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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8411076" data-attributes="member: 42582">What's our comparison class?If we're saying that AW is a genre-work when compared to (say) The Seventh Seal or Nomadland (to pick two pretty different films), I can buy that.If we're saying that AW is a genre work compared to some other RPG, then I would be pretty sceptical unless someone is pointing me to a pretty atypical RPG!Upthread, [USER=7028554]@Grendel_Khan[/USER] suggested that AW isn't about simulating the fictional world, and I replied that it both is and isn't. I would say the same about genre.Consider the AW playbooks. The driver, the chopper, the hardholder, are obvious post-apocalyptic types. The brainer and angel and hocus and gunlugger look to me more like ways of taking well-known RPG character types (enchanter/telepath, healer, cleric/cult-leader, warrior) and locating them within a post-apocalyptic context. Then we have the operator and skinner giving us two versions of the "face"; the battlebabe is a quirkier warrior type; and the savvyhead mixes the post-apocalyptic mechanic/tech-type with a hint of RPG-style alchemist.To some extent, the AW moves reflect genre: eg no-sh*t driver. But some seem pretty portable: cool under fire or leadership might fit just as well in a military game as in a post-apocalyptic one. And read a situation or read a person would fit the spy/thriller genre pretty well, I think.In combination, the basic moves plus the playbooks give a pretty clear picture of what sorts of people and events are going to figure in the fiction. At that level of functional abstraction, I see them as similar to the lifepaths in Burning Wheel; and even to some approaches to class in D&D (less so in those versions like late 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e where class is less determinative of a character's role in the game).I don't see the agenda and principles as distinctively genre-focused either, taken as a whole.To me, the following principles seem to fit broadly under the agenda item Make Apocalypse World seem real:• Address yourself to the characters, not the players. • Make your move, but misdirect. • Make your move, but never speak its name. • Name everyone, make everyone human. • Ask provocative questions and build on the answers. • Think offscreen too. • Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.These are portable across a very wide range of RPGs. To me, they are primarily approaches, or techniques, for (i) establishing fiction as the GM, and (ii) presenting that fiction to the players.The following principles, which seem to fit broadly under the agenda item Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring, seem to me more narrowly focused (except for the first, which is pretty portable I think):• Be a fan of the players’ characters. • Barf forth apocalyptica. • Look through crosshairs. • Respond with f****ry and intermittent rewards (also restated as "Put your bloody fingerprints all over everything you touch").Those last three to introduce more of a sense of genre, but I think they could speak eg to a Cthulhu-esque game as much as a post-apocalyptic one. They would be out of place, obviously, in a LotR-esque or typical superhero game.When you combine these more focused principles with the playbooks and moves, the distinctive post-apocalyptic genre starts to emerge. But I don't think you need to change much to get what will still be a pretty tight game dealing with some other genre (military, perhaps a la Apocalypse Now or even All Quiet on the Western Front, or weird war, seem to me the most obvious, but that probably says more about me than anything about the range of nearby possibilities).I think this helps explain why PbtA has turned out to be so flexible and portable as a RPG design framework.</blockquote>

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