Helena Real speaks candidly about Dungeon World 2

CW: sexual assault.

When Dungeon World was first released in 2012 (or 2013, for print), it was a runaway success. It became an indie classic – particularly praised for popularizing the PbtA play style among those who were primarily exposed to D&D. Because its audience extended across multiple demographics and play cultures, it remained relevant for years even as the sheen of novelty faded. But now, the game is associated with a different kind of narrative.

In March 2020, co-designer Adam Koebel had one of his NPCs sexually assault a player’s character on a stream. In the face of backlash from the audience, his players, and the wider community, he would eventually apologise. Later, two of his ex-partners made statements about previous abusive behavior (archival versions seem to be unavailable at this time). 

In March 2021, Luke Crane, the designer of Burning Wheel, launched a campaign for a zine that featured Koebel as a contributor. Other contributors were blindsided by the inclusion and Crane was accused of trying to launder Koebel’s reputation. Crane apologized and the campaign was cancelled. He also resigned from his position at Kickstarter, where he had been Head of Games and later Head of Community. 

In late 2024, Crane announced that he and John Dimatos, a former colleague at Kickstarter, had purchased the rights to Dungeon World from Koebel and Sage LaTorra (who had already washed his hands of the project). Crane and Dimatos said they were planning to make Dungeon World 2, a sequel to the original game. While they were publishers, the game would be designed by Spencer Moore and Helena Real. Both Moore and Real had published games inspired by Dungeon World – Moore’s Chasing Adventure and Real’s Against the Odds.

Dungeon World remains a game with an active community. The news of a sequel made a splash but as the team has released previews, the response from the community has been mixed with many proposed changes receiving strong criticism.

Rascal reached out to Chilean designer, Helena Real, for an interview about the past and future of the game plus her experience as one of the few trans designers from the Global South to lead a major RPG project.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and readability.

Thomas Manuel: How did you get involved in professional game design?

Helena Real: I was working on a new job as a copywriter for a company. It was the best job I've ever had, and I hated every single day of it because it was like ‘I'm using my gifts for the dark side’. And at the time, Mark Diaz Truman, who is now one of the people who founded Magpie Games, had a Patreon for a resource called the Fate Codex, which was like articles for Fate. I was reading the submission guidelines on the website and I was like, ‘I'm gonna submit a pitch’. I sent an email and I was sure he was going to write back to me in two months and say, ‘Hey, thank you for writing, we're gonna pass’, whatever.  But later that day I got an email. He was like, ‘Awesome, I can pay you X. How soon can you have it done?’ And that's how it started.

Mark went on to work on 7th Sea 2nd edition, which was being developed by John Wick Presents at the time. There was an open call for designers, and I knew that Mark was there. So when I sent my submission, I was like, ‘Mark, can you please put in a good word for me?’ You know, we worked together for the better part of the past year. And yeah, that's how they gave me the chance to work on New World. Mark ended up leading the final version of that and I wrote like a third of that book. I was there from April 2016 until September 2018... That was the point in which the company started collapsing.

I don't know what happened. I have no information beyond what everybody else knows about this, but I get the feeling that the reception the game really put a dampener on whatever they could develop because people hated it. It was an incredibly successful Kickstarter. But when people got the core rule book, they were like, ‘What is this? Wow, this is not what we wanted.’ And that's going to tail into Dungeon World when we get to that. But it definitely is one of those things that to me, as a designer, is one of those tragedies.

I've been in this hobby as a GM and as a player for at this point, almost 25 years. And the way people react to things is — at least most of the time, I'm shocked, I'm flabbergasted at how conservative the RPG audience sometimes is. How attached we seem to be to the old ways and how much change is rejected at any single point in the story. How everybody wants these things to remain what they were, instead of trying to push the limits and the boundaries of what, to me, is a form of art.

Manuel: I know that you also worked on two Fate Worlds for Evil Hat: The Way of the Pukona and Ngen Mapu.

Real: All of those words are Mapuche words. The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group of both Argentina and Chile, numerically. And as a country that was colonized in this case by the Spanish conquistadors, this is the only country I think in history in which the conquistadors failed. Because they fought for the land. It's one of the only things that makes me proud of this country.

I was working on 7th Sea 2nd edition. At some point, somebody passed along my email and I got an email like, ‘Hey, we're Evil Hat. Would you like to write a Fate World for us?’ And Fate is one of my favorite RPGs ever. So I was like, of course I will. And that's how Pukona came about. And after it was done, which took us a long time, like two years or something, I was like, ‘Can I pitch again?’ And I had this idea for Ngen Mapu.

One of my favorite RPGs is Werewolf the Apocalypse. But the things I love about Werewolf are not the usual things people love about it. I love the spiritual side of it — this idea of nature having defenders of nature and all that. I also love pacifist-like non-violence approaches in RPGs especially so I wanted to have spirits of nature that have to deal with humans, but they cannot harm them. They need to convince them. They need to change their minds and hearts.

Manuel: So, moving to Dungeon World, how were you initially approached for the project? I’m assuming by Luke Crane?

Real: Yeah. He sent me a message on Discord. And it was because Spencer recommended it. At the time, Luke was trying to get a feeling of the community around Dungeon World. I came out with a public version of Against the Odds in May last year, and Luke contacted me in September, if I remember correctly. And he was like, ‘we want to have a short meeting and ask you questions about Dungeon World, how you feel about it’.

We met. I said my piece. I told him everything I love about Dungeon World, everything I hate about it. At some point, Luke —and John — told me like, ‘Is Against the Odds your Dungeon World 2?’And yeah, to a certain degree it is. That's how I would do it if I was in charge. And I never thought that I was going to be in charge because who cares about what a Chilean trans woman has to say about Dungeon World.

Weeks passed and I wrote a long message and I told them, ‘Against the Odds is my baby, but also I'm a single woman at the end of the world who has no knowledge of layout whatsoever or drawing. My only skill is — if anything — is writing and designing things. It has found a little audience but it'll never have as much of an audience as Dungeon World could. I would love to help with that. I'd love to be like a freelance writer. I've done a lot of that. But I would love even more to be in charge — to get to be the lead designer on something. I've never been a lead designer on anything.’

A couple of weeks passed and they were like, 'Yeah, we want you to be there, but we want somebody else to be there too. We want to recreate the original chemistry of Dungeon World, which was having both Adam and Sage'. So having two together. In this case, Spencer and I. Spencer is a cis white het man from Canada and I'm this Chilean trans woman and lesbian, from the end of the world. [The goal was] two people who can’t be less alike working together.

Manuel: Were you aware of the broader situation around Dungeon World? That Adam Koebel wasn’t welcome in the community generally? That Sage LaTorra had basically washed his hands off the whole project because of him?

Real: Before sending that message that I just told you, I knew even if they said yes, I would need to talk about the Adam situation of it all. Was Adam gonna be involved? Were they going to royalties off this? And Luke already came prepared to that meeting. He was like, ‘No, we bought the complete rights. Adam and Sage have nothing to do with this. They will never get another cent’.

I personally was a huge fan of Adam. I used to follow his YouTube. I love Dungeon World so of course I was interested in what both of them were doing. Sage is more of a recluse but Adam had like a huge YouTube channel and everything else back in the day.

What happened with Adam was awful. I think he made a mistake. I think he reacted poorly to it. After the fact, we learned about a lot of awful things. I don't believe in the bullshit of separating the art from the artist. You cannot do that. But I also am a firm believer that people are better than the worst thing they ever did. I feel that if what Adam did is the worst thing he ever did, I think his creation, half-creation, is better than he is.

When we do roleplaying game design, the game only exists once somebody else takes it and runs it. So Dungeon World is not only the rules and the book but the whole community that grew around it — everybody who did dungeon starters or started working on their own forks or provided adventures or rules or ran it at conventions. These two people are the originators but are they the only ones who get to determine the future of it? That doesn't feel right. Comparing it with Dungeons and Dragons, as far as I'm aware, Gygax was an asshole. And people are still playing D&D 50 years later. So it's not separating the art from the artist, but in my case it's saying we acknowledge the flaws of the artist because we're all human beings and we all are flawed — deeply flawed some of us. But we also acknowledge that we can create things which are much better than we are, you know?

So, yeah, with the assurances that he wasn't gonna be involved and he wasn't going to get anything out of it, there was trust between all of us — Spencer and I, Luke and John. Luke said, ‘Adam's not gonna get anything out of this. I'm not gonna let him know about your design. He's not going to critique your design or anything. This is a complete clean slate.’

Manuel: Did you have any reservations about Luke Crane himself? Because his reputation is also tied up with Adam Koebel now after that Kickstarter.

Real:  I think Luke is firmly aware of the mistake he made. I think what people were most angry about was that he tried to sneak him into that thing. And that cost Luke dearly — cost him a job, cost him a lot of goodwill and good faith of the community. And I feel that's been a huge cost.

Luke is the Creative Director. He's being very straightforward and very honest about everything, all of the dealings that we've had. He hasn't been micromanaging us at all. This is our vision. For better or worse, if there's anything to blame, it's on us. He's been very trusting, very supportive, and I can tell that he's a very loving person. Maybe I can speculate that some of the mistakes that he made in the past was out of love for Adam as a friend and not out of any desire to be contrarian or to dismiss the gravity of all the further details that came out of Adam’s doings.

Manuel: Did you know going into Dungeon World 2 what the scope of the changes were? Was there a sense at all of how much appetite for change there was?

Real: To be honest, my greatest flaw is I tend to be very romantic and idealistic. I shouldn't be, I should have known better at this point in my life. I'm an almost 40-year-old woman.

Dungeon World was incredibly powerful and successful when it came out because everybody wants to play D&D but nobody wants to play D&D. Everybody wants the experience of D&D, but when you look at those rules — three rule books, 400 pages, nobody wants to play. It’s filled to the brim with callbacks and ancillary design — things that have left there because time stopped and it never changed and we're still in the eighties or something. Dungeon World said, ‘Hey, do you wanna play that? We have super cool rules — the latest design, latest mechanisms, the latest iPhone design for D&D. I remember running it for the first time and my friends were not that impressed, but behind the screen, I was like, ‘Holy shit, this is the best D&D I've ever run.’

But 12 years later, the design feels old, feels completely out of sync with what PbtA has done. In 2012, when the game came out, there was no Masks: A New Generation, there was no The Between, and those are the games that I'm running these days. I don't know what games I was running and reading in 2012... Fate, Ars Magica? Now I'm running games and I'm reading games, which are, for me, very well-developed and they go out of their way to accomplish a specific feeling.

Dungeon World, compared to those, feels very wishy-washy, feels very unfocused — in a way, like how D&D feels. We needed to at least change all of these things which feel boring or uninteresting or un-intuitive. I've been part of the Dungeon World community, so to speak, and I've been mostly a reader. I'm not much of a poster for many reasons. I always got the feeling that people were really looking forward to a new Dungeon World that wasn't trying to be just Dungeon World 1.5 — wasn't only that cleaned up version of the first edition.

People panicked a little bit because we're putting out some blog posts and people are saying ‘Oh, you're changing everything’. Like, no, no, we're putting ideas out there, but there are a lot of things we're not gonna change. Like, we're not gonna take the fighter away, or the wizard. We're trying to reimagine how a fighter or a wizard should work because that's one thing that I said to Spencer, I never want to have favorites when it comes to player-facing content. I don't want to design in a way that feels like, oh, the wizard gets so much attention and the poor fighter gets nothing. I want to design in such a way that I have to be happy to play with a playbook for 50 years.

People are accustomed to alphas and betas being publicity stunts. But we're really trying to get the community involved and we're willing to change a lot of things. We want to listen to what they have to say, but we also want to say our piece.

Manuel: So yeah, you've hinted at it, but there seems to be some very strong negative reactions to the previews. Is that affecting you? What is the mood in the design room?

Real: Of course, it has. I would be the worst liar in the world if I said, ‘No, I'm totally okay. I don't mind’. We pride ourselves on trying not to be too emotional, but of course, because of my experience in life, I find that very shitty and completely inhuman of us.

But to be honest, one of the things that has surprised me — but in a good way — is that the most well thought out comments and discussions have been very self-aware. I've seen a lot of people being like — for example, with the discussion of hit points — people saying, ‘I know it's not the best. I know conditions are better, but this is the way I can sell this game to my friends. 'cause my friends won't play anything that isn’t D&D.’ And when they said that, I was like, shit, you are right. That's something that I hadn't thought about because the people I play with, they have no interest in playing D&D and if I offer something new, they're going to be happy. They don't care about having those common things, but there are people out there who need that and I want to offer them to them as much as we can.

I'm really proud of what we've done so far. And after 10 years in the industry, I have this level of separation from design, which I didn't have when I started. I'm not precious about my design. I love it and I'm super proud of it. But if we need to throw it in the garbage and start again, I'm willing. I know we can do it. The playtest is going to be the determining factor in how it all shapes up in the following months and years after that. But we wanted to propose all of these things and see what the community said. And the community has been very loud, which is also awesome, to be honest. When I put out my little game, one of the things that was really heartbreaking was nobody commenting. That's so much worse. Like, in a way I love to have haters, better to have haters than to have nobody giving a shit about what you're doing.

There's so much work. I cannot tell you how many hours we've worked the past six months on this and how many meetings... I've been getting a lot of gray hair that I didn't have before, but it's okay, I'm willing to get gray hair. 

I always had, but now I have even more of a respect for the team that did D&D 4e. Like, holy shit, now I get it, guys. You came here with the best of intentions, trying to make the best game possible, and people dragged you through the mud. Now I get it too. I really, really do get it. Because fans are hard, but just because they're fans, they're passionate.

Manuel: Have you received any personal harassment or anything like that?

Real: Happily, no, I wouldn't be making jokes about it [if it had happened]. But forewarned is forearmed. I think I'm ready for them in a way. They're gonna hurt me anyway. I'm not gonna lie about it. Like if somebody writes something like, ‘oh, you awful tranny, you're ruining Dungeon World’, it's gonna hurt me. Because it's gonna focus on something else [that isn't design].

But at the same time, there are other things that have hurt me. Like one of the things that Luke and John offered me personally was the opportunity to fly me to Gen Con this year, and to be part of the team there and be able to preview the game for everybody and talk to the fans. Just, you know, be there. And I'm not gonna be able to do it because of the situation in the United States. And that has been heartbreaking. That has been awful. I feel the pain of all my trans siblings in the States and the terrible things that are happening right now. When you are trans, you know that always people have that, that they can use it against you in a way.

I'm really proud of the community that so far the only comments are snark with people telling us like, ‘what have these two ever designed?’ Awesome. Sure. Who cares, you know? I have 10 years in the industry, but who keeps track of this shit. I love that people are being honest about, ‘I don't like this. It may be good, but I don't like it’. That's super valid. You can not like things, even if they're good. And you can like things which are bad. Like, I love the original He-Man and She-Ra. They’re shit shows, you know, but I love them. So it's okay to love things, which are not perfect.

A lot of people argue by saying what Dungeon World is, and when they say that, I translate in my head as ‘this is what Dungeon World means to me’. And that is so valuable. It's precious. It's something that I never want to contradict or say anything to because I don't think they realize this, but there's such a vulnerability there. It’s a human thing, saying, this is what this means to me, this is what this evokes in me emotionally, and this is the emotional attachment I have to this game. And I'm super conscious now of that load, of that burden. It’s like I have your hopes and dreams on my shoulder — with Spencer. We're trying to do our best. And I hope that we can, together, we can get a version that... it's not going to please everybody — I'm a hundred percent sure of that — but I hope that it's gonna please a lot more people than it does today.

This is a huge game and getting the opportunity to do this has been wonderful and gives me a bit of hope in very hopeless times. So I really hope that we can come out with a great design in the future and people love it.