One Shot World
A downloadable game
What Is This?
One Shot World is a hack of Dungeon World that removes most of the long-form mechanics and replaces them with simple rules designed to facilitate one-shots and short campaigns.
What's Changed?
- Playbooks have been simplified down to just a few background and core moves, as well as a few optional advances.
- One Shot World uses the standard Dungeon World basic moves, though some have been tweaked to facilitate a shorter game.
- Alignment and Bonds are replaced with questions that serve a similar function.
- Rations and encumbrance are gone, and wealth and equipment are simplified.
- Racial moves have been removed in favor of a playbook-specific backgrounds, which provide a package of ability score bonuses, moves and starting equipment.
Included are the core rules, playkit & playbooks, starters and supplements intended to make your one shots shine!
This game is (and always will be) FREE OF CHARGE.
Cover art: Greg Soper
Download
Development log
- Form Fillable Playgbooks!Oct 08, 2023
Comments
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Hello, first of all great work I love it.
If you want to keep improving the game, there's a typo (page 3) in the "When to make a move" text box :
Moves are what you do in response "to to" (the world "to" is there twice).
Thanks for Cairn also.
Hi, this is such a cool system! I'm planning to run this with friends but I'll have some translating to do. Would it be possible to access editable files, mostly playbooks?
Have at it
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jHObHIwfY-O6_t9vOTwCeR1kcUq5-hET
Thanks so much!!
Judging by the other comments, sounds like you weren't a fan of the Immolator playbook (fair). Would you be willing to share the editable template so that we could make one on our own?
I don’t remember which of these it was:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fxg5ff3XCR8j5pFGuBoLOPgsCD31uECJ1lOXkJKXvnQ/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RWKOJN65Xw84NE1377cjpT8xSkwQ-fFUI7P2msf7Ctc/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clyhwYBDHoNq4JUwrEKkX1wM5WXPvm1dK3CaXmLJ698/edit?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_eVN9IPohbs53NyN6qlKV5q2MI7JgcTT/view?usp=sharing
You're a hero! Thank you
Awesome work! Fighter's Evil Eye states "When you Defend, you can spend 1 hold to: Lock eyes with a foe; any damage rolls against you and your ward are halved, rounded up."
It's unclear how this should interact with some of the other options for Defend: (1) How does "Halve the attack's effect or damage" stack with this? (2) What is the level for "Deal damage to the attacker equal to your level"?
Unfortunately I haven’t read or played OSW in about… 7 years! So I don’t really remember enough to answer your question!
Sorry about that!
Hi, I already DM 3 sessions with your system, and it works amazing for One-shots. My party loved it, how easy and fluid the char creation and XP systems works. Congratulations! I was looking for a Immolator's Playbook (a class from OG DW), did you ever do it, or someone else? I will keep OSW as my to go for one shots!
No, I hated that playbook!
Hahaha isn't my char choice neither, but one of my players love it! Thanks for replying!
Ugh.... yes! I never printed it or mentioned it when I was running DW games. It was like having a set of medieval manuscripts spread out on the table and then there was a full color manga thrown on top.
Just finished running this for a couple of friends and it was very well received! We all had a lot of fun. It was my first time running anything Powered by the Apocalypse and I think we'll be coming back to the system again after this marvellous introduction
Got to introduce a new player to RPGs last night using One Shot World. Totally fun! This hack of Dungeon World lives up to its promise of optimizing the game for one shots and making character/setting creation quick and enjoyable.
Started our session with a mid-battle cold open, and the Barbarian dispatched the giant snake enemy with one hit—but that was great, as we got to then see the PCs poke around the creature's cave, interrogate a corpse with Cleric magic, and generally get into shenanigans until the mountain itself started trying to eat them. A good time was had by all.
Thank you for making this excellent hack available! I have been using it for the last year to introduce people to role-playing games, or transition from D&D into other fiction-first style systems.
To that end, I took the liberty of converting the playbooks to be form-fillable for remote play online.
If you have the time and inclination, please have a look and consider adding them to the "Downloads" section for everyone. :D
Form Fillable OSW Playbooks
Thank you SO much! I will upload them with credit.
One of my all time favorite things to print and hand out to IRL nerds when they start asking me about DIY d&d. I have given this away many times. I love this thing you made.
Hi, great job, I'd really like to make a French translation of the game if it's ok with you? Do you have by any chance a plaintext version of the game to make the work easier?
Hello!
You are welcome to make a translation. I don't have a plaintext version but I'm happy to share the individual files (I made it in Google Draw). You can copy the text from each page.
Even better... Now i will be able to easily stick to the original layout :)
Hi, I wonder... Why are some pages on the drive not present in the final pdf ? For example "Players Moves" ?
I think I ended up cutting them. I don't remember, it was a long time ago!
Hello, did you make it to the end and is it available somewhere?
This looks very good. OSW Print Instructions.pdf refers to a cheat sheet.Where can I find that?
does this help?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13idlGIOIKphIsivCLoBbn87cczIqgP0G/view?usp=drivesdk
Hi Yochai! That like points to the printing instructions linked right above these comments (for me). In it the last line mentions a “GM sheet cheat sheet”. I don’t think I’ve seen that anywhere.
Ohhhh.
This?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kfgaq6_E0NplKWQnmK3I-uJouNq1akOQ/view?usp=drivesdk
That will be very useful. Thank you!
This is a great fantasy PbtA, the rules are generally light yet every PCs can still have distinct uniqueness among each other. It's easy to understand and GM as well.
Thank you so much for making this game available to all of us, Yochai.
If you guys are looking for easy to run, fantasy PbtA suitable for short campaigns, One Shot World should be your go to.
I highly recommend this game.
Thank you much!
May I also suggest Homebrew World by Jeremy Strandberg? It was a sort of reaction to OSW and I really love it.
I will surely check Homebrew World too Yochai. Thank you for the advice!
Apparently Mr. Jeremy Strandberg kindly provides Homebrew World for free too.
Good luck on all your projects too, Yochai. Best regards.
I love this game - thank you for bringing it into the world. It was the perfect thing for my group when our regular DM couldn't make it one day.
Question on the Wizard / Antiquarian background: "When you Cast a Spell, prepare one additional spell from your spellbook" sounds like you'll get to prepare every spell in your book during a day of adventuring - is that the intent, or have I misunderstood?
That is definitely a typo!
It should say "When you prepare a spell..."
Thanks so much!