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I have the player pack version 2.0 and it has a slightly different version of the Aid or Interfere Move compared to the book.

When you help or hinder someone you have a Bond with...

This declares that you must have a Bond before you can do this move to someone. The book does not have this requirement at all and even has an example illustrating doing the action without a Bond. The Book's text is

When you help or hinder someone, ..

without the other clause.

Does anyone know why the two versions differ? Is one more correct than the other?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Does the other version still say "roll +Bond"? \$\endgroup\$
    – enkryptor
    Commented Jun 23, 2018 at 23:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, the roll and results are the same between the two with slightly different phrasing. \$\endgroup\$
    – chadum
    Commented Jun 24, 2018 at 17:36

2 Answers 2

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The sheet wording is an old error

The v2.0 play sheets were produced from and reflected the master version of the Dungeon World rules kept at GitHub. These have always had the “someone you have a Bond with” wording. At some point before the open-source game text was released, Sage and/or Adam added this wording as either a correction, or as an error.

In response to your bug report, Sage solved that mystery: it was an error, an older version of the move’s text having been uploaded to GitHub, after the “have a Bond with” wording had been removed from other files that eventually became the printed book. Sage removed that wording, with the revision note explaining:

This was a late edit once we had already moved to working from the InDesign files primarily, syncing it back for consistency.

The v2.0 play sheets were produced recently, directly from the master text. Since they are from the official master text, so their wording could be considered authoritative… until the master text changed to fix the error, indicating that the book version was correct all along. Now that the master text is amended and they agree, they’re both right and the v2.0 sheets are wrong.

A note on the unreliability of things calling themselves Dungeon World “SRDs”

Contrary to common belief, Dungeon World does not have an official SRD release — all the “SRDs” scattered around the Internet were produced by third parties from a snapshot of the GitHub text at some point, and most (all?) have not been kept up to date. Dungeon World “SRDs” should not be relied on when looking for the official wording of the rules.

Unlike games that have SRDs, where the SRD is the guide to what subset of the text open-licensed under the OGL, Dungeon World does not need a reference document (as in the “System Reference Document” that SRD stands for) to tell us which parts of the text are open. This is because the whole text of the Dungeon World is open-licensed under a Creative Commons license. Since there's no second, limited version of the text that's open, there's no need for an SRD, and no true DW SRD exists. Documents and sites saying they are a Dungeon World “SRD” are using the term merely for marketing or out of misunderstanding, because most people associate “SRD” with “the free version of the rules” and don't understand the actual meaning and purpose of actual SRDs.

This is why the Dungeon World GitHub project — maintained by the authors — is the first authority on what the official game text is, and not DW “SRDs”, contrary to how a number of other games are related to SRDs.

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    \$\begingroup\$ You seem knowledgeable on this, but the ebook version I have (which I bought a few weeks ago) has the original text (roll+bonds with anyone). The gitHub text indeed mentions "you share a bond with". \$\endgroup\$
    – Boulash
    Commented Jun 24, 2018 at 7:21
  • \$\begingroup\$ Hmm, that’s odd. Is it the PDF or ePub version? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 24, 2018 at 15:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ Both have the "old" version". By the way, was there any kind of anouncement to clarify this? \$\endgroup\$
    – Boulash
    Commented Jun 24, 2018 at 18:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ I did some investigation in the github. It shows the "someone you have a Bond with" text since the original Moves in Beta 1 and has not changed since. The commit was in March 2012 with this comment: Initial commit. All files circa Beta 1. \$\endgroup\$
    – chadum
    Commented Jun 25, 2018 at 16:38
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    \$\begingroup\$ I posted an issue on github for this: github.com/Sagelt/Dungeon-World/issues/188 \$\endgroup\$
    – chadum
    Commented Jun 25, 2018 at 17:05
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The correct version is the one from the book (it's also in the SRD).

As to why the player sheet has a slightly different version, I can only guess and yours is as good as mine.

I stand corrected, a reliable online source that's easier to navigate than GitHub would probably be the Roll20 Compendium (it has the "you share a bond with" version)

https://roll20.net/compendium/dw/Aid%20or%20Interfere?fromList=Aid%20or%20Interfere&#content

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Not surprised as one of the DW creators, Adam Koebel, was (and is?) GM in Residence at Roll20. \$\endgroup\$
    – chadum
    Commented Jun 26, 2018 at 17:28

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