Porting Dungeon World's GMing Rules, Part 4

So, for this post I'm taking a bit of a departure from the campaign and domain play rules that I've been kitbashing from Dungeon World and An Echo, Resounding. This is mostly because it's been awhile, and I'm having to reconstruct all the stuff I had figured out from what are now opaque notes, and instead of figuring all that out tonight, I went instead for a simpler problem and decided to tackle some planning/layout issues, and then to address equipment tags.

Equipment tags are one of my very favorite nitty-gritty details from the Apocalypse World family of games. I'm a sucker for broadly modular systems that have a framework for incorporating very flexible input (now that I've figured them out, I'm a big fan of tags for blog posts as well). Perhaps best of all, incorporating DW style tags does not require a lot of work on other rules. For all of the "fictional cue" tags, it's really just a matter of systematizing and highlighting what's already there in OD&D. OD&D referees are already supposed to account for the fact that a Glaive isn't something you're going to use in a wrestling match and that daggers might have trouble getting around a determined shield wall. The trouble is, as I'm discovering actually running an OD&D game, is that when the ref gets caught up in keeping track of exploration rounds and combat rounds, tracking monster hit points and special attacks, remembering to check morale, and so forth, it's way too easy to succumb to "Roll to hit. Roll damage. Next guy." Equipment tags are a fantastic way to remind refs about the cool stuff to pay attention to.

Probably the most significant mechanical alterations are in terms of range and encumbrance. I really rather like DW's method of handling weight and encumbrance, and so I'm converting the pound weights of S&W WhiteBox into "Weight" tags. I'm going to go ahead and reexamine the movement and encumbrance rules to square them with the changed weight method. Range is pretty straight forward. I'm straight up converting ranges in feet into the broad categories of "near" and "far".

The biggest challenge is coming from converting prices for things not included in the WhiteBox rules, but overall I'm really excited about including equipment tags going forward.