Tag Archives: tone

Grumping about DungeonWorld, 9/17/26

Posted on by Henry

I have a problem. I grumble nearly every time I think about DungeonWorld. It’s gotten worse, and I’m at risk of full blown curmudgeon-itis.

I have to talk about D&D first. For better AND for worse, D&D remains most people’s touchstone for roleplaying games. DungeonWorld isn’t D&D, but obviously looks and sounds like it should be similar. Based on my recent conversations with newer explorers of the hobby, DungeonWorld is the not-D&D game that they are most likely to have tried. Those who aren’t exploring lots of different RPG systems will try out D&D, look at DungeonWorld… and then often go back to D&D. Whenever I hear that, I feel disappointed—not with them, but with how much better DW could have been.

Maybe my sample group is weird. That’s totally possible.

DungeonWorld (DW) is the Powered-by-the-Apocalypse (PbtA) game that I like the least. That has been true for a long while. This opinion pre-existed and is totally distinct from my thoughts about Adam Koebel (here’s some now-old news on that front). Maybe I’ll talk about that drama some other day, but probably not.

I’ve had fun playing DW. I’ve had fun running it. Heck, I ran it during its playtest and had a delight with my friends. Back then D&D’s 4th edition was still au courant, with its Daily, Encounter, and At-Will powers for every character class and its clearly MMO-inspired design. In retrospect I do like how D&D 4e worked as a tactical puzzle game, but DungeonWorld felt like a much-needed alternative. It was a game that felt D&D-ish and which didn’t assume everyone needed a tactical map to play their tabletop RPG.

I still really like the ways in which DungeonWorld encouraged the GM and players to all collaborate on the narrative and the setting. This wasn’t unique to DW: PbtA games regularly played around with more-collaborative systems. But DW had explicit mechanics by which players could contribute. That plus a great set of players led to The Underwatch, one of my favorite campaigns that I’ve run.

No, my problem with DungeonWorld is a personal gripe that I don’t expect others to share—and which I fervently want to convince you is correct:

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Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman

Posted on by Henry

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This movie manages to embody the tone of the central character, AND make me believe that the central character really is the Spiderman that I know and love. It’s not grim-dark, or silly (well, I mean, it *is* silly but it’s *Spiderman* silly). I really enjoyed it, and would happily watch it again. And while nothing is perfect, I felt like this movie did a wonderful job of portraying a Spiderman with hope and integrity, and without the angst that seems like such a big component of so many other Marvel movies.

I’m not saying I don’t love the angst, but there’s something refreshing about seeing Spiderman so relatively free of it. Maybe Peter will grow into it in the future, but that can take its own time.

Also, while I still want to see a Spiderman movie about Miles Morales (which the internets tell me has been teased by an easter egg I missed), I was impressed by the fact that this movie managed to feel inclusive in a way that other Marvel movies have not. Maybe I shouldn’t be that impressed. The other Marvel movies, after all, haven’t exactly been bastions of inclusion. But I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the movie’s high schoolers. Honestly, anything else would have been jarring, so it’s good they didn’t screw it up.