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The Living Star - A Dungeon World Playbook $2.25
Average Rating:4.4 / 5
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The Living Star - A Dungeon World Playbook
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The Living Star - A Dungeon World Playbook
Publisher: Awful Good Games
by Marc V. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/29/2017 12:31:22

An amazing playbook. This gave me an option for a class that I would have never thought of before. The abilities are unique and are genious. I love how capable of doing the impossible this class is. This class is something I would recomend to anyone wanting to be godly. I would like is they give some items to boost the ability of the living star, and i would enjoy it if there was more extra moves.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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The Living Star - A Dungeon World Playbook
Publisher: Awful Good Games
by DJ A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/06/2015 11:02:57

I've seen this book in play once in addition to play testing early versions of it. We were doing a Spell Jammer-esque game of DW for a goofy one shot that I was DMing. The Living Star (LS) was fun to watch. This class doesn't fit in a typical fantasy game, but if you are doing something more atypical it should be a welcomed addition. The core mechanic is seldom seen (I've only seen something like it in one other playbook, an ice mage of some sort) so it has a very unique feel compared to other classes. The player said he had fun with it and the class seemed to work just fine with the other classes in play (no toes were stepped on for the duration of the game). The LS can go many directions based on what you choose for your advanced moves which makes it a welcome addition to any group.

The only problem that crept up was when the group was trying to make camp every time the LS was low/out of Radiance. The LS player really wanted to avoid taking damage for recharging. I allowed it the first time but after that I made sure to not give the party that much down time to keep healing up. So just watch out for that.

Also the authors notes at the end explaining intent and extras are a definite bonus and I wish other play books would follow suit on moves that can be harder to interpret.

I'm giving this product a 5 star review because it is put together well (character sheet is clean and organized, the book is easy to read and the extras are fun) and the price is fair since it's around what most people charge for a single class, yet the LS offers a little extra with some author's notes and moves that weren't thrown in originally but were included if you wanted to use them.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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The Living Star - A Dungeon World Playbook
Publisher: Awful Good Games
by James E. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/05/2015 17:05:36

Note: have not actually played the class, only read it.

Some very cool ideas which in the current form are wrecked by a very poor core mechanic. Virtually all of the class's moves are reliant on spending a class-specific resource, and that resource can only be recovered by damaging yourself in one of two ways. One of these ways requires you to have none of the resource left, so you can't top up as needed, and the other isn't even listed in the playbook, but in the accompanying reference book–which you will need to use if you want to copy your moves into a Google Docs for online play, because the playbook itself is images instead of text. Also, because of the core mechanic none of your attributes matter to the class aside from constitution; this is doubly reinforced by the fact that the only non-radiance attribute your moves key off of is Constitution.

It's a shame, because like I said it's got a few cool ideas, but as-is it's one of a very few playbooks that I wouldn't even consider bringing to the table, except maybe to ape some moves from through multiclassing.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
I would encourage you to actually give it a try: we\'ve been using it in an ongoing Google Hangout campaign for quite some time (which we used to help playtest it before release), and the only tweaks that have made it to the table after the fact are allowing you to spend radiance in order to hover while flying, and possibly increasing its damage to a d8. Here\'s a link: http://daegames.blogspot.com/search/label/expedition%20to%20castle%20ravenloft This class utilizes a similar point mechanic as our Skeleton, which was also playtested prior to publishing, and there are other playbooks that utilize a point pool. In fact Adam Koebel has even stated that for psionic classes you could use Wisdom or Intelligence for power points. Just so anyone that reads this review is clear, two of the five starting moves involve spending radiance points to do things: Plasma Charge and Seeing Stars (the others state that you can eat metal to get by, or roll+CON to fly). Plasma Charge allows you to burn/melt objects with a touch, or spend points and roll+points spent instead of using Strength to hack and slash. It isn\'t required to hack and slash, and is intended to be more of a backup or \"last ditch\" option. Seeing Stars lets you spend radiance points to try and blind someone momentarily. Beyond that, about half the moves don\'t utilize radiance points at all, and a fair number of the ones that do just care about whether you have at least half of them left. Honestly this criticism could be equally applied to classes like the thief: all of the starting moves that require a roll (3 out of 4) use Dexterity, so ergo the only stat that matters is Dexterity, right? No: you still need Wisdom for discern realities, Intelligence to spout lore, Strength to hack and slash (unless you want to burn through your radiance), Dexterity to get out of the way, Charisma to parley, and so on. Same for this class. You may not like the class conceptually, and that\'s fine: like many of our playbooks (giant spider, anyone?) it\'s not something you would normally expect to run into. But to claim that it\'s \"wrecked by a very poor core mechanic\" when you haven\'t even played it? When that \"very poor mechanic\" has precedence in other classes? At best that\'s hyperbole, and at worst that\'s just being deliberately dishonest.
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