Urban Modern Fantasy Released

filed under game design on 01 Jan 2020
tagged dungeon world, modern, and urban modern fantasy

I made this! From the drivethru page:

Urban/Modern/Fantasy is a toolkit for running modern adventures using the rules laid out in Dungeon World. It’s a framework for running many different modern stories without any particular playstyle focus or assumptions built-in beyond the usual urban fantasy tropes and those inherent in Dungeon World (which you should read before UMF).

Inside you’ll find rules adjustments, advice for handling modern situations like gunfights and car chases, and tools for running meaningful NPCs and developing a modern setting, whether that’s one with paranormal elements or not. You’ll also find:

  • Six new stat-based playbooks, and more than ninety Moves divided into five Move paths, for a flexible mix and match approach. Want to be a Genius Celebrity Gunslinger or a Tough Field Scientist who used to be a pro Athlete? You’re covered.
  • Sixteen supernatural paths (DW compatible compendium classes), with at least five Moves each, and a Meta collection of general supernatural Moves. Includes Angelic, Demonic, Dragon, Elemental, Empath, Fae, Galatea, Ghost, Haunted, Hunter, Lucky, Mage, Oracle, Psychic, Scarred, and Shapeshifter.
  • A complete Vampire path with six bloodlines, one per basic stat, Advanced Moves, and Adjacent Moves.
  • Three campaign frameworks and three starter cases/missions.
  • Printable character sheets, supernatural playsheets, and vampire playsheets

Urban/Modern/Fantasy was written by Tam H. The text is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. UMF is based on Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel, which is licensed for use under Creative Commons 3.0.

Why?

More or less, a couple of years ago, I had just finished a DW campaign and was feeling burned out on fantasy. I wanted to run a modern game. I like pbta, but I didn’t want strong built-in play assumptions or intraparty conflict. I like DW. It checks pretty much every button for “what I want” at the table. Light, but with options. Immersive. Lots of GM structure. Monsters to fight.

So I put together the basic stat-based playbooks, inspired by d20 modern and using DW’s moves extensively, and asked a friend to play it play-by-post.

We played an incredible game, then moved on to the original character’s kids, and that game’s still going strong. As we went, I refined and added and took away, and shared the google drive version, and other people played and enjoyed UMF.

original post with more details and the original version

The original google drive version is still available for perusal and play, though not as pretty! Other major changes between the google version and the release version are better organization and layout, complete reworks on all the basic playbooks to eliminate alll but one (Ritual!) DW move (you can still use DW moves but now there’s more UMF moves to choose from), printable playbooks, and a ton of play adjustments.

As always, you can reach me on the Dungeon World discord!