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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8039661" data-attributes="member: 87792">I think the best example I can give here is an Apocalypse World game I ran about a year and a half ago for three players, two of them brand new to tabletop roleplaying. It only lasted six sessions because one of the players was incredibly flaky and one flake out of three is a big problem.In Apocalypse World your playbook is your position within the world and the world is created round the characters. We had three characters - a cult leader (who called his cult his family and was generally well intentioned), a creepy psychic wearing a biohazard suit, and a hermit who lived in the woods. But a key thing about Apocalypse World is that although your position in the world is indicated by your playbook this can change; you can change either through spending XP and growth, or as one of four options "when life becomes untenable" (you can come back weaker, weirder, having changed playbook, or you can just die and start a new character - but the first three can each only happen once). D&D could have handled the creepy psychic and the hermit in the woods as starting characters but there is not and never has been anything remotely resembling the Hocus playbook; there are no classes where the key element is your relationship with set NPCs that are closely tied to the world - no cult leaders. (There's also no equivalent to the Hardholder (town boss), Chopper (motorcycle gang leader), or Maestro D' (leader of the local scene) playbooks for the same reason). The setting isn't fixed but the rules help you create a setting for the game.Anyway, to cut a long story short by the end of six sessions all three characters had experienced sufficient character growth to change their playbooks and their fundamental relationship to the world.The cult leader had screwed up keeping one of their members alive (snake eyes at the wrong time) and had a crisis of faith. This was made deeper by the creepy psychic mind-controlling them into leaving their "family" behind when they had already lost confidence in themself. So they'd decided that they shouldn't be trusted to lead people and were instead trying to fix things.The hermit in the woods had started out with beef with the cult leader because their big brother was a former member of the cult who had disappeared. They'd then over the course of the game got to know a little about the family and realised that the members of the family all needed guidance (or they wouldn't have joined) and someone had to step up and look after that complete rabble. And became the new cult leader.The cult leader had realised that the creepy psychic had mind controlled them and had sought revenge, first drugging and then shooting the creepy psychic in the head before ditching their body. The psychic had bled out, their essence infusing the mask of their biohazard suit, which an NPC had put on. At which point the psychic had taken them over - but there would be problems if they ever took that mask off. This is literally an official playbook called the Faceless where the mask whispers to and controls the wearer.Three players, two who had never played a tabletop RPG before and one who had never played Apocalypse World before. Three satisfying narrative arcs in six sessions. All RAW - and with the mechanics following and supporting the player's choices rather than controlling them. And the closest thing to DM force I used was pointing out that the Faceless existed to the player of the creepy psychic (who wouldn't have known otherwise that this was an option). The rest flowed from the rules and the setting; I literally didn't have any sort of pre-planned metaplot.And as for not being constrained by unnecessary rules, Apocalypse World is a significantly lighter system than D&D 5e.</blockquote>

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