Help Me Get "Apocalypse World" and PbtA games in general.

[Reynard]

Sort of, unless one is an improvisational master we found some prep goes a long way to speeding up the game. Still the mechanics give the feel for the way any game interacts with the table.

For me specifically, I want to address one thing at a time (as I did in the FitD thread) so that I can figure is out. I have a pretty good handle on the core mechanics. I wanted to know about prep, which will lead into a more detailed discussion of Threat, which itself should lead into a more detailed discussion of moves and harm and so on. What is absolutely not helpful for me is to read someone's wall of text explaining every aspect of running PbtA games. I'll just zone out and scroll right on by, which is why I am structuring these threads this way because I REALLY want to try and get these games that thus far have been pretty impenetrable to me.

 

[andreszarta]

Thanks. that's helpful. For the record I am not really doing a "one shot" so much as "starting a campaign that isn't going to finish" -- so I want to do a 1st session as explicitly detailed in the book, then a second session as detailed in the book, without a worry about a 3rd session. Besides, hey, maybe everyone will fall in love and we will just keep going. This is different to me than a con slot. I run a lot of con games and they are definitely a different animal than "let's test out this game."

Right on! Don't get distracted by whether or not it fits the con-slot or not; the advice is there to illustrate how with practically nothing you start a game that eventually points you at the kind of prep your need to do.

Also, the advice on breaking your two or so sessions into "mini-sessions" with XP, HX and stuff can give them a better taste of some of those long-play nuances of the system.

For me specifically, I want to address one thing at a time (as I did in the FitD thread) so that I can figure is out. I have a pretty good handle on the core mechanics. I wanted to know about prep, which will lead into a more detailed discussion of Threat, which itself should lead into a more detailed discussion of moves and harm and so on. What is absolutely not helpful for me is to read someone's wall of text explaining every aspect of running PbtA games. I'll just zone out and scroll right on by, which is why I am structuring these threads this way because I REALLY want to try and get these games that thus far have been pretty impenetrable to me.

Then don't hide your real questions behind a script of how you think this discussion ought to go. Ask away!

(BTW, I might also be talking about Apocalypse World here too)

 

[Aldarc]

My limited experience of Dungeon World was that class balance was all over the place. I played a druid, and had a ludicrously good time being the swiss-army-knife of problem solving, with an animal form for every situation. Another player was playing a playbook that appeared to be straight-up broken and I'm not sure was an official one, though it was featured on the game's website. But a couple of players struggled to find useful ways to apply their characters' capabilities to situations.

Yeah I have been warned off DW for various reasons, hence why I decided to start with AW. It doesn't hurt that Fury Road is one of my top 3 movies of all time.

FWIW, DW was intentionally written with the whole "balance doesn't matter" ethos of OSR and old school D&D in the background.

IME, Jeremy Strandberg's Homebrew World - a cleaned-up hack of DW mostly meant for shorter campaigns - does a better job of addressing this. There are also plenty of other DW hacks or alternative playbooks out there that try to reign in the imbalance as well.

 

[Reynard]

FWIW, DW was intentionally written with the whole "balance doesn't matter" ethos of OSR and old school D&D in the background.

IME, Jeremy Strandberg's Homebrew World - a cleaned-up hack of DW mostly meant for shorter campaigns - does a better job of addressing this. There are also plenty of other DW hacks or alternative playbooks out there that try to reign in the imbalance as well.

I actually don't know why one would want to use a fiction first story game to emulate OSR play, but I guess people do.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I actually don't know why one would want to use a fiction first story game to emulate OSR play, but I guess people do.

They're probably not nearly as far apart as many people tend to think. Both largely came about in response to the same trends in mainstream gaming. Each goes about addressing those trends in different ways, but they do have a good deal of common ground.

 

[grankless]

I personally had a hard time learning the procedures of PBTA play by reading Apocalypse World - I feel like Flying Circus by Erika Chappell does a great job of teaching the GM how to run the game, restating a lot of the information in AW in cleaner, more clearly categorized writing (without the... idiosyncratic language used in Apocalypse World).

I've definitely found that the toughest part of GMing a PBTA game is just, as the GM, being aware of all the basic move triggers - it's surprisingly demanding. I've found that the framework for rolls in Forged in the Dark is more my style personally, but still like PBTA enough.

 

[Reynard]

They're probably not nearly as far apart as many people tend to think. Both largely came about in response to the same trends in mainstream gaming. Each goes about addressing those trends in different ways, but they do have a good deal of common ground.

I'm not saying it is impossible or anything. obviously lots of folks seem to enjoy that format. But when i think old school dungeon crawling, i think counting arrows and poking things with 10 foot poles.

EDIT TO ADD: I should say, though, that I am really curious how World of Dungeons would actually play at the table, especially with my fellow GenXer old school group.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not saying it is impossible or anything. obviously lots of folks seem to enjoy that format. But when i think old school dungeon crawling, i think counting arrows and poking things with 10 foot poles.

Sure, I get that! There are certainly differences as well.

 

[overgeeked]

I bought Apocalypse World 2E. Between my (admittedly nascent) familiarity with FitD and this video, I think I have a pretty good idea how the basic mechanics of PbtA work. However, I am still kind of at a loss at exactly what the MC does for "prep". I think it is mostly jotting down ideas and formalizing threat between sessions, but I am not entirely sure. So the first thing I could use help on clarifying is what the role of the MC is in PbtA games is specifically in regards to how much or how little to "prep."

NOTE: I understand that you don't prepare adventures, with plots and things. That's not my question. My question is more about how much world building and hook slinging do you do, as compared to, say, a sandbox D&D game. Sometimes the text seems to suggest that the amount is "none" but other times it tells you to use your "prep" to ask and answer questions.

Lately, I mostly run West Marches-style open-world sandbox D&D 5E games but there were a few years where I mostly ran/played various PbtA games. Dungeon World, Masks, Monster of the Week, Uncharted Worlds, Spirit of 77, etc.

Most don't require the full world-building you'd expect from a purely homebrew D&D game. They are typically very player-focused in world-building. Players are regularly encouraged to add details to the world. Most PbtA games have questions in character creation either on the sheet or in the book for the referee to ask to help fill out the character and the world. The referee is also often told that when questions about the world come up to ask the player of a character who should know...and have them decide. So very much collaborative world-building by design.

For things like NPCs, factions, etc...it's about the same as most sandbox D&D games. You're supposed to, as the referee, create factions, NPCs, etc to populate the world. But that prep is supposed to be focused on the characters. You create NPCs that your PCs will bounce off of, or gravitate to, or otherwise strongly react to. In some iterations of PbtA the referee is supposed to specifically create NPCs that will come between the PCs and cause problems. But players create a lot of NPCs as well. Their backstory and character creation picks, depending on the PbtA game, can generate any number of NPCs that might or might not show up in game. Anything from a cousin who works at the local bank on up to entire aliens worlds. Same with factions, basically. For example, in Masks one of the playbooks is the Bull (strong fighter-type superhero) and they were created...think normal person kidnapped and experimented on to gain powers. The faction the did that is out there. The player can have a lot of input in creating that faction.

Hook slinging is about the same, I think. But you're generating your hooks differently. You're mostly pulling form the characters, the collaborative world-building, and the fronts you've designed. Fronts being the events you want to feature in a game. A lot of the drama from PbtA games comes from the characters themselves and their interactions with each other. I know some PbtA games have a much looser stance on PC groups, but I haven't played many of those as it's too awkward. I prefer the specifically team-focused PbtA games. So you start the game, typically, with a relationship web of sorts between the characters. Like in Masks. You have a few backstory question to answer (just about your character), then you have relationship mad-libs. You pick some of the other PCs to have a shared history with to keep things cohesive but also filled with drama. For example, again from Masks. "X is your love" and "Y is your rival." Or "You and Z pulled an illegal stunt together" or "You're trying to impress A with your antics."

Very often the advice is "poke the PCs at the start of the game and simply react as this sets off a chain reaction." And most PbtA playbooks are built to service that style. Lots of in-built drama, hooks, NPCs, etc for the referee to use against the PCs. Not to screw them over or pull the carpet out from under their feet, rather to introduce drama.

Most PbtA games are laser focused on creating drama for the PCs to wade through. So whatever prep or hooks or world-building you do as the referee should be focused on that drama. "This time it's personal"? Nope. Every time it's personal. Basically, if it doesn't poke at least one of the PCs it doesn't belong in the game. Some PbtA games are more or less laser focused on drama. But as a generalization, I've found it's true. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you think of PbtA games like soap operas you'll be most of the way to grokking them. Not bad, hammy melodrama...but if you're going to have a traitor it should be some PC's relative or best friend...if you're going to introduce resurrection (for example) the players should find out about it by having someone their PCs love or hate coming back from the dead. All that stuff most D&D players are trying to avoid by having the tragic "everyone I've ever known is dead" backstory...yeah, that's where most PbtA games live and breathe. Prep that stuff.

 

[Aldarc]

I actually don't know why one would want to use a fiction first story game to emulate OSR play, but I guess people do.

I try not to overthink it. I suspect the creators were enthusiastic about marrying two hot, contemporaneous "trindie" things together: i.e., OSR and PbtA. But it's pretty clear from its reception that most fans wanted were less interested in DW for running a "Faux-SR PbtA" game, but, rather, for running a more mainstream D&D-esque fantasy-adventure PbtA.