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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8678137" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/aMyvEzV.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/311613/Worlds-Greatest-Roleplaying-Game-The-Game" target="_blank">Drive-Thru RPG Page.</a>This product is actually part of a <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/354606/The-Worlds-Greatest-Roleplaying-Game-The-Zine--A-Complete-Collection-of-4-Issues" target="_blank">larger collected work</a> that I do not own. It’s also a tad on the lengthy side, so if I were to review it I’d likely make it its own thread.The World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game: the Game is an Inception-level metanarrative, where you play as players playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. The player-PCs of the 5e PCs have Apocalypse World-style playbooks reflecting a common type of gamer, such as the Actor or Optimizer, and they can use their moves to give in-game benefits to their 5e PCs. The session is otherwise a typical game of 5th Edition D&D rather than being its own RPG.There are nine playbooks, eight for PCs and one for the DM (Master of Dungeons). Four of the playbooks roll an unmodified d20 to trigger relevant moves, and are considered to be death saving throws for the purposes of interaction with other rules even though they don’t have to be used when a PC is dying. Rolling a 9 or less causes the intended move to backfire in some way, a 10-19 is a success, while a natural 20 has a success which goes above and beyond. The other four PC-facing playbooks don’t require a d20 and typically interact with Inspiration in some way, shape, or form. The Master of Dungeons is its own special case.The Actor merges player and PC skill together by granting the opportunity to auto-succeed at a Charisma skill check by role-playing it out. And by roleplaying it out, I mean roll a death saving throw! A natural 20 grants Inspiration, but a 9 or less backfires and imposes disadvantage on Charisma-based rolls against the same targets.The Explorer is played whenever the PC is seeking out something. 10 or above grants some kind of hint or clue, but 9 or less causes you to roll with disadvantage on the relevant check. There is no natural 20 result for this playbook.The Instigator move is played whenever the PC does something against the better judgment of the rest of the party. This automatically grants their PC an additional bonus action that can be held onto to use for later. But further uses of this ability during the same session cost Inspiration.The Warrior can trigger only if the PC spends their action, movement, and bonus action and successfully causes damage to a target. In such a case, Inspiration can be spent to cause maximum damage.The Optimizer is unique in that the 9 or less d20 roll imposes no negative conditions. It triggers whenever two features of a PC (feats, spells, magic items, etc) are used in concert with a single action. A 10 or above allows one to ignore a condition of the feature, such as requiring a short or long rest to recharge, while a natural 20 increases one effect of the action by 50%, such as dealing one and a half times as much damage.The Problem-Solver can be triggered whenever the PC fails a skill check or saving throw. A 10 or above allows them to temporarily avoid the consequences of failure, being able to retry the roll again with disadvantage or find some other way to circumvent fate up to their proficiency bonus in rounds. If used, the PC needs a long rest to do so again, and 9 or less forces the PC to deal with the consequences of failure.The Storyteller can be played whenever a new NPC is introduced, spending Inspiration to create a piece of backstory or personality for them. Furthermore, the PC and their allies have advantage on skill checks against that character whenever they take advantage of that trait against them.The Rules Lawyer move triggers whenever they correct the Master of Dungeons about some rule in the game, but must spend Inspiration for every additional use more than once in a session. However, the Rules Lawyer’s PC takes disadvantage on all rolls related to any house rules in play, but gains Inspiration if both of the disadvantaged d20 rolls manage to beat the DC.The Master of Dungeons is a specific DM-only playbook. Whenever a player uses any of the other playbooks to do a successful move, the Master of Dungeons can give +5 HP to any monster or NPC of their choice or increase the next skill check DC by 2.Thoughts: These are pretty simple rules that can be bolted onto 5e games without much hassle. Some of the playbooks are more narrowly focused; the Actor only interfaces with a narrow range of d20 rolls, and the Warrior can only affect damaging abilities. Optimizer and Problem Solver are incredibly broad in what they can be used on, and while I do like the Storyteller’s ode to collaborative story-telling common to PbtA games, for dungeon-crawling fantasy I can see a player falling into a repetitive rut of “the NPC is cowardly/overly trusting/underestimating my PC’s race/class/etc” or something similar to justify advantages on rolls. Instigator and Rules Lawyer I can see taking special care to employ, given that their moves can more easily generate adversarial playstyles in disagreeing with the other players or DM. I also like how the DM gets something when moves are successfully triggered, which can help temper PCs from overusing their moves beyond the limitations of Inspiration and rest.I’d like to note that the hacking of the “2d6 Apocalypse World” resolution system into a d20 death save provides for some interesting effects. In being a death save, Bardic Inspiration can modify the roll, and Bane and Bless’ 1d4 modifiers can do so as well. Same with the Lucky feat’s luck points. Those are what I’ve been able to find via a quick Googling, but I’m sure there are CharOps folks out there who can cook up more innovative combos.</blockquote>

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