System Review: Dungeon World

A review of Dungeon World? In the year 2025? I guess I'm just living on the cutting edge.

Dungeon World wears its inspiration on its sleeve. We have the usual stats of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma we're used to from Dungeons & Dragons, which are determined with a score between 3 and 18, then converted into a modifier that makes your rolls better or worse. Many of D&D's classes have been adapted for Dungeon World, including bards, clerics, druids, and rogues. Your character's HP is determined by your class and Constitution score, as is the dice to roll when inflicting damage.

The resolution mechanics and narrative focus of the system are where it deviates from the trappings of D&D, and it was my first exposure to the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) engine. I ran three one-shots with a table of experienced roleplayers who had also taken multiple improv classes together, which seems like the dream combination for a fiction-first system like Dungeon World. We had all played Blades in the Dark together, so we weren't totally new to this style of game, but it still presented a challenging learning curve in places.

With Moves Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

Let's start with the core mechanic of Dungeon World (and all PbtA systems): Moves. As the table is sharing the usual back-and-forth of creating a story, the Game Master will interject when a player "triggers a Move"; they just said something that requires a roll to resolve. That means it's time to pick up two d6, roll them, and add up the result. The thresholds for degrees of success are static; 6 or less is a failure, 7 through 9 is a partial success, 10 and up is a success.

But my sticking point was the Move categorisation. There are seven generic Player Moves; one for each of the six stats, and an additional "Defy Danger" Move that can use any of the stats. I struggled to fit all the actions my players were trying to take into seven opinionated categories. Some were a matter of mindset, like realizing the typical Stealth roll was actually "Defy Danger against being detected, using the Dexterity modifier". Others weren't as clear, like constructing a temporary defensive wall or picking a lock.

I understand what the goal of the Move system is. It provides a framework of consequences for each action, so players and GM alike can understand what they're risking when they attempt a roll. And this strikes me as a helpful tool for someone new to the Game Master role, providing guidance on partial successes and dialling in the right level of penalty for failures. But in my experience, Moves felt restrictive rather than supportive.

On top of those, each player class (called a Playbook) has its own set of Moves that can be unlocked when levelling. This all seems fine so far, right? Well, the guidance from the rulebook is that players don't call out which Move they want to make, they narrate the fiction and the GM calls for the Move. But now the GM needs to remember not just the standard Moves, but all the Moves chosen by each character from their Playbook. With just three players, even at level 2 we could be looking at a dozen additional Moves that could be triggered! Maybe if I ran a longer campaign, I would memorize all these Moves, but in my short-form game I had to stop and read the Move details from the player's sheet, and it repeatedly brought the game to a screeching halt.

GM as a Referee

I've often heard people describe the Game Master's role as being a referee; neutral and fair, not bending the rules to make life any easier or harder for the players. And somehow, Dungeon World might be the system that reinforces that mindset the most. And it does that by relieving the GM of any mechanical agency.

Usually, a GM has the option of modulating difficulty for a player roll. Systems like Dungeons & Dragons let the GM set the Difficulty Class of a roll, so difficult actions have a higher number they need to reach. A common mechanic is advantage and disadvantage, rolling more dice to increase the odds of success or failure. Dungeon World doesn't have any of that. The success thresholds are static, the GM can't provide extra dice, and the manual provides no guidance on imposing modifiers beyond what a character already has on their sheet.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It allows the GM to focus on the fiction, and of course difficulty and adversity can be introduced through the narrative. But the stories crafted at the table are reinforced by the mechanics we build them with. Players feel empowered when their character has an edge reflected by the dice, and the challenges they face can be emphasised by mechanical disadvantages. It's hard to feel clever as a player when the parameters of your rolls are unchanging, regardless of how you approach a situation.

How Crunchy is Too Crunchy?

Now, here's where things get controversial. Dungeon World is often regarded as running counter to some core tenets of the Powered by the Apocalypse framework. For example, hit points. Each Playbook has its own damage die, and many Moves specify different sizes of dice for affecting hit points. This is seen as a boon for groups trying to get away from Dungeons and Dragons, while still having a quantifiable measurement for how strong their characters or opponents are. The downside is, it abstracts away the characters' condition, replacing broken bones or missing limbs with "I still have 1HP, so I'm okay".

As a GM, my preference is to move further into PbtA territory with a system like Chasing Adventure, which still captures the heroic fantasy vibe without relying on the gamification of damage and hit points. However, my players enjoyed having that metric for success when it was time to face down an enemy.

Still a Tentpole

Over a decade after its release, Dungeon World still has a supportive following. I've seen it frequently recommended to burnt-out GMs desperate to move their group away from D&D's drawn-out combat and obscene power curve, and I totally understand why. Most groups will pick up Dungeons & Dragons as their first game because it's all anyone new to the TTRPG scene knows. But the crunch lurks beneath the surface, and once the GM realises what they've got themselves into it's already too late. Dungeon World fits neatly into that one-line pitch of "It's like D&D with shorter combat", which is a role it still serves admirably.

Dungeon World also has a massive catalogue of homebrew content to pull from, including hundreds of custom Playbooks for players to dig through if they want to keep things fresh. There's a treasure trove of rule changes and tweaked systems to suit your table, like Yochai Gal's Revised Ability Scores. It has inspired dozens of similar systems, each making their own changes and improvements to the fiction-first fantasy genre.

... But for How Long?

I bought my copy of Dungeon World when I was still just scratching the surface of the TTRPG scene. And I was drawn to it for the same reason as so many others: to coax my D&D group into other systems. It wasn't quite the match we were looking for, but we still had a great time with the few sessions we played.

I had already decided from my short time running Dungeon World that it wasn't the system for me. The next time I want to run some heroic fantasy with snappy combat, I'll be reaching for Dragonbane, Shadowdark, or Fabula Ultima. And if I have a group of players with no interest in math and strategy, I have Chasing Adventure and Stonetop to try. I'll be keeping a copy of Yochai Gal's One Shot World on hand, in case anyone wants a non-committal taste of the world beyond D&D.