Design Notes

I designed this class in 2016 for my local Dungeon World campaign (a number of one-shots and short run games in the same setting rather than one contiguous thing). It was a super valuable tool for learning how DW classes work! Designing helps me better understand other designs.

A big design hurdle for me was designing a class that revolves around weapons without stepping on the Fighter's toes. DW Fighter's whole thing is "look at my unique and super cool sword" and I wanted to make sure the Gunsmith was something different than just a Fighter with a gun. I ended up settling on the Gunsmith being a scrappy inventor and tinkerer rather than just a gunman. They use guns not because they're cool and powerful, but because they invented them, and nobody else knows how to use them properly.

Every firearm The Gunsmith can make has the "dangerous" tag; the GM essentially has free reign to punish anybody else for using them. They're also prone to break even when the Gunsmith uses them. Minimizing mechanical jargon, the 7-9 (mixed success) options for The Gunsmith firing their gun are:

-the weapon breaks temporarily
-the weapon backfires and hurts the wielder
-the wielder loses ammunition

The idea is that the gun is meant to be a potent and unreliable instrument. The gun deals 1d12 damage to enemies (better than even the Fighter or Paladin can manage), but The Gunsmith isn't a trained fighter; their damage with any other weapon is an underwhelming 1d4. 

The move meant to handle the inventor side of the equation is a riff on the Wizard's Ritual move, with which they can perform magic with open-ended effects (and open ended costs); Invention allows The Gunsmith to do this with mechanical constructs rather than magical effects.

Having this class let me do some cool things in that Dungeon World game! It gave me an opening to introduce the spread of firearms as a legitimate danger for the PCs to confront, and gave the players some new tools to play with in our short run adventures. Ultimately I think it was a worthwhile experiment; I definitely learned a lot from it.