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I totally appreciate this, and have to say, I'm still waiting for the light to come on for me when it comes to Fate. I've purchased Fate Accel, Fate Core, and the Fate tool kit, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what its play principles really embody.

So, to comment on this --- Even when I was a die-hard "trad" GM running Pathfinder and Savage Worlds, I personally never found the rhetoric of the Forge to be offputting. I think Ron Edwards had a clear idea that he wanted to get the principles of "narrativist" play solidified, and it was...

The thing you're forgetting in all this is that the principle of the innovation adoption curve is a very real thing. And that exposure to any fraction of the principles surrounding RPG theory is something that only a small percentage of the player base ever experiences. And why is this...

Interface Zero 2.0 for Savage Worlds. The Deus Ex series of video games are my all time favorites. This gorgeous hardcover is pen and paper Deus Ex and it is amazing. Star Wars Edge of the Empire. It really hits all the right notes in terms of the setting. The background information on the...

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition Ironsworn Genesys Core Scum and Villainy Burning Wheel Gold The hardest items left off were Interface Zero for Savage Worlds, Lex Arcana, and The One Ring 2e.

You mentioned a couple of months ago that you're also primarily running games online. https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-do-you-tell-a-group-maybe-this-isnt-for-us.686578/ I have to say, online gaming is HARD. I've found you kind of have to limit the timeframe to be much shorter. 2-2.5 hour...

I've been in this situation before, and can commiserate. For me, I basically decided that if the players couldn't be bothered to be engaged, that I couldn't be bothered to participate. If the group was to continue, that change was needed. I can be pretty blunt when the situation suits. I...

Hmmm, @TheAlkaizer , how to sell you on Ironsworn? Imagine you liked the general theory/concept of Apocalypse World / Dungeon World / Powered by the Apocalypse games, but could never quite get "into" it / understand it / make it work. You tried AW, or Dungeon World, but it just never clicked...

Some of you may know how big a fan I am of Ironsworn. Just wanted to give a shoutout that the PDF of Starforged landed on DriveThru. I've already played 2 sessions of it (a friend of mine backed the KS), and it's without a doubt an improvement on Ironsworn, which was already fantastic. The...

@Reynard If you don't have it already, the Interface Zero 2.0 campaign setting for Savage Worlds is fantastic just for the gear, bioware, and gene mutation rules alone, even if you have no desire to use anything else in the setting.

I'm on the fence about PbtA being "universal." But I do think the transferability of the overall mindset of playing PbtA, regardless of differences in focus/playbooks, is quite strong. I just started playing Starforged (the sci Fi spinoff of Ironsworn). And it's remarkable how much of Ironsworn...

I've played Savage Worlds (lots and lots), GURPS (a small bit) and Fate (a tiny bit). Savage Worlds is an excellent system, as long as you prefer its particular brand of "pulp" action style/feel. It's biggest weakness is that after 10-15 sessions of a campaign, it can become difficult to scale...

@Aldarc 's linked Twitter thread from Shawn Tompkin hits the nail on the head. The dice mechanic for Ironsworn (and Starforged, which I just started playing) gives a greater variety/range of results, while allowing for more flexibility in how bonuses get added to rolls, while also being...

This is a pretty good point. It's entirely reasonable to suppose that if Adkison had decided not to pick up D&D, someone, somewhere out in the corporate world would have seriously considered it. Maybe it's Hasbro. Maybe it's another media company. My best guess, if WotC doesn't pick it up, the...

So I'm actually going to revise my thoughts on this after re-reading @Reynard 's OP again. I never really fully addressed the main point he was trying to make around the near-death of TSR / D&D in the late 1990s -- what would alternate history look like, where D&D exists from 1974 to 1997, but...

Fronts are broad-scale, lightly-defined pieces of GM "prep material" that will inform some of the fictional setting / constraints. They're not meant to be heavy metaplots, or rigorously defined components of the setting, but they are meant to provide a backdrop for some of the conflicts the...

I've yet to play my first FitD game (hurry up, Court of Blades Kickstarter!), but my experience with Ironsworn was similar. One of the reasons I found Ironsworn easier to grasp was the additional structural layers it adds to the PbtA "core"--- the vow mechanic, momentum, assets, a slightly more...

No, nothing specific in any rules I've seen (re: number of players). But from both my Dungeon World and Ironsworn active play experiences, 1 GM + 4 players was better than 5 players. Several Ironsworn sessions only had 3 players, and the experience didn't suffer, and in many ways was more...

One final note --- As a rule, PbtA favors smaller groups than other systems. A GM with 2-3 players is very much supported, and possibly even preferred. 4 players is do-able; 5 players would stretch the ability to account for the various character agendas. I personally wouldn't want to GM a...

The real "Ah hah!", lightbulb moment for me with Ironsworn was the realization that I had to radically revise how much of each scene/scenario, in the moment of play, had to remain open-ended. You have to stay in the moment, while allowing yourself the ability/freedom to revise certain details...