I'm a big fan of the *World games because they are rules light, they put the emphasis on the story, and they allow that story to evolve and take on a life of its own. There's certainly something satisfying about playing out a scene as the GM and having no real idea or plan for how that scene plays out.
As much as I like the mechanics, the games can be a real bitch to run at times. Here's why.
The game is "rules light" in a sense. Any time the characters are doing something that would put them at risk, it likely counts as a move and they roll for it. The mechanics for the moves all follow a straightforward formula, you roll 2 D6 and then add an appropriate modifier. If you get a 10+ it's a strong hit (you get what you want), a 7-9 is a weak hit (you Almost get what you want at some cost or something close to what you want), and on a 6 or less you fucking blew it (so watch out). Simple enough, right? The catch is that there are lots and lots of moves, and each has it's own options to choose from, consequences on a soft hit, and some detail the consequence of failure and some don't. So on paper you're like oh cool look at all these fun moves! But at the table, it results in a lot of me flipping pages and trying to come up with consequences appropriate to the degree of success, that make sense with the fiction we're building. Sometimes I stall. Sometimes my group gets bored and I swear at them.
Another way that the game feels stuck between two worlds is in the prep. It is supposed to be prep light, and as GM you don't make a story line for your characters to follow. This has DEFINITELY led to some cool scenes and moments that I doubt any of the players involved would have thought up on their own. However, I also find myself grasping at straws at times. There is a system to create fronts: groupings of threatening elements that exist in the world the player characters live in that follow impulses toward some dark future. But the fronts are confusing to grasp and hard to make tangible. I've run probably 3 games of apocalypse world and am in the middle of a dungeon world campaign and fronts still give me a hard time.
I think, without planning a story line, there's some prep I can do to help me out a great deal at the table. For my next dungeon world session, I'm aiming to prepare a dozen hirelings with distinct personalities for the PCs to choose from, plus some cool treasure items. I may prowl the net to help me with the latter. I'd also like to draw some half-maps of areas that I think the PCs are likely to explore. The game instructs the GM to "Draw Maps, leave holes." I think I've been more on the side of Holes, so I'm going to try and set myself up for a bit more success next go around.
I've gotten better over time, and the moves all carry an inherent flavor to them which is what I love about the games. Still, the open-endedness of the rules can feel more like vagueness, and I've only grokked the flow of the game by lurking on the astoundingly helpful forums for... much time. Anyway, expect another AP post from Dungeon World soon, plus some custom rules and such I crafted for our campaign. Also, I might have to make another post to focus on all the things that draw me to Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World and its well fleshed out Hacks, because this post maybe came off as negative. BUT THE GAMES ARE AWESOME, I SWEAR!!!
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