r/DungeonWorld

I have recently had a magic item be part of some loot for my party, but I wasn’t sure how to handle how the whole party would “know” how the item worked. The Rulebook doesn’t mention this from what I can see. For reference, when the party found the item, I had them randomly roll and they got the “Flask of Breath”

From my GMing objectives I would prefer it if all players could partake in knowing and using any magic items like this, because it would be a cool bit of fictional problem solving and adds an interesting element. However, I went into this somewhat naively because I prefaced the find with “wizard, you recognise this flask as the Flask of Breath”, but then the wizard wanted to keep its identity, value and uses hidden because he was “worried the Thief in the party would try and steal it.” and he played it off as “This is an interesting flask, I’ll have to study it”. No faults from the player there of course, it was lore-accurate RP for his character.

The options I can see are:

*The magic item isn’t unique and so the PCs would know that it is A, rather than The Flask of Breath

Or the magic item is unique and:

*Well known enough that each PC would have heard of it *Only PCs with magical backgrounds would know about it *No PCs know how it works and would have to experiment with it/detect magic/take it to a learned NPC/spout lore to do so. *The instructions are on the magic item themselves, inscribed as runes or something *I set the item in fiction, describing its properties as it is discovered *Simply break the fourth wall

I want the item to be unique to add interest and loss-tension to any interactions with it so the first option is out, but I’m not sure how to (fiction first) deal with the other options:

1. Every PC has heard of it

There would be a myriad of magic items in this universe, it seems unlikely that every PC would happen to know about a particular item and exactly how it works.

2. Only PCs with magical backgrounds would have heard of it

This allows for inter-party information disparity which I want to avoid

3. No PCs know how it works and would have to experiment with it/detect magic/take it to a learned NPC/spout lore to do so.

Each PC could have a sense that the item is magical. The problem I can see with this is, the party might not experiment fully, or are too afraid to experiment in case the item is evil, or far worse if the party experiments with an item with a fixed number of uses and inadvertently uses it up. If someone spouts lore about the item then would they then be able to ask to keep the result secret?

4. The instructions are on the magic item themselves, inscribed as runes or something else

How would uneducated PCs be able to read it? And if it was in common tongue, that sounds pretty unrealistic

5. I set the item in fiction, describing its properties as it is discovered

This might work for more obvious items like the Flask of Breath, but what about items with more subtle effects, like the Cloak of Silent Stars

6. Simply break the fourth wall

Sounds like a cop out leading to lack of immersion

GMs how do you handle this?

I’m making a Star Wars hack for DW. My son is obsessed with Mandalorian so I’m looking to emulate that. For his armor, I feel like making the armor rating high makes sense, but I don’t think it’ll capture the “feel” of wearing a suite of invincible armor.

Does anybody have ideas on how to do this in a fair way? Maybe another game does something similar?

Hi! I'm a GM, and my party is 8 session in Homebrew World. Even though I knew it would probably turn into a long form adventure, I decided to go with Homebrew World since I was kinda familiar with it.

Even though I like the system, I'm not sure how viable is it long-term. The players are levelling even with needing extra 2 XP per new level.

I was thinking about making custom character sheets for my players based on their inclinations and background (I've already made some custom moves - maybe they can be translated into full on character sheets).

Has anyone done something similar?

I can remember a game that I'm sure was a hack of DW. It explicitly came with a small (like maybe 3 rooms and a trap) 'dungeon', which had its entrance high in a mountainside.

Its HP system was more like Night Witches, with boxes you could check off (and the last one being 'you die'). I think there was also an always-available option along the lines of 'you stumble/fall over/drop what you're holding' so that even if you have no unchecked boxes left, you need to take at least 2 damage to die.