Back in November I found myself with a very long series of waits on my hand on buses, in cafes, and in Hospital waiting rooms. I am trying to cut my screen time way back, so I decided instead I would grab Mythic GME and a book off my shelf and play a solo game over the course of the day.
I decided to give Dungeon World another whirl. I was not disappointed: I rather enjoyed the narrative complexity that came out of a storygame played solo (even if my players are still not interested in them.) I came up with a fantastic tale of a young princess, a squire, and an apprentice magician playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with dwarf terrorists in the Underdark. I gave the overall experience a 7/10, it was a good solo run, but in a lot of places it was marred by some of the flaws of the system, such as how easy it was for a bad roll or two to turn into an quagmire of bad events, and the fact that magic was often fickle and ineffectual. I made a pile of notes about how I would tweak the game in the future.
In March, I had to move house, and as I packed, hauled boxes by the dolly-full between houses, and unpacked every day for a month, I found myself binging a lot of solo semi-actual play podcasts that I was behind on, including the entire third season of the amazing The Lone Adventurer by Carl White. TLA tells a cohesive story of spies, thieves, and manapunk fighter pilots that is deeply engrossing. And one of the things he does that I really enjoy is that he periodically changes game systems to suit the kind of adventure he wants for the specific arc of the story. When he wants Bondesque action he plays D&D5e; when he tells crime stories he uses Blades in the Dark; when he is engaging in a long skyship voyage he plays Ironsworn; and airship battles are played in Warbirds. And for each he works very hard to explain the system and how it is producing the story he wants. After a few episodes in a given system, you have got a pretty good sense of how to play it and how it plays.
For one recent segment of The Lone Adventurer, Carl switched over to Chasing Adventure, a PbtA fantasy adventure game that was designed to work similarly to Dungeon World, but was intended to smooth off DW's rough edges, be mechanically a little lighter and more free-flowing, and a little less beholden to Dungeons & Dragons. Listening to Carl play got me quite intrigued, I went out and grabbed the free version immediately, and liked it enough to buy the full version a few days later.
The System
Chasing Adventure was originally a hack of Dungeon World that Spencer Moore created to remove many of the same gripes that I have about the game: Magic is poorly executed, a few bad rolls tend to spiral out of control, and the game is trying really hard to be Dungeons & Dragons in a different medium and not trying nearly hard enough to be a flexible fantasy or sword and sorcery game.
The number of tweaks, modifications, and quality of life upgrades Chasing Adventure piled on to Dungeon World very quickly turned it into its own thing: a very flexible and light fantasy adventure storygame that certainly resembles Dungeons & Dragons superficially, but is definitely a distinct game that plays very differently.
Characters in Chasing Adventure have a level, character class ("playbook") and five ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma that range at the start between -1 and +2, and can raise to +3 when they reach 10th level, and so a Dungeons & Dragons character can be ported from D&D to CA very easily.
Conditions
Hit points are replaced by a system of conditions. When a mishap, injury, or strain impacts a character they apply a condition to an ability score of the GM's choice. The character has disadvantage to all rolls on that ability score thereafter. Many NPCs don't have ability scores per se, but instead have a number of condition boxes and the GM will grant advantage to rolls against that NPC where appropriate to the condition they describe.
When a PC has conditions attached to all ability scores or an NPC has all of their condition boxes filled, they crumble. An NPC that crumbles may surrender, die, flee, or otherwise be eliminated as the GM sees fit. A PC who crumbles must choose between making one of their conditions semi-permanent, changing their character class to represent a major change in the character's persona, or allowing their PC to die. In the case of a locked-in condition, the PC may only remove it when they gain a level, and at the cost of not getting certain other level benefits.
Armor is an expendable resource that you can expend to cancel out a condition. For example if you are wearing chainmail with an armour rating of 2 and roll poorly during an engage roll when fighting a monster, you can expend a point from your chainmail not to get a wounded condition on your Strength. Magical wards and certain character abilities gained from a playbook increase armour. Once you have expended armour it doesn;t come back until your character takes time to rest and maintain their gear.
Moves & Dice Mechanics
Like in most PbtA games, when the characters attempt to handle a task where failure would be consequential the GM calls for them to roll using one of a handful of "moves". Usually the roll will use one of seven of the ten Adventure Moves, where they roll 2d6 and add an appropriate attribute. If extenuating circumstances suggest the roll might be easier or harder the roll might be given advantage or disadvantage where the player rolls 3d6 and takes the two higher or lower rolls respectively.
On a result of 10+, the PC gets the result they are looking for; some moves have codified results, such as the examine roll getting a truthful answer to one question and one follow up question about the situation by the GM.
A result of 7-9 the PC gets a success but at some cost that the moves codify. For example, in battle a 10+ on the Engage move allows you to inflict a condition on the enemy, while a 7-9 lets you inflict that condition but you get one yourself.
A result of 6 or lower is a failure, and the GM imposes a consequence through a series of suggested GM moves, such as "change the environment" inflcting a condition on a PC, causing an NPC or a piece of equipment to be lost, adding more NPCs into the encounter, etc.
PCs can also choose to inflict conditions on themselves to gain advantage on a roll, or help their ally to grant them advantage on a roll, but if they do so, they suffer the same consequence if the roll fails.
All rolls in Chasing Adventure are player-facing: the GM calls for a roll and determines NPC actions based on results. For example a monster only harms a player of they fail a Defy move to avoid an attack or an Engage roll when they fight it. Accordingly rolls often represent a lot of action all at once: an engage move might represent several minutes of striking and parrying, lef fly a whole exchange of arrows as the PC moves and dodges, etc.
Playbooks offer PCs a number of unique moves that represent their class abilities, or special modifiers to existing moves.
Specialized Systems
Chasing Adventure has a number of other formalized moves where a certain amount of complexity is required, such as for sowing rumours, tracking someone or something down, making connections, or rejoining the party after a missed session.
In two cases there are a set of moves designed to formalize two more complex pillars of play: chases and social interactions.
In the case of social interactions the game has a mechanic called favour. Favour is an abstract expression of whether a person is positively inclined to a PC enough to give them valuable information or go out on a limb to help them. Asking NPCs for things comes with a risk of losing favour.
Chases (as well as running in terror from other calamities) is handled by breaking the encounter into a chasing and an escaping side that each have an edge score. Players describe an action intended to close the distance or get away as appropriate, and make a "gain the edge" move that risks 1 to 3 edge depending on the significance of the move. On a 10 they gain what they risked, on a 7-9 both sides do, and on a 6 the opposing side does. When one side reaches 3 edge, the chase is resolved with ties favouring the side with the most PCs. the losing side gets to decide some aspects of the outcome based on how much edge they accrued.
Chasing Adventure also has a number of moves and mechanics to handle sidekicks that resembles the popular sidekick system that was introduced into D&D5e through one of the Unearthed Arcana articles back around 2019. NPC sidekicks are generally meant to be an asset to your rolls; the game pretty much guarantees that they will land in danger if sent to do a dangerous task on their own.
Character Advancement
Characters gain XP for rolling on stats where they have a condition, acting in accordance to a character dive (which starts dictated by class, but evolves with play), as well as one per game session if PCs had discovered something new and important, visiting a new and dangerous or seriously altering a location, and for overcoming a notable obstacle or enemy.
If a character settles in after an adventure with 5 or more XP they can exchange 5 XP for a level. A character levelling up may claim one upgrade that can include removing a locked condition, raising an attribute, buying a new special move from your playbook, or changing your playbook.
This system has some restrictions as to when and how you upgrade stats. An it means recovering from lasting conditions is very costly.
Characters do not gain more conditions, and so, with exception of a few class abilites that grant armour, characters do not become any tougher. Effects that let them inflict multiple conditions or easily evade certain kinds of dangers really only become availbe to characters at levels 10+.
Overall levels do not feel like the same quantum leap that they are in Dungeons & Dragons: 1st level characters feel closer to 4th level OSR D&D characters, but after that, it takes 2-3 Chasing Adventure levels to feel like a single D&D level. Ultimately the game perpetually feels like mid-level D&D play.
Other than character moves and equipment, the other way to improve PCs is by acquiring assets like hideouts, henchmen, titles, guild memberships, and contacts. These can be bought at level up or earned through play.
NPCs
GM Tools
The GM advice and tools in Chasing Adventure includes a mechanic similar to the Fronts system in Dungeon World, but with a mechanical timer attached to it that counts down every time the players take downtime called Ominous Forces. This system is designed to give PCs a sense of urgency and keep them engaged with the perils that threaten the campaign world. Overall it feels very similar to the system I proposed (and often use) called Devastation Dice.
Aside from that clever system, the GM section offers advice on how to move the spotlight effectively from player to player, make sure each PC has a moment to shin in the narrative, and run memorable NPCs which are all solid advice.
Free vs. Full Versions
The free version of the game overall feels very complete, and includes a generous GM section.
The Full version of the game has two additional sections that are not presented in the free version of the corebook. the first is a "Advanced Play" section that is a guide to hacking and altering the rules, including a set of tools for creating new playbooks, legendary objects, and changing the genre of Chasing Adventure.
The second is a sizable selection of random adventure generators and handy random tables to help GMs come up with ideas on the fly, most presented as d36 tables.
What I Loved
Freeing Dungeon World from D&D (& Apocalypse World)
I have a love/hate relationship with Powered by the Apocalypse games, in theory I think the elegant way they handle initiative, combat, and roll outcomes has incredible potential -- especially when made as abstract as possible.
Early PbtA games were very beholden to Apocalypse World: they tended to make the outcomes listed in the moves as very specific and often had scores of moves to choose from. Later PbtA games, such as Down and Out in Dredgeberg and World of Dungeons abstracted this so far that it almost had the opposite problem; there was little guidance on how to handle failure or qualified success at all.
Chasing Adventure elegantly handles this by having a selection of mostly-mechanics-free "GM Moves" such as "Add a PC", "Inflict a Condition" or "Change the Environment" with solid guidance on how to choose and execute your move well. A Conditional Success or Failure allows the GM to make a move that seems appropriate. NPCs have "methods" that describe what they will do (and thus suggest what move to make) if the PCs invoke a GM move when interacting with them. I find that this is a pretty good compromise between the free-flowing World of Dungeons and the excessively rigid Apocalypse World approaches.
in the case of Dungeon World, adding in elements like hit points, character level, memorized spells, etc. in the attempt to imitate Dungeons & Dragons layered multiple levels of complexity onto the game that slowed it down and made it feel quite kludgy and awkward at times.
Because genre emulation is a major goal of the Storygame and especially the Forge ethos, Dungeon World often felt like it was trying too hard to be "Dungeons & Dragons except as a PbtA game" and not enough like it was trying to be a good swords and sorcery game in its own right.
Chasing Adventure is more than happy to get rid of all of D&D's sacred cows in its quest to lighten the load and streamline Dungeon World. As a result, Chasing Adventure feels like its own, fresh take on the Swords & Sorcery / Fantasy adventure genre that makes the odd tip of the hat to D&D rather than trying to emulate it.
It treats D&D5e as a sort of touchstone through character classes and ability scores: "You can take the kind of characters you imagined for D&D and fit them in here, and have a totally different kind of adventure with them here."
An Effective Alternative to Hit Points
As unrealistic as they are, I actually like hit points as a system because they just plain work. If you don't think too hard about them, and maybe add a wounds system in, they can work really well. Often when TTRPGs attempt to replace hit points they end up creating a system that is just as odd, unrealistic, fraught, and immersion-breaking, if not moreso.
But that isn't to say I don't wish we had a good alternative. I am always excited when I see a game make an alternative system for handling injuries that also works. (The health & stun tracks in Shadowrun is one of my favourite ways of handling injuries in a TTRPG.)
Chasing Adventure's conditions system works. It makes characters feel tough but not invulnerable, and it makes fatigue, injury, confusion, and even emotional turmoil feel dangerous.
It also makes the characters mechanically feel about as tough as a 4th-7th level D&D character: they can take a few hits, but never feel invulnerable.
Ominous Forces
One of the best innovations that Dungeon World had to offer was the idea of Fronts: a method of tracking looming threats that made the campaign world feel like a living thing - and one that is in danger. If you want to create a game where the forces of Chaos are actively seeking to tear things down and where the PCs have a good chance to stop them, it is a great system.
I tinkered with using fronts and giving them a more mechanical aspect by combining them with Depletion Dice to create a system where, if the Chaotic forces of the world go unchecked, they have a chance of advancing their schemes in the background, in the process generating new hooks and rumours for the PCs.
Chasing Adventure does something very similar with its Ominous Forces tool. GMs running an extended campaign in Chasing Adventure are encouraged to come up with 2-4 Ominous Forces and a list of their goals and multiple short term objectives that will bring them closer to those goals. Whenever PCs use the "Settle In" move to take rest and downtime one of the Ominous Forces gets to accomplish one objective, as chosen by the GM.
This gives a simple but effective way at keeping the campaign moving at a fair clip, while also creating urgency for the PCs: players have to decide whether their PCs can really afford to rest, train, and resupply, or wether they have to push themselves harder to keep ahead of the Enemy.
Crumbling
When PCs in Chasing Adventure have 5 conditions they are no longer able to keep adventuring as they are: they are too injured, worn down, and distressed to press on. This allows for psychological trauma, fatigue, illness, and hunger to be an equal threat to injury to a character's well-being.
When a character crumbles, the player has the option to simply let the character die, lock one condition in to represent a long-lasting and severe trauma or injury of some kind, or they can have a major psychological break that causes the PCs to change classes, and thus motivations and the tools they use to solve problems.
I find this system provides an interesting alternative to death: characters can be crippled, driven mad, scarred, or transformed by an attack. Thanks to the way lasting injuries work, it also means that the PC will receive fewer benefits on their next level up, as well, if you go the permanent condition route.
I love the lethality level of old-school Dungeons & Dragons, personally, and don't get fussed when I lose a character. I don't tend to see PCs as sacred reflections of the self. However, as I play a lot with children these days, this allows me a good alternative to killing off player characters, which I appreciate and it makes Chasing Adventure an easier sell for them..
Multiclassing that Makes Sense
Chasing Adventure has a multiclassing method that makes a lot of sense to me, expecially given that multiclassing is not always voluntary in the system: the character gains the basic moves from the new profession. They then total up the number of levels they have beyond first: they may spend these levels to buy new lower-level movies specific to their new class, or keep moves they had already learned from their old class.
In practical terms it means that a character who changes class loses access to perks from their old class to make room for new ones, and if they want to keep any of their old benefits, they will start behind other characters of the same class at the same level. They also swap two ability scores.
For example, let's say a 5th level Wizard has just been severely injured and crumbles, and the PC decides to switch him over to being a Barbarian, as the wizard has lost faith in the power of magic to overcome his foes. The player may decide that the trauma and injuries cost the wizard his powers altogether: they lose all magic: the barbarian could then buy 5 levels worth of Barbarian benefits, effectively re-writing the character. On the other hand, if the character doesn't want to lose all of their powers, They might choose to buy the ability to cast spells and the first two spells they learned for one level, the ability to perform minor cantrips with another, and level, and keep a favourite spell with a third. They character can then buy two barbarian abilities.
This ex-wizard has lost their other spells, their ability to give sage advice, and their trust their lore and arcane knowledge. While they retain a few of their former powers, they are now otherwise about as effective in battle as a 2nd level barbarian.
in either case, the character is likely going to swap their second-bast ability score with their strength to be a more effective barbarian, leaving them either socially more cold and distant, less clear-headed, or less quick on their feet as once they were as a reflection of their newfound fury and the scars left behind by their previous injuries.
While it is possible to make a character who can do a lot of things this way, keeping old class abilities comes at a cost to the character's development in the new class. At best you might wind up a jack of all trades and a master of none. And because of Chasing Adventure's relative mechanical simplicity, it is difficult if not impossible to use multiclassing to created min-maxed builds.
It also means that Clerics and Druids who turn away from their faith either lose their holy abilities altogether, or find them much diminished as they are closing themselves off to their divine source, which I like for flavour purposes.
Cool Arcane Magic System
The Wizard spells described in Chasing Adventure are all listed with a cost: a potential terrible thing that happens if the Wizard loses control of the magic that they are channelling.
Whenever a Wizard uses their "Cast a Spell" move they run a risk of the spell exacting that cost from them on a roll of 7-9. on a roll of 6- the spell goes truly haywire and the GM may choose to inflict the cost with no magical result or use it as the inspiration for some wild GM moves as the spell goes wild.
This makes magic feel dark and dangerous in a way that reminds me very much of the spell misfires in Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, and that is the highest praise you could ask of a magic system. The more license a GM takes with their counter-moves on a failed spell, the more wild and dangerous magic will feel.
This also means that a Wizard character is not likely to cast spells wildly without thought to the danger, which I feels helps make magic itself feel more weighty and meaningful in the system.
It also gets rid of the idea that a magic-user loses the spell when they cast it. While that works if you are drawing heavily on the lore of The Dying Earth or perhaps Discworld, 'forgeting' spells often feels strange and counter-intuitive when you position Wizards as beings who gain power through learning secret knowledge.
It is also worth noting that spells do not have levels in Chasing Adventure: a character can basically start with any two spells they would like, incldung classics like fireballs and teleportation, but the spells are not so powerful in the way they work mechanically to throw the game out of whack.
Truly impressive magical effects require the character instead perform a ritual, which is a separate move that the GM can require be done in places of power, over long periods of time, at great cost, or with rare objects and ingredients. This gives us a free-form way of making magicians feel like true miracle-workers, but also defines serious costs that keeps magic from being a tool that can fix anything.
A Better Balance of Player Agency
One of my biggest complaints about PbtA and other Storygames in general is that they tend to hand a level of agency to player characters that goes way beyond the sort of bounded agency they have in older styles of TTRPG.
In a game like Dungeons & Dragons you are effectively using language and visualization to have a virtual reality experience. The GM uses description and perhaps props to give you a window into what your character senses, and you decied what your character does in that world based on that information alone.
More modern games often give the player the means of changing the world in some way beyond what the character alone could do. Be that by giving the player a set of choices regarding the outcome of a roll (as in older PbtA games), the ability to veto new things the GM introduces (like in Cypher System games) or meta-currency the PC can spend to alter the outcome of events (such as perversity points in the Mongoose editions of Paranoia), or even just a free-floating token to change odds that has no in-game justification (like inspiration in D&D5e.)
While having player agency that steps beyond the bounds of the character agency may be better for telling certain kinds of stories (especially heroic ones or ones where the players are interested in using their characters to explore their own identities), I find that it breaks my sense of immersion when i play and lowers the sense of tension.
Chasing Adventure tends to lean into bounded player agency: by leaving consequences primarily to GM moves, simplifying existing moves, and trimming down the list, it puts a lot of the creativity back in the GMs court. Rather than giving players a menu of options for them to choose from when they determine the outcome of their actions, it trusts the GM to use their moves wisely, and outs control of outcomes primarily back in the GM's hands. It returns more to a Virtual Reality experience, while creating a far more dynamic set of possibilities for PC success or failure.
Greater GM Trust
Powered by the Apocalypse games are generally structured to strip the GM of a lot of power and discretion. They do this in the name of:
- Ensuring the GM respects the social contract of the game.
- Ensuring that the GM does not introduce events and themes that do not match the story goals of the players.
- Ensuring the story of the game stays in tune with the genre.
- Ensuring the players retain strong authorial control over their PCs.
There is a general sense that the GM and the dice cannot be trusted to provide a satisfying narrative, and the game is structured to constrain them.
By reducing and abstracting the moves and making a wider scope for GM moves than is usual for a PbtA game, it gives some trust and power back to the GM, while still formalizing and providing good guidance on how to approach GM fiat.
Perpetual "Sweet-Spot" Play
Chasing Adventure's conditions system, magic system, and the simple levelling system always keeps characters feeling competent and tough, but not superheroic. In terms of Dungeons & Dragons, characters always feel like they are somewhere between 4th and 10th level, keeping them in the "sweet spot" of most engaging play much longer.
Growth Points
The Tag System is Still Meaningless
This is a complaint I have had about Dungeon World and Index Card RPG that I feel stands. Weapons and equipment have a series of tags attached to them. A few of these tags have mechanical meaning, but most of them are an attempt to differentiate weapons by adding a description that is implied in the weapon itself. For example, there is no difference mechanically about weapon reach in Chasing Adventure, unless it matters in the narrative, so the "intimate" tag on the dagger is a meaningless extra system.
The Full Version Doesn't Add Much
After reading the free version, of Chasing Adventure, I was impressed enough to go out and buy the full version. While the "Advanced Adventuring" section had a few good tools, and was well written. however I think that the price was a bit high for the additional content offered, I would have liked to see more. Perhaps an example encounter, world-building tools, and a more sophisticated set of random tables. As it is, I don't mind buying the full version of a game to support a fellow indie developer.
Poorly Explained Safety Tools
To be honest, I am not a fan of the safety tools; I consider them both ineffectual and a symptom of a creeping, puerile toxicity in the culture. But I am a curmudgeon, and I suspect that they are here to stay, whatever my opinion of them.
With that in mind, if you are going to include safety tools in your game, I think that they need a lot of attention and care in explaining them, with specific examples, and a clear discussion about when they are and are not appropriate to use, and the responsibilities of everyone at the table. And they ought to be accompanied as well by a discussion of the importance of clear, assertive, adult communication on top of the tools so that they remain an emergency measure.
I did not feel that the section on safety tools did them justice, given its brevity.
Needs more of a Bestiary
Chasing Adventure offers a unique way of presenting NPCs. With no hit points, damage, or mechanical tools to use then, but rather a collection of narrative prompts, it would be ideal if the GM had a lot of examples to draw on, as well as modify and reskin as needed.
The monsters in the core rulebook are cool, evocative, and inspiring, but I feel that we desperately needed more of them to draw ideas from. A few interpretations of classic AD&D monsters as exemplars, in particular, would have made the monster design process easier while I was play-testing.
Conclusions
Chasing Adventure is a quantum leap forward from Dungeon World: it takes some of the best traits from Dungeons & Dragons, and enough to make it familiar to a D&D player, and then takes it in a fresh direction. It doesn't try to emulate the dungeon crawling aspects of D&D like its predecessor, but rather uses D&D as a jumping-off point for players to get started, but takes them in a very different direction.
Chasing Adventure takes the best ideas of the Powered by the Apocalypse engine, but brings back the trust in the GM, bounded player agency, and more free-form approach to the rules that I particularly appreciated. It gives you the best traits of PbtA: the dynamic way of resolving tasks and greater narrative freedom, but like earlier games, it aims to provide an adventure that the Player and their Character go on, rather than a story that the players are conscientiously collaborating on.
I find that Chasing Adventure is a good alternative D&D for my kids because it is simple and offers alternatives to death for a fallen character. I also enjoy it for solo gaming as the dynamic way rolls are resolved tends to keep the narrative constantly moving and changing with less need for an oracle.
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