I have a couple of questions, regarding both Dungeon World and PbtA games in general...

I have a couple of questions, regarding both Dungeon World and PbtA games in general. I'm interested in trying my hand at making an AW hack, but I'm at a loss on where to get started. Is there anything specific I should know? As for DW, I just want to know what exactly went wrong with it, or what people dislike about it so much. I want to make a fantasy game, so I'd really like to avoid the pitfalls DW made.

AW is good because it has rules for everything you might do in the setting, but not for anything else.
DW is bad because it doesn't manage to do either of those.

People dislike it because some people dared to like it publicly on Veeky Forums

You might be on to something with that. I mean I've heard a lot of reasons, some pretty plausible, some downright stupid, but that one really jibes with what I've observed about Veeky Forums over the years.

>I want to make a fantasy game, so I'd really like to avoid the pitfalls DW made.
Just don't lazily mash AW's mechanics together with AD&D-like format and focus and you should be fine.

DW failed at being a good PbtA system because it totally ignored what the point of AW's mechanics. In AW, every roll should matter and advance the story in some way. If the party is fighting someone or something, a successful roll should advance the story. This doesn't mean that the fight should be over in a single roll, but *something* changes -- the boss's minions are dealt with, the villain suffers a debilitating injury, the party forces the fight to a more agreeable location, etc. There's an actual plot-important change that will affect how the rest of the scene plays out. DW pays lip service to this idea but includes HP simply because that's what D&D does; a successful roll reduces the monster's HP, but there's no actual advancement of plot, just a numerical change that has to be repeated until one number reaches 0 (no, adding flowery descriptions to combat maneuvers does not equal actually advancing the story).

Really though, it all stems from the fact that AW is all about that story and DW tried to apply those rules to a game about dungeoncrawling. Make your own campaign plot-focused, focus on character types *you* want to see in your campaign *SPECIFICALLY* (e.g. Running dark fantasy? Write up the Faithless Priest, Bloodthirsty "Knight," Naive Child, Comuner with Demons, and similar character sheets. Mythic fantasy? Character sheets would be more like Willy Trickster, Wrathful Warrior, and Mysterious Seer) rather than generic classes like Fighter, Wizard, Thief, etc., and don't stick on D&D bits just be-fucking-cause.

And definitely definitely don't pretend your game is the second coming of Christ or repackage existing GM advice as wisdom from the mountaintop. Smug asshattery was the final nail in DF's coffin, and it was a fucking HUGE nail.

>Smug asshattery was the final nail in DF's coffin, and it was a fucking HUGE nail.
DF?

>includes HP simply because that's what D&D does

Wrong, it included it because it wouldn't accomplish its stated goals if it didn't.

You seem to know a lot about smug asshattery. DW's GM rules (not advice, you're not supposed to ignore that shit, which you should know if you're actually an AW fan and not a meme-loving shitposter) section is its best part, and much as I like Apocalypse World, DW's GM rules beat it by a mile. AW doesn't even even explain half its shit, it's too busy being stylish to tell you what it means when it says things like "Be a fan of the player."
Go ahead, read that rule in both books and see how each explains it. Oh wait, AW doesn't, at all.

Err, "Be a fan of the characters." Pardon me, it's super late here.

Wait, you're actually upset that AW doesn't come packaged with "Babby's First Guideline to GMing?" That it actually treats its playerbase as halfway-competent and able to read shit that's been out and available for ages?

And those stated goals are... Trying to run a dungeoncrawler with a narrative system and fucking it up?
>Don't say that shooting myself in the foot was a bad idea! It was essential to me accomplishing my goal of shooting my foot!

>Babby's First Guideline to GMing

You claim you're a fan of the AW system, but you don't appear to have the slightest clue what the GM rules actually are, and instead keep acting like they're a guideline or help for newbies.
They're not like the GM section of other games, they're not helpful hints. They're explicitly part of the rules, and you have to follow them or you're not running the game properly.

To that end, they ought to be explained to prevent misunderstanding. (And that "Be a fan" rule generated a metric fuckton of misunderstanding, so an explanation would have been nice. But I guess Vince had hit his quota for the word "fuck" and couldn't write any more passages without it, or something)

The thing about DW is that most of the advice it gives is shit that you can read about in any random Dungeon Master's Guid or GM tip site.

AW treats you like an individual who at the very least understands the bare essentials of managing a story while DW pretends that it's the first game to offer GM tips when D&D has been doing exactly that since OD&D.

The basic rule of thumb when playing AW is that every roll should advance the story along. It's not anything new and anyone with a basic understanding of running a game and developing a story should be able to run AW w/o any major issues.

Especially when everything you need to know is already printed on a pamphlet that explains everything you'd need to know.

>I'm interested in trying my hand at making an AW hack
Uh oh.
>I'm at a loss on where to get started. Is there anything specific I should know?
Double uh-oh.

Hit the eject button OP, you're already past the point of no return.

>I'll post the same dumb shit over again
>maybe nobody will notice

That's the philosophy of how you handle rolls, yes, but that's not the GM rules. The GM rules include the principles, the agenda, the moves, and the fronts. If you skim over or misunderstand one of those things, the game will break down.

>If you don't understand the rules, the game breaks down.
No kidding?

Listen mate, literally everything you need to know is written on a pamphlet that you can easily access whenever you need, it's not rocket science.

The thing about DW is that it's marketed at people who've never played tRPGs.

Which is kinda weird considering how many pages there are for a system that's supposed to be catered newbies in the hobby.

I mean, you could get a copy of 5e's DMG and get just as much information on actually running a tabletop game in general than you bought DW.

>I mean, you could get a copy of 5e's DMG and get just as much information on actually running a tabletop game in general than you bought DW.

N-no not really. GW does massively more to guide DMs than 5e. DM moves alone make it a lot more structured and straightforward to DM in.

It also seriously inhibits them by forcing their moves upon them. A GM who is told "do not adapt, only stick to these moves" s going to bore the shit out of his players very quickly.

5e's DMG gives you tips on creating settings, NPCs, and long-running campaigns, gives you an idea as to what types of players there are and how to run games for them, as well as the bare essentials required to run the game proper.

Also, DM moves hamstring creativity and make GMs to develop bad habits that will hamper their ability to improvise, which is an essential skill that's required to run tabletop games in general.

Jesus, what do you guys think DM moves are, anyway? How does "Show signs of an approaching threat" inhibit creativity or hamper improvisation? Seeing as it's as vague as a story prompt and you have to figure out what it means and improvise that on the spot.

>5e's DMG gives you tips on creating settings, NPCs, and long-running campaigns,

As does DW. It's using a system called "fronts" to do this.

5e DMG also spends half its pages on "here's how to implement shit into combat that was in the previous editions" and other, basically unrelated optional rules shit.

You also do not understand what DM moves are.

Because rather than thinking about the overarching plot of the campaign and basing your sessions around working towards a goal, you're more focused on looking at your DM moves and thinking about how you'd implement them in your campaign, which is basically just using training wheels.
>5e DMG also spends half its pages on "here's how to implement shit into combat that was in the previous editions" and other, basically unrelated optional rules shit.
I don't understand how this discounts what I've said. Also, not everyone has played previous editions of D&D so knowing your options as a DM only gives you more inspiration to do with as you please within your campaign.