thoughts on Apocalypse World?

[niklinna]

I would say that fits my experience in role-playing, yeah. D&D classes feel like a poor fit for what I want to do in D&D, whereas PbtA playbooks, as you say, plug right in. (It still doesn't hurt that PbtA playbooks give you 1–2 defining moves, and don't dictate your character's future career—particularly variants that let you freely choose other playbook moves as you gain XP.)

 

[darkbard]

In the sense that it completely failed my expectations, at the very least. I wanted a PbtA approach to D&D-esque fantasy; what I got was an OSR hack with awkwardly shoe-horned in PbtA mechanics.

I mean, a ton of people seem to like, so it's obviously somebody's jam. But instead of being a perfect blend of my favorite genre and my favorite system I instead got an old-school dungeon crawler straight-jacketed by a system much better suited to telling more fluid stories. It feels like a square peg in a round hole which is, in my personal opinion, poor game design.

I venture respectfully that perhaps your GM and group didn't fully grok the possibilities of the system, or went in with a desire specifically to run an old-school dungeon crawl? @Manbearcat ran my wife and me through a full ten-level game of DW that ended a few months back, and I can recall now only two episodes that involved anything like crawling through dungeons: one being when my wife's character leapt down into a well housing a dragon ostuary to reclaim her lightning wand while the rest of us (my PC and a gaggle of NPCs) battled a dracolich on the surface, and the other being a full session battling another dragon in return for a giant's aid in repairing and weaving magic into some armor that was damaged in the previously described scene. The existence of the giant's forge was essentially player-authored via a successful Spout Lore roll, and the short foray into the dragon well was similarly player-driven. Short of that, all our play revolved around social encounters in a frontier town and secluded monastery-like library, conflicts with hags and bandits and the ghosts of vengeful spirits while traveling the perilous wilds, and battles against perytons, wyvern, and the landscape of a cruel, glacial mountaintop itself in our quest to undo the life-draining menace of an ancient necromancer. Trope-y stuff, to be sure, but nary a dungeon crawl among it!

 

[Manbearcat]

I venture respectfully that perhaps your GM and group didn't fully grok the possibilities of the system, or went in with a desire specifically to run an old-school dungeon crawl? @Manbearcat ran my wife and me through a full ten-level game of DW that ended a few months back, and I can recall now only two episodes that involved anything like crawling through dungeons: one being when my wife's character leapt down into a well housing a dragon ostuary to reclaim her lightning wand while the rest of us (my PC and a gaggle of NPCs) battled a dracolich on the surface, and the other being a full session battling another dragon in return for a giant's aid in repairing and weaving magic into some armor that was damaged in the previously described scene. The existence of the giant's forge was essentially player-authored via a successful Spout Lore roll, and the short foray into the dragon well was similarly player-driven. Short of that, all our play revolved around social encounters in a frontier town and secluded monastery-like library, conflicts with hags and bandits and the ghosts of vengeful spirits while traveling the perilous wilds, and battles against perytons, wyvern, and the landscape of a cruel, glacial mountaintop itself in our quest to undo the life-draining menace of an ancient necromancer. Trope-y stuff, to be sure, but nary a dungeon crawl among it!

Yeah.

I don't understand the OSR feel from a read of the text nor the xp triggers nor the playbooks (outside of a few very specific moves). It looks like and runs like thematically, tropey high fantasy (playbook/bond/alignment-statement dependent). Basically 4e type conflicts/themes.

Including your game and @prabe 's game, I've run probably 20 games (of varying length). Maybe 1000 hours of GMing?

I've not run a single dungeon crawl (and by dungeon crawl I'm talking about Moldvay Basic or Torchbearer) nor can I imagine doing so or being inspired to do so by the ruleset.

 

[Gradine]

I will have to give it a re-read, then. It is very well likely that my first impressions were marred or skewed in some way.

 

[niklinna]

I will have to give it a re-read, then. It is very well likely that my first impressions were marred or skewed in some way.

I've never actually read Dungeon World, now you've got me curious to take a look.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah.

I don't understand the OSR feel from a read of the text nor the xp triggers nor the playbooks (outside of a few very specific moves). It looks like and runs like thematically, tropey high fantasy (playbook/bond/alignment-statement dependent). Basically 4e type conflicts/themes.

Because you misunderstand/mis-equate OSR to one specific subset

Including your game and @prabe 's game, I've run probably 20 games (of varying length). Maybe 1000 hours of GMing?

I've not run a single dungeon crawl (and by dungeon crawl I'm talking about Moldvay Basic or Torchbearer) nor can I imagine doing so or being inspired to do so by the ruleset.

See, right there? That's the fundamental disconnect. You're equating OSR=Dungeon Crawl. And that's a false equivalence.

While many people play dungeons with old rulesets, that's a subset. The staunchest OSR advocates are using D&D in the same way Pemerton is using Classic Traveller, and in ways similar to how AW is intended to be used: anything not covered by the rules is "Say yes"... In OSR-D&D, that's mostly combat and exploration in rules, but many OSR GM's aren't doing dungeons at all, and may or may not even be using wandering monsters in the wilderness.

One of the fundamental problems with the OSR label is that it applies to a lot of different things that are only related in "Let's grab (Moldvay-Cook/Homes/Original) and modify it for ___"... It's not a unified whole. The largest trend is sandbox GMing. And AW as written is pretty close to sandbox.

It's also worth noting that Pemerton's approach to CT is a not uncommon Old School Renaissance Traveller GM approach. But it's not the approach of ANY Traveller GM I've played with (Invalidly small sample of about 4), and is a rare approach on COTI. In part because those special cases are inconsistent mechanically. Pemerton's quite right that Traveller implies only rolling for exceptional cases... but makes a bunch of procedural rolls, too. THinking about it, tho', those are pretty abnormal situations for most players. EG: Few traveller players will be cargo brokers nor pursers, for example, but those procedures are included to create troubles.

 

[pemerton]

I've never actually read Dungeon World, now you've got me curious to take a look.

My (pdf) version is over 400 pages lone. I feel there's probably scope for a bit of an edit! (Maybe that's unfair? But it does seem long.)

 

[darkbard]

My (pdf) version is over 400 pages lone. I feel there's probably scope for a bit of an edit! (Maybe that's unfair? But it does seem long.)

There's A LOT of white space. The publisher didn't do itself any favors with, in my opinion, lackluster art and layout. Blades in the Dark is so much more compelling as a physical artifact, once again in my opinion.

 

[Tonguez]

There's A LOT of white space. The publisher didn't do itself any favors with, in my opinion, lackluster art and layout. Blades in the Dark is so much more compelling as a physical artifact, once again in my opinion.

Yeah lots of whaite space And lots of lists.
Each Class takes up about 6 pages each + spells when relevant.
Then there is the section of Steadings and GM advice, plus Monsters and Magic Items also take up page count

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Thanks one and all who took the time to answer my questions. I now have a much clearer idea of AW/PbtA.

Cheers and happy gaming.