Meet the Designers: Helena Real
With Dungeon World 2 on its way, its two designers would like to share previews, updates, and “behind the scenes” looks at the game development with the community, so they can better understand the decision-making process behind it. Here is the second of many such blog posts.
Hi! My name's Helena (she/her) and I'm a Chilean trans writer, game designer, editor, translator, and Game Master for Magpie Games' Curated Play Program. I got addi—“hooked”—on TTRPGs back in 2001, when a classmate invited me to a session of MERP (Middle-earth Role Playing) on the cold floor outside the library of my high school. I was 14 at the time, we had a single set of polyhedral dice, and my first character—a poor wizard I named “Raistlin” after following another classmate’s recommendation—died in his first fight. Good times!
I’ve been running and playing TTRPGs ever since. The original Dungeon World was one of my favorite “late” games, back in 2015-2016, when I returned to the hobby after a few years away due to personal reasons and, yes, a whole lot of burnout after the D&D 3.5-Pathfinder 1E days. As a former friend used to so succinctly put it: “Why do D&D character sheets have to look like tax forms?”
At heart I’m what they call a “narrative” player and GM. I don’t really care to play or run TTRPGs as “power fantasies”; i.e. playing characters who are better than you and who you try to turn into as powerful alter egos of yourself as you possibly can. For me, it’s all about THE DRAMA. I want to experience emotional catharsis when playing and/or running and, as such, I gravitate to TTRPG systems & philosophies that emphasize that. I want tools to create dramatic momentum and to push players to make decisions that feel portentous. I don’t care for “crunch” unless it’s in the service of drama, and I don’t fudge dice EVER. I believe in the power of dice-rolling (or other random generating engines) to inject TTRPG procedures with a healthy dose of unexpectedness.
I’ve worked as a freelance TTRPG designer since 2015, so this is my 10th year anniversary in the industry! I’ve worked in a lot of wonderful projects, from the disappeared Fate Codex to Avatar Legends, passing through 7th Sea: Second Edition, Bluebeard’s Bride, two Fate Worlds for Evil Hat—the award-winning The Way of the Pukona and Ngen Mapu—and many others.
PbtA is my favorite way to play TTRPGs and my favorite fiction genre is fantasy. I’ve read and watched A LOT of it, and I prefer the classics and the not-so-well-known books rather than most “new stuff”. My favorite fantasy authors are Tolkien, Le Guin, Moorcock, Howard, Weis & Hickman, Pratchett, Dunsany, Lewis, Hobb, and Ende. My favorite fantasy movies are The Princess Bride, Highlander, most Hayao Miyazaki Ghibli films, Labyrinth, Excalibur, the Del Toro Hellboy movies, The Dark Crystal, El laberinto del fauno, Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian, The Wizard of Oz, and Dragonheart.
When I was offered the chance to participate in creating a sequel/spiritual inheritor to the original Dungeon World, I jumped at the opportunity. I did so because of a number of reasons, of course, but perhaps the most important is this: I believe we haven’t seen the best fantasy PbtA yet, and I want to give it a shot at trying to create it with Spencer.
We want to take everything that was great and awesome about the OG DW and move forward. We want this new Dungeon World—Dungeon World 2—to feel like the easiest-to-use game if you want to sit around a (virtual) table and just want to tell a good fantasy story together. One that doesn’t feel that different from those favorite books & movies of mine I mentioned above and that, most importantly, isn’t bogged down by antiquated rules and/or tributes/winks/references to positively archaic mechanics and modes of play.
We want to offer you a streamlined set of rules, one that respects your limited playing time and puts a piece of design in between you and your friends’ conversation only when those can enhance said conversation, and propulse it towards yet another dramatically-charged instance in the fiction.
We hope that, after you play a session of Dungeon World 2, you feel like SO much happened. That you faced obstacles, both physical and otherwise, yes, but that you also had moments of genuine connection between your character and the rest of the party members. That your character learned things about themself, and that you are one step closer to achieving your goals. And that you visited places that are, well, truly fantastical. If we accomplish that, I think we will have been successful.
Join us and help us make that dream become a reality—through your playtest and feedback!
Until next Tuesday,
Helena