PBtA Discussion Thread

What has your experience with the PBtA system been?
What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses?
What PBtA game do you find the most enjoyable?

Other urls found in this thread:

my.mixtape.moe/qkyfoj.pdf
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Strenghts:
>Oddball characters and general craziness. If other games try to be The Road or Left 4 Dead, PBTA is Mad Max and proud of it.
>"Cinematic". Like all VB games, it's made to give support to the action but never get on its way. No MUH REALISMS AND BALANCED PHYSICS here.
>Really simple to learn and play. Has just the right amount of crunch to get you going, but never gets cluttered.

Weaknesses:
>You'll have a hard time homebrewing it. PBTA works by setting rather rigid character templates (maybe not very rigid if you're used to D&D, but if you come from, say, Savage Worlds, it's very restrictive) and it's pretty hard to make new templates or a free character creation system that balances well with the rest of the rules. If you're trying to play PBTA in your setting, you'll have a really bumpy road ahead of you. At least the setting is quite vague so you can give it your own twist.

I played a couple games with it, in wich all players were members of a post-apoc biker gang, in a world where almost everything was some kinda pop culture reference. Like, we had a tribe of bikers that dressed like 19th century dragoons, carried Union Jacks and venerated Ed, the zombie god of glorious death, and the biker gang the players belonged to was one long Pink Floyd reference. Had lots os fun, would want to try Icelandic Sagas.

>What has your experience with the PBtA system been?
Played about a half dozen of them. Had a blast pretty much every game. I'd easily call it my favorite system to play. I'll give about any PBtA game a shot at least once, even if I don't normally have much interest in the theme of it.

>What are its strengths?
- In a "good" PBtA game, the theme is super strong. Monster of the Week? On-point to simulate Buffy, Supernatural, X-files and any other supernatural MotW game. Monsterhearts? Sexy supernatural teen drama. etc. The games tweak the mechanics to reinforce their chosen theme and often end up making it a stellar experience.
- Easy to pick up and keep track of. Don't have to think much about numbers and can focus on story.
- Easy to adapt to a different PbtA game if you want to switch to a new theme.

>What are its weaknesses?
- Players who have trouble speaking up and contributing will flag without a GM holding their hand.
- Players who don't dig narrative games will get bored.
- Longer campaigns are more difficult to do without switching out characters or restarting a character from ground zero.


>What PBtA game do you find the most enjoyable?
For me, Monsterhearts. I love sexy, twisted character drama and "superpowers".

Nice system but it falls apart after few sessions. It really isn't made for longer stories.

Sounds like a group problem.

>if you try to play PbtA in your setting you'll have a bumpy road ahead
It's mostly because the kind of story you want to tell is tied tightly into the mechanics of the game. If you want to change aspects of the game narrative or setting, you need to change the relevant mechanics as well.

>"All it's weaknesses are really players' faults."

Not really what I meant. I just meant "different strokes for different folks". There are tons of games I wish I liked, but they're from a completely different realm of roleplaying from what I am used to or have learned to enjoy. It is what it is.

I'm sure it has proper "faults" aside from what I listed, but as I'm not the technical sort of roleplayer, I'd never notice or find myself valid in critiquing whatever I wasn't sure I liked when it comes to something like mechanics.

I've not played one yet, (want to, though), but I've also been told that a well-designed PbtA game's main strength is driving play by frequently presenting the players with hard, mutualy exclusive choices.

Thoughts on that?

I've played a couple, but I enjoy Monsterhearts the most. It needs the right kind of group to play it, but it's basically a perfect translation of a genre into game form.

Well, it's up to the GM to follow the GM moves as appropriate. 'Put the players in a spot' is a GM move. 'Tell them the possible consequences, and ask if they're sure they want to go ahead' is another one.

Likewise, often player moves have something like:
"Fast, cheap, good. On a 10+, all three. On a 7+, pick one or two, or the GM will pick".

It's on the GM to pick appropriately.
You can do this in any game, PbtA games just strongly encourage it.

That's really the best way to sum up PbtA games - what you SHOULD be doing anyway in games, just explicitly written.

Played Dungeon World instead of one of the better games, huh?

I'd agree that's one of the things it shines in, yeah.

Depending on the GM, even on failure, they might let you succeed... but at the expense of something very dear to you. In some games, that might be equipment or treasures. In others it might be promises or morals. Every time you roll the dice for something, it really feels like you're gambling against fate. Especially since you're only meant to roll if it would be just as interesting to fail as succeed.

By laying out on the character sheet all the sorts of things that are important to your character, it makes it easy for GMs to find out where the screws are and see what happens when the character has them threatened or in conflict. Perhaps more interestingly - it does the same for other players too, so the other players can come gunning to take advantage of where you're weak. (Or, alternately, protect those things too.)

Doesn't mean it's exclusive to the system, it's just that the system codifies it and makes it what the game is about doing.

I've been put in a position of either giving an antagonist what they wanted (which I knew enough about to know it was dangerous for them to have it) and betraying the one I loved - in front of them. I ended up giving them the item, which by the end of the session, lead to the end of the world. My character, being next to immortal, presumably lived with what he'd done through whatever chaos came after.

Like I said - other games can give you those sort of powerful moments. No question. But I haven't played any other system that consistently pushed my character into tight places and made them choose like that. If you're into that sort of thing, I think that's what a lot of PbtA games do well.

Would you say the K6BD rpg is decent so far, or too close to DW?

I love the stat names.
I can't fucking stand having to play as a class.

Simple World is a generic rules-light version of AWE rules which doesn't use playbooks.

Last I checked, when the author was asked (off Veeky Forums, some other website) why they picked the PbtA engine, they said they weren't a huge gamer and it was just a system that seemed good. So... not the best impression.

The playbooks themselves look OK from a skim.

However, a lot of the game seems like it's trying to cram a lot into the framework. 'Flourish' is a different move from 'do violence', for example... even when they're both going to do harm. This is bad because it should NEVER be ambiguous which move you're using - it should be immediately obvious from the way you're describing things.

Here's something telling - there's almost no unique GM moves or principles.
Monsterhearts has 'Make humans seem monstrous, and monsters seem human'.
Apocalypse World has 'barf forth apocalyptica'.
By comparison, Broken World just has 'create a rich, living world'. What? Rich how? There's nothing in the principles about the mood of the setting!

There needs to be a focus on what the game is ABOUT, and it's not coming through in the rules, leaping out.

exactly, one of the reasons MonsterHearts is one of my favourite games is because so long as the players use their moves and I as the GM make moves and follow the principles closely it automatically produces interesting teen drama stuff. That's how you know a PbtA game is well made, when that doesn't work, the designers haven't used the system correctly

Ya know, I've been thinking about a way to make Eclipse Phase less of a jumbled mess. Maybe PbtA could be a way to do it. I'll need to percolate a bit on how to properly drive the theme of the game, and appropriate playbooks and associated moves.

>What has your experience with the PBtA system been?
Largely negative after playing six games.
>What are its strengths?
2d6 + stat for checks, but Mentzer D&D and Traveller both have these.
Out of all the games the cancerous obnoxious hipsters like it's the least horrid by virtue of having some mechanics that are not meta-bullshit.
I can't honestly think of much beyond that.
>What are its weaknesses?
System-wise it holds to the retarded notion of "failing forward", the situational skill equivalent of demanding "an awesome character death or your character doesn't die".
"Rules-lite" hacks that are 200+ pages long, a great deal of which is droning forge-faggot theory.
The most obnoxious player base in existence since early White Wolf was a thing.

I'd recommend taking a look at the simple world pdf someone posted in this thread, it's essentially a guide on making a PbtA game

Will look into it. I was also considering Blades in the Dark, but I think resleeving/bodyswitching is a bit easier to emulate in PbtA

There's a semi-official Fate version of Eclipse Phase coming out.

One of the 'things' of Eclipse Phase is that it's intentionally a wide-open setting - Firewall only exists to give GMs an easy way to bring characters together. If you're doing a PbtA version of it, you'll need to cut bits out and pare it down.

That said, Eclipse Phase IS a post-apocalyptic setting - just one where things aren't as bad as they could be. I think you could port over some things without a huge amount of trouble. The Hardholder becomes the Station-Holder without much trouble. The Chopper could turn into Space Pirates. The Brainer is, of course, a psychic. You could go on in that vein.

There's no such thing as fail-forward in PbtA games, because that would imply everyone's working towards the same goal or that the GM has preplanned a win condition. Good PbtA games don't have a 'forward' to go towards, just many different directions.

This is why I'm very iffy on Monster of the Week as a good PbtA game. There IS a win condition, everyone IS working together. It doesn't seem like it quite fits.

I wonder if that is part of why the PC-to-PC conflict in MotW felt less interesting to me than in Monsterhearts. Most or all of the players in our group came into PbtA via Monsterhearts and had played in it together. When there was character friction, which was what we were used to, it just stuffed things up a bit in a not-fun way.

Still - would rather play MotW than Urban Shadows. Not that I think Urban Shadows is bad, just that the game is designed, pretty much, to make you forced to be a broody lone wolf because becoming anything else gets you fucked over in a death spiral.

Sincere question: What do you guys think of dungeon world?
Usually it's 'Dungeon World VS the rest of Veeky Forums', so I'm wondering how fans of the system actually see the game.

My longest game ever was actually in AW. Most people went through several characters (although one girl managed to keep the same character throughout, mostly by cutting and running from any dangerous situation and using feminine wiles to make friends with whoever survived).

It's tricky, and we thought it was going to end several times, but if the players keep hustling it keeps going.

As someone who's currently playing Urban Shadows, that last bit worries me. A lot. Could you extrapolate on it? I assume it has something to do with corruption, but I'm afraid I might be missing the big picture here.

If I wanted to play old D&D I would play old D&D, not an AW hack that is four times the size while not even doing everything D&D does.

I think Dungeon World is currently the best 'intro to RPGs' game out there right now.
It's really easy to explain to newbies. All the player-facing rules are either on the handouts, or on the character sheet. Character generation takes two minutes so you can get playing ASAP.

However, its PbtA game suffers from the DnD-isms that are stuffed into it - especially the Vancian casting, which good fan-classes get rid of.

It's not a very well-designed PbtA hack, but I can't think of a better newbie game that exists.

If someone said to me "How do I get into DnD", the best answer is to hand them Dungeon World. They might not like it, but unlike something ultralight like Lasers&Feelings, there's just enough meat on it that they can tell you WHAT they don't like.

>If someone said to me "How do I get into DnD", the best answer is to hand them Dungeon World.
Except DW isn't D&D in style or substance and the average D&D retroclone is 30 pages long without the DM section, most of which is just classes to pick between.

>Except DW isn't D&D in style or substance

Exactly.
But the average person who has no fucking clue about RPGs doesn't know any of that. They just want to play an elf ranger or a dwarf axe guy or whatever and start playing, and DW excel at that.

The other thing, that most retroclones are missing, is that PbtA games -teach you how to GM-. That's what makes them worthwhile - they codify GM advice that 'every GM knows' but the average beginner doesn't.

What if I don't want to play old D&D, but an easy-to-understand, quick-to-start story-driven fantasy game? Because that was basically what I was looking for.

Well I can totally agree, I've tried a few systems with different friends to get into RPGs, and Dungeon World is sticking. For newbies like us, it works perfectly. Most of my friends also come from a creative background, with little video-game experience, so they're mostly drawn to the imaginative side rather than heavy rules.

It's bad. 'Narrative-focused dungeon crawler' is not a bad idea (though it's nowhere near the unique and astounding snowflake DW fans think it is), but the implementation is bad.

The biggest issue I found is the problem with having allies. The whole reason AW, Monsterhearts, etc. work well is because everyone gets given hard choices that lead to binding consequences, and then the MC steps back and lets the players handle it.

In PbtA games, you are motivated by scarcity and want.
>In AW, you want to survive, but the most scarce resource is loyalty. You need a gang or a holding to support you, even if you're a 'lone wolf' like a Gunlugger. The rules encourage the MC to set up PC-NPC-PC triangles, so that PCs fight over loyalty.
>In Monsterhearts, you want love and acceptance. Everyone's looking for an in-crowd they can get with, who won't run away from the monsters that they are. The MC is encouraged by the rules to set up PC-NPC-PC triangles, so that PCs fight over the affection of NPCs.
>In Urban Shadows, you want power and control. You want to collect strings so you can manipulate the situation, protecting what's yours and hunting prey (almost every playbook has a move about being a predator, either of mortals or monsters). The MC is encouraged to set up PC-NPC-PC triangles, so that PCs fight over control of NPCs.

DW doesn't have that. It's based on a D&D party, which is more or less self-contained- they roll around, solving problems and killing monsters, and they always rely on each other. The game doesn't give good cracks into which the GM can stick a wedge, because dungeon crawling parties don't have those kinds of cracks. They want gold, which is best gotten by sticking together.

On a mechanical note, when someone in a regular PbtA game fails, the other players step in and move the story along by taking the GM's hard move and using it as a springboard for their own move, which can be in any number of directions. It doesn't matter that the GM doesn't make a move until the dice say so, because the PCs are constantly moving on their own and stretching out the story. In DW, there's only one way people react to a bad move- they move together against the consequence. If your buddy gets knocked down by the skeleton king, you're not going to grab the artifact and run out of there, or offer to cut a deal with the king for your own life, or another option, you're going to help him, because that's the kind of game it is. Each character is only one part of the larger whole of the party.

This leads to the sad state that DW games don't encourage the sort of pushing against one another that makes PbtA special. It becomes a back and forth between the GM on one side, and the party on the other. When one side makes a hard move, it's inevitably directed at the other, and the only response is to direct something back. Anyone who's studied storytelling, or even just consumed a fair amount of fiction, can tell you that having three parties exponentially increases possibilities -you can have betrayal, unlikely alliances, torn loyalties, etc. The GM can try to create multiple factions, but inevitably the nature of the game means that the first loyalty of the characters is to the party.

I love me some D&D, but it's not a good choice for a PbtA hack, it doesn't have the right dynamics.

I am aware of the FATE version.

On the topic of "Fail Forward", I get the feeling the meaning has drifted a lot since it conception. Seems it's now more "a less optimal method appears when the initial one fails", while originally it was more akin to "failure always has interesting consequences, not just "you don't do the thing"".

DW is kind of like training wheels.

I think one word you could use to describe what you like about PbtA games is 'momentum'. When everyone's in the groove of it, the game practically runs itself.

When you have training wheels on a bike, it's harder to build up momentum. You can't lean, you can't clear elevation changes as easily, you don't stay as stable as someone going at a decent speed.
But some people need an entry point - training wheels - and Dungeon World works for that.

Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts - these can be scary for people with the mature themes they touch. And they're definitely not child appropriate, which is a strength of DW - you can give it to your kids.

DW is also written more clearly than Apocalypse World.

I MCed about four one-shot games and one short (10 sessions) campaign.

I'd say its strenght are the clever mechanics that really work hand-in-hand with the table to make stuff happen and it being interesting to play out. It's like a mechanical improv coach.
Also I dig the atmosphere of AW in particular, it really manages to make setting and mechanics fit together in a way that only OD&D or B/X used to, in my opinion.

I'd say it's a good game if you want something non-traditional, that it needs you to think about how and why things work this way and understand the designer's intent to really get the most out of it, but newbies without any prejudices or assumptions will do great with it.
Honestly, the only players I've had who didn't enjoy it and left were the optimizers, because it's not really about power-level dickery.

As far as weaknesses, I would say that it really only works if you do it "right", which is very, very, very different from D&D and a lot of trad games which can work fine doing it "your way". It's very rewarding, but requires some thought.
On the other hand, if it fits your style, like it does mine, the framework is going to really improve your DMing. Like, I used to DM basically how Baker says the game should be MCed, except without the structure around my prep, so reading a book that really outlined how I did stuff in a meaningful way gave me a big boost in prep.

My favorite PbtA game is Apocalypse World.
I also enjoy The Sprawl and The Hood.
I am not a huge fan of Dungeon World, and prefer its little sister World of Dungeons.
I have ran a successful campaign of Shadowrun-themed World of Dungeon for a while.

You know what I found to be great training wheels? D&D 4e.

I brought in a number of players, including several kids around 8 years old, because they understood "these are the powers on a sheet, use them to beat up the bad guy".

I wouldn't start someone with AW or Monsterhearts (well, maybe Monsterhearts if we do a CW-level campaign) but if we're looking for something to start a brand new player with, I wouldn't use DW.

D&D 4e isn't as terrible as people made it out to be, after a few years. Though the kids I DM for would hate to have this much written stuff to deal with. They understand B/X, World of Dungeons and Into the Odd perfectly though. I'm waiting until they're around 14 to let them try Apocalypse World, and it will be with a different wording for sex moves, obviously. Like "when you share an intimate moment", could be a kiss, that kind of thing, because, well, kids.

I like DnD4e but I think, much like Dungeon World, it's torn sometimes between 'being a well-designed game' and 'being DnD'. And it also just plain has more crunch and things to remember.

It's still my favourite DnD, and it has a really great Red Box starter set if you could ever find it these days.

Well, refreshing to hear actual arguments on the subject.

So, what if I one day would like to lose those training wheels and play a 'worlds'-game in a classic fantasy setting that isn't a D&D clone. No such thing exists right?

World of Dungeons is the answer either ways.
It's minimalist, so it works if you're a noob and it works if you're a vet of PbtA games. Plus it lends itself to customization.

So far, you've got (for free)
World of Dungeons
World of Shadows (Shadowrun)
Kingdom of Oo (Adventure Time)
World of Dusters (Boot Hill)
World of Mutants (Gamma World)
World of Secrets (Spy Stuff)
End of the World (pre-AW troupe play)
The World Sequence (generic stuff)
Streets of Mos Eisley (Star Wars)
World of Troublemakers (Avatar : TLA)
World of Dungeoncrawls (more death)

Classic fantasy? Hm.

Vincent Baker was trying to make Apocalypse World: Dark Ages, which was about post-Roman Empire, slightly fantastical Europe, and you can still find the playtest documents online. However, the general consensus was that it didn't quite feel right, and needed some more development.

The game FELLOWSHIP just came out, and it's pretty good. It's slightly more customised than most PbtA games, and it's focused on "you are a bunch of people from different races, out to beat the dark lord". The GM in this case plays the Dark Lord, and while they act like a regular GM, there's a slightly different 'delegation of authority'.

There's also Mercenaries of Babylone or something like that. Swords of Babel?

We've actually tried Kingdom of Ooo and it turned very lolrandom very fast. Although I'm willing to accept that this was due to my lack of skill as a GM at the time.

I first and last played Urban Shadows when the Kickstarter was still going, so, honestly, my complains may have been fixed because I told them directly and they replied to me, so I know they saw it.

But when I played it, you were pretty much actively discouraged from making connections with anyone else. Any time they helped you, they automatically took a "favor" (can't remember the term) off of you, which they could call in at any time. Refusing to do what they asked could get you into much deeper shit than submitting to the favor. And I seem to recall one instance where a PC agreed to do what the NPC wanted, but needed X to do it. And the NPC agreed to provide it, but took another favor they could cash in later. (Actually, maybe that was a player, and not another PC. I do know that two PCs were in a serious enemy-of-my-enemy thing where they were using each other as punching bags to distract their mutual enemy from what they were doing. They did a lot of back'n'forth in that way too.)

I wouldn't count this as, "dumb GM mistake" either, because he'd run pretty much all the major PbtA games by this point and was great at being a GM.

In any case, I ended up being happy I was playing a pretty jock-ish, kick-down-doors-like-a-dummy Hunter since it was different from my usual careful, social-type.

Honestly - even though I hadn't played Dungeon World, I'd heard enough about it and had played enough PbtA games to decide it was probably a good thing to recommend to people who said they wanted to try fantasy games, but D&D was too much for them.

Then Ryuutama was published in English and that's the one I recommend.

I haven't tried it, so I can't say if it's actually working or not, but it reads very well.
But overall, WoDu requires a lot of energy as a referee and player. I'd recommend short 2-3 hours sessions.

Yeah, that's a relief. Debts aren't nearly as common in the finished product as they used to be in the early versions, and there's even a move that allows you to "postpone" a debt, which makes things a lot more manageable, IMO.

Hot damn - that makes me a lot more likely to join in an Urban Shadows game. When I'd made my post, a lot of people helpfully chimed in that I clearly didn't understand the theme of Urban Shadows and toning it down would be watering down the theme or some shit, so I assumed it was going to stick around.

WoD-Vampire-esque diceless PbtA game.
Instead of rolling dice, you spend a Blood resource to power your moves.

Out of curiosity has anyone played Superhuman, it's a diceless, GMless, PbtA game about playing as angsty superheroes, I still can't work out whether that sounds terrible or amazing

Here, take a look at the two debt moves I mentioned. Debt brokering is still a part of the game, and I'm pretty sure it's meant to be, but it's not nearly as crippling anymore. If anything, they're there to serve the story and the cast, not to define them.

That reading of the rules is much clearer. Awesome! How do you feel it plays as a whole? (And have you played MotW or Monsterhearts, as comparisons?)

Veeky Forums is saying my post is spam, so I'm going to mess around to phrase it right.

PDF of release? Was in playtest, warlock was boring.

Hah, that got through, though it's not great grammar. Don't know what got caught in the filter, there wasn't any link.

>"Powered By"
Boy THERE is a 2000s era meme that didn't age well.

Possibly a stupid question, but what makes it sound bad/out-dated to you? It's a little clunky in full, but once you establish what "PbtA" means, it's fine for conversation.

(I don't care, I'm just wondering if I'm missing out on some context.)

Not him, but I want to bump this thread so I'll take a guess. Maybe he was equating it to the OGL from DnD of that time?

It reminds me of car decals.

Anyone playing Worlds in Peril?

What's everyone's favorite PbtA settings?

I hear Monster Hearts and AW mentioned a lot but Monster Hearts does not sound like my thing (just from what people say the genre is honestly) and post apoc (assuming desert like Mad Max stuff?) isn't something I feel I can get too invested in, maybe because I was born too late (1989) to get into those cheesy post apoc movies.

>assuming desert like Mad Max stuff?

It's entirely up to your table what shape the apocalypse takes. There's no implied setting apart from what playbooks you chose, and the "psychic maelstrom" being a thing.
The Roll20 Presents series up on Youtube did a fantastic wet apocalypse with boats and a world where everyone was losing memories and desperately clinging on to their identities as reality seemed to unravel.

AW doesn't have to be Mad Max. The whole point is that there's no setting. There was just some kind of world-ending event, and you are alive 50 years after that.

I've played in Mad Max, and also a world where you have to be deadly quiet because something takes away people who make too much noise, so all the infrastructure is there but there's no sound anywhere if you can help it. My GM once ran a campaign where the players were robots who were supposed to help humans colonize a new planet, but something happened to all the humans and now the robots are there alone with no guidance.

Unless you have the Chopper (motorcycle gang) or Driver (guy who drives) books in play, there's nothing even dictating that travel is a part of the game.

You two have made AW sound a lot more interesting than I originally thought now. How much does it sell for and does the author have sneak peak/test play rules for me to see if I think it's worth it? I have nothing wrong with post apoc, i just hate deserts. I like trees and water too much.

Here's the basic playbooks, and the play aids for the MC (the GM). Technically you could probably run it with just this, but I don't think it would make much sense without the rulebook.

No idea how much the original book is going for these days, but 2e is coming out very soon- it's somewhere between final proofing/layout and printing atm.

I'll second a lot of the strengths and weaknesses and add that you really have to have a group that wants to contribute.

I ran World Wide Wrestling and it was ruined because one player was on her phone the entire game when she wasn't on camera and not really pushing any of the fun parts without hand holding. But this is the same player who thinks Only War can only tell fight stories.

I want to clarify that DW is great for a GM to learn GMing and the players to learn to stay in character while doing "D&D stuff". It's great for faux nerds who want to be into D&D but really just want to act, and it's especially good at handling their blooming interest into a setting they like better.

Personally, I would play Saga of the Icelanders instead treating it like a "smalltown Game of Thrones". You have Vikings and some supernatural stuff, and you get to toy with gender politics and societal roles which are easily identifiable places to launch conflict from.

I think the PDF is like $10.

It doesn't need to be deserts. I'm watching the VoDs of the livestreamed roll20 Presents Apocalypse World campaign, featuring a "damp-pocalypse" (world is only half flooded/in the process of flooding).
All that matters is that society as we know it has fallen, and that scarcity is a significant factor.

Do Mad Max, but instead of the Australian outback it's set in the Russian/Central Asian Steppe

seconding this, considering buying

>D&D with training wheels

It's funny you should say that, since apparently the whole design process was started when Adam was asked to /specifically/ run 1e AD&D by a bunch of friends who were very much into the RP part of the game but didn't care for, or couldn't get their heads around the mechanics.

Yeah, I'd say that's the case for most players, and most people. They're just not into the rules all that much, and would rather avoid the hassle.

There is a kind of player who loves to sit down with a fat book of rules and memorize them, and they used to be the target audience for RPGS, especially in the 90s, but those guys are unusual. I don't think it's a coincidence that they used to be the target demographic, and the RPG market has nearly collapsed more than once.
I'm glad there are more games being made these days that are targeted to folks for whom rules are only a means, not an end in themselves.

I don't know about that. I know lots of people ('most people' to use your term) who prefer simple, clear rules like those of many OSR games as compared to the amateur drama student prose that is PbtA. They don't want a brick of a rulebook, but they also like the structure of a game with clearly delineated rules and ways to handle interactions.

Having something they can rely upon, that isn't subject to their continual roleplaying effort and constant creativeness (which can wear on anyone, especially after a long day), is something to be appreciated. They can tell a story with as much input as they feel like giving, without it all falling apart, and the GM can make something of it.

>simple, clear rules

That's what I'm saying. AD&D 1e does not have simple, clear rules, which is why the OSR shifted to Basic, and to further simplifying and clarifying those rules.
Basic is simple, clear, and has just enough rules to create the game experience it sets out to do; so do the PbtA games, they just give a different game experience. These are both part of the move away from the complicated rules-heavy systems that began with AD&D, and hit its peak with all the monster megasystems of the 90s.


>amateur drama student prose

Come on, man, we can have a discussion without getting snotty about it.

I meant more that PbtA games don't have clear, explicit rules. Other than damage, there's no hard system for how numbers interact- it's all on how you read a 7-9, and what qualifies as an appropriate consequence is very flexible -is your worse outcome going to be that your gun just ran empty, or did you shoot through your target and into the gut of your sister on the far side?

PbtA is a game of constant effort, by both the players and the GM, to make the fiction, and the rules exist more as guidelines than hard-and-fast rules. A lot of people like that, but it's definitely throwing someone into deep water and telling them they can't float- they need to always work to stay above water, or drown.

I'm a big fan of Vincent Baker and a lot of the other authors, doesn't mean I won't point out that their writing, especially around stuff like sex and relationships, sounds like something written by a kid who is really proud he got into AP English

>Roll20 Presents
I want to watch them play Ryuutama, but I can't get past the DMs hair. It's too distracting and hilarious. He looks like an idiot of the highest order. I know he's going for super special unique snowflake, but it just looks silly and bad.

Yeah, his hair is goofy as hell, but he's a solid DM and seems like a pretty decent guy.
His hair started getting weird when he was running Shadowrun. I swear it was like he was inching towards wearing a pink mohawk, but stopped just short of going all the way, and now he has to pretend that wasn't what he was doing.

Eh - I actually like his hair a lot. I personally wouldn't go pink myself, but...I'm more annoyed by the woman on the show whose hair is far more distracting to me. She also has a singing character who can be hit or miss in terms of how annoying that ends up being.

Overall, though, I have to say that their Ryuutama series is worth watching. I'd put it first or second out of the APs I've seen for Ryuutama. (The series run by one of the English translators was pretty damn good. I still wish it hadn't got interrupted.) Adam's commentary on the game mechanics during the GM turn is pretty interesting to listen to, if nothing else. And for that one, you can just minus out the window and listen to the audio if you can't handle his glorious hair.

I haven't played MotW or Monsterhearts, but I've read both of them, and while I haven't played a lot of Urban Shadows yet, it seems a lot more flexible than both of the aforementioned games. It's not necessarily better, though, just... different. It's easier to adapt it to different themes, settings and such than MotW (which seems laser-focused on monster hunting, with a noticeable risk of losing momentum as soon as you step out of that territory) and, I assume, Monsterhearts (which I read a long time ago, so my memory isn't as clear on this).
Of course, there are also some noticeable weaknesses here and there. For example: a few archetypes are quite boring, IMO (mostly the Aware and the Veteran), to the point where I'd swap them with their MotW equivalents. Aside from that, the book is filled with examples that treat the reader as a complete rookie, but that's not necessarily bad, just... annoying if you're not a rookie. Sometimes, you just want to get to the next section, and it's kind of a pain when the book keeps going on and on about the same concept you're more than familiar with.

Here you go: my.mixtape.moe/qkyfoj.pdf

The Wizard is... better, but it's not perfect, y'know? That applies to a lot of the archetypes, sadly. At least they fixed most of the goddamn stats, which were so ridiculous in the early versions that I had to homebrew better versions of them just to make it logical. Some are still a tad irrational, though (looking at you, Spectre and Veteran).

>Here you go: my.mixtape.moe/qkyfoj.pdf