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Multiple people here have stated over and over that the Ageof Umbra frame isn’t “grimdark” despite what the article says. Heck, it’s not dissimilar in overall vibe (perhaps even more hopeful) to The One Ring. A bleak high fantasy world that asks if you’ll be the ones to fully rekindle hope.

The decision space for a DH character leveling up may approach a half-caster in 5e, maybe. You’ve got feats & ASIs and spell choices and specializations and subclasses and on and on. DH is clearly closer to the PF2E/4e - 5e side of the character growth crunch continuum then something like DW...

When I see the term “bypassed my encounter” used colloquially in D & D space it almost universally has a negative connotation from the GM where they’re going “darn I’d planned this cool thing and then the players used magic/asked about other options/rolled well on skills/went off a different way...

If D&D shipped with custom/optional mechanics to fit a variety of different stories you might want to tell with the system instead of a handful of condensed mechanics it might be getting there. All the DH “frames” have mechanics that reinforce the narrative themes they want to tell. What Matt...

Or said in an even more oppressive and genre appropriate way “have your ability to hope eroded away until you can no longer go on.”

Honestly the CR phenomenon has been huge at getting people to try 5e. The game I ran for 1st timers in late 23-mid ‘24 were all big CR fans, but had never played. My Tuesday group got spurred to play TTRPGs by CR. I think that the crowd coming in from that direction is probably more apt to try...

I believe Apocalypse World’s printing was funded via KS, back in the early 2010s? I know online sales is how the Bakers have gone from having day jobs to full time game designers.

Mechanics like the ones presented here via the hope/fear dice allow for more stuff to be hung off them; and combine with the agenda and principles for players and the GM to create expectations around the narrative experience. If you’re happy with having total control in a conventional D&D style...

Umbra setting as written.

Yeah, I’m aware that the preponderance of 5e leveling has switched to GM fiat / milestone. Been there, done that. I’m just saying that compared to all the other frameworks of narrativist play here this is the most GM authority bit. I can see why you can’t do individual leveling like in a PBTA...

Yeah, sure, it’s pretty explicit about this up front. It’s got an Agenda and Principles the GM is asked to consider themselves bound by, directly centers player protagonism & how they respond to things vs monster/NPC/GM actions as much as possible (see: GMs being encouraged to prompt for player...

Note that like “separate” soft and hard moves are a post-AW convention conversational. AW just has Moves; when a player Ts up a golden opportunity or rolls a 6-, the GM then has the spotlight to make a move as “hard and direct as they like.” Thats just a move, but the game is telling the GM “you...

It’s really a setting about re-kindling hope in a bleak and desolate land. In that way, it’s a perfect fit. The “campaign frame” also has some mechanical changes to adversaries & rules alike that make it more oppressive away from safe havens with maintained consecrated bonfires; adjust some of...

You’ve misunderstood what I meant. Part of the intent of a world/city that has events happening independent of player action that then get telegraphed back to them via fictional updates (you don’t have to make all the faction clocks player facing) is to make it feel more real. Threat clocks in...

I think I’ve been pointing out that BITD does the “living world” thing built in a way I haven’t seen any other larger scale commercial product do over hundreds of pages now. The focus is on providing opportunities for the players to engage the world through telegraphed events, make Doskvol feel...

This got a genuine chuckle from me.

Note that if the GM has fear from any source they can do an “intrusion” style activation to step in with an adversary spotlight. Yes, it’s technically possible to get to a combat encounter with 0 fear stacked and never roll a failure (failures alsohand over the spotlight) or with fear, but seems...

Are you hard scene framing to challenge the player’s goals/beliefs/etc as noted? @Campbell ‘s post was about how a MC with that responsibility needs to be a player with constraints because of the expectation the game is placing on their role. no, it doesn’t weed them out - it forces them upon...

Ok, but they do actually have really good encounter building math inclusive of stuff besides just "add more or less monsters!" I think an expectation of well designed/mathed and balanced encounters is maybe the least narrativist and most 4e/PF2e esque thing about this game. When I run a PBTA...

I think they assume this is being adjudged on the fly as the fiction demands or invoked explicitly. Edit: Yeah, they explicitly assume this is being adjudged on the fly as the fiction demands per page 160 - where they also make a note about not just flat upgrading Difficulty because the former...