http:\/\/cityofmist.sonofoak.com\/2016\/10\/what-gms-new-to-pbta-apocalypse-world-engine-games-dont-know\/<\/a><\/p>\nWhat Does John Think About PBTA?<\/h1>\n
PBTA games have several important qualities.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to cover some of the ones that I think are important and give my option on some of them as well.<\/p>\n
Moves<\/h2>\n
Moves define the various things that players and GMs can do.\u00c2\u00a0 Their impact and effect are driven by how the Move is written.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The name of the Move often conveys the genre or setting as well.<\/p>\n
Moves can be setting specific.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, Masks, an RPG about teenage superheroes, has a Move called, “Unleash Your Powers”.\u00c2\u00a0 You can guess what it does by the name.\u00c2\u00a0 Notice how even just the name drives home the setting and how it comes into play.<\/p>\n
Characters are built using predefined Playbooks.\u00c2\u00a0 Playbooks are kind of like Classes in D&D.\u00c2\u00a0 (These will be discussed in more detail below.)\u00c2\u00a0 Each Playbook has Moves that only that character can perform.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, the Driver in Apocalypse World can choose, “A No Shit Driver”.<\/p>\n
GMs, or MC (Masters Of Ceremony) as they are called in PBTA, also have their own set of Moves.\u00c2\u00a0 In Dungeon World MCs have moves like “Reveal An Unwelcome Truth”, “Put Someone In A Spot”, and “Use A Monster”.\u00c2\u00a0 Again these drive home the setting and genre.<\/p>\n
Playbooks<\/h2>\n
Playbooks are used to define the character and describe any Moves that are specific to them.\u00c2\u00a0 They act as characters sheets but have Move details as well.\u00c2\u00a0 Often they also include rough details on how the character might look, their affiliations, etc.<\/p>\n
Playbooks provide most, if not all, of the rules that the player will need.\u00c2\u00a0 This allows them to focus on the story and not their list of spells or how a particular stunt works for example.<\/p>\n
The Playbook name, style, and look again drive the setting and genre.\u00c2\u00a0 In The Watch, a dark fantasy RPG, there are Playbooks called The Spider, The Bear, The Wolf, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 Just the name denotes detail about the focus of that Playbook.<\/p>\n
The Playbook will also often include statements that provide Bonds to other PC.\u00c2\u00a0 These are an excellent mechanic for immediately tying the PC to each other.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, in Dungeon World the Wizard has, “X is keeping an important secret from me.”\u00c2\u00a0 Notice how these can drive the setting and genre.<\/p>\n
Fail Forward<\/h2>\n
The dice rolling in PBTA games is one of the hardest things for most traditional RPG players and MCs to grok.\u00c2\u00a0 The import rule here is that players do all of the rolls.\u00c2\u00a0 The MC first present the situation that is in front of the player.\u00c2\u00a0 The player reacts by describing what they do.\u00c2\u00a0 Often this involves fiction first then activation of a Move.<\/p>\n
The results of the roll drive the results of that piece of the encounter and push the fiction forward.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a really important thing to grasp.\u00c2\u00a0 Most PBTA RPG systems break down the rolls into a 2d6 roll with modifications.\u00c2\u00a0 2 to 6 is\u00c2\u00a0 Failure, 7 to 9 is a Success with a Complication, and 10+ is a Success with often fewer or no Complications.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes even a full Success will mean picking options from the Move.\u00c2\u00a0 Move often spawn questions or a response from the MC.<\/p>\n
Here is a fast example of how this works.\u00c2\u00a0 While exploring a dark cave the dwarven warrior Gimli runs across a group of three goblin scouts.\u00c2\u00a0 The MC then describes the action, “The goblins jump out from behind a rock and charge forward with their rusty swords swinging!\u00c2\u00a0 What do you do?”.\u00c2\u00a0 Notice how the MC starts with action from the scene.\u00c2\u00a0 Gimli’s player responds with, “For Crom!\u00c2\u00a0 I drive my hammer down on the head of the first goblin!”\u00c2\u00a0 The MC looks at the available Moves and says to make a “Hack & Slash”.\u00c2\u00a0 The player rolls a 5.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a Failure but it does not stop the fiction!\u00c2\u00a0 The GM responds with, “Moving forward your hammer glances past the left ear of the goblin who nicks your arm with his blade.\u00c2\u00a0 Now that you have moved forward the other goblins charge in from all sides!\u00c2\u00a0 Take 4 damage.”\u00c2\u00a0 The idea is to push the fiction forward and let the character act even more cool after getting out of a jam.<\/p>\n
Summary<\/h1>\n
PBTA games are definitely more difficult for the MC as there is a lot of response and setting up action before and after every roll.\u00c2\u00a0 The back and forth play is difficult to run until you get more practice.<\/p>\n
Another thing that can be difficult when running PBTA games is driving the difficulty of a challenge.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, in my example of the combat with the goblins I could have still let the character smash the goblin then have the next one land a blow.\u00c2\u00a0 The associated complications to a failure take time to master.\u00c2\u00a0 It gets even harder when you have to handle this for a group of players.<\/p>\n
This system begets a storytelling heavy session.\u00c2\u00a0 There are not a lot of crunchy bits that get in the way of the fiction and the actual resolution is often very quick.\u00c2\u00a0 I have found that throwing tons of things for the characters to respond to is the best course of action in PBTA games.\u00c2\u00a0 This way each element of the encounter presents a more intuitive response.\u00c2\u00a0 It also gives something for each character to do in the scene.<\/p>\n
I am still in the learning how to run PBTA games.\u00c2\u00a0 So far I am good for the first couple of rolls but then I will start to get lax and fall into common tropes, “You failed take some harm.”\u00c2\u00a0 That is not how the system is geared to work.\u00c2\u00a0 Saying that\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I really want to get good at it.\u00c2\u00a0 I have played in some absolutely amazing PBTA games over the last four years so I know it works well if properly executed\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I just need to get it to sing for me.\u00c2\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What Is PBTA? PBTA stands for Powered By The Apocalypse.\u00c2\u00a0 Apocalypse World is an RPG by Vincent Baker that was released in 2010.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the first system to present these rules.\u00c2\u00a0 Small-press RPG that utilize these rules are classified as PBTA.\u00c2\u00a0 PBTA defines the base mechanics that are being used behind a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-growlings"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usandacat.com\/thelair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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