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I've tried gming my first PbtA session a few days ago and I really don't get how it works. I mean, I've tried to improvise and don't use the scheme of the "traditional" rpgs with a prepared plot... but it was awful. I don't understand how this game should enhance improvisation. Anyone can explain me what's so great about this system?

First of all, which of the dozens of PbtA games did you run?

Urban Shadows.

Do you have a .pdf you could share?
I've only seen its playbooks, so I can't tell whether the game is actually representative of PbtA.

Not OP, but found this in the archive thread

The first session should largely be setting the scene for later. Not a lot of actual stuff tends to happen in that first session, it's mostly just the characters going about their usual business and the group establishing NPCs, important places and other setting details. After session one the GM can take these and create a couple threats, after which the game gets moving since the GM has a means of putting pressure on the PCs to get the ball rolling

But yeah session one of most PbtA game is a little weird as a result

>Glances at pdf;
>X-cards

OP, you never had a chance.

>Leftist Snowflake Politics: The RPG

This couldn't get more awful if it tried.

This.

From my experience, PbtA is tricky because it requires rethinking the railroad. You need to use the fronts to put pressure on the players to keep moving and doing stuff, not just dicking around and handling the immediate situation, because they don't have the D&D drive to get more gold. One of my favourite ways of doing that is to make the hard move "announce off-screen badness" while they're already in a bad situation. It complicates the life of the players in that scene, and gives you something to loop in everyone else.

As well, you really have to get them to care about the NPCs. Urban Shadows helps with the strings (which makes players consider certain NPCs their property), but really find ones that hit the right buttons. If you have a player who wants to be a big hero, give him damsels. If you have a Don Juan, give him hotties. And make the damsel and the hottie the same person, and use her to play the two off each other. The secret of PbtA games is that if the players actually work together they can solve pretty much any problem quickly and easily, so the MC needs to constantly try and put wedges between them. And nothing is a bigger wedge than when two players want different things for the same NPC, and that NPC is subtly encouraging it by flitting back and forth between them.

I didn't glance, but are X-cards a vital and required part of the game like you're implying, or are they mentioned in the same breath as "it's OK to be a gay dwarf"

The latter. Autists are just triggered because they might actually have to consider that there are other real people at the table, and that they aren't allowed to stab them because Blackleaf died and the game is life.

I don't know if this applies to your game, but the Apocalypse system has many of the same issues as FATE. It assumes and requires a level of storytelling ability from the GM and players that not everyone has. It also expects a degree of investment into the story and the characters that not all players are interested in or capable of. I think these types of games work well with the right group, but it's kind of hard to find thoae groups.

The thought of real people isn't all that triggering, it's just that I'm used to dealing with functioning individuals.

Hey, /tg! Going to run my first Apocalypse World game (it's just the vanilla AW 1st edition). to run long story short one of the players decided to get the Hardholder and one really liked the Driver. One expects to run his settlement with a lot of neat ideas and the other expects to be a free rider an adventurer on the open road full of opportunities and danger. I know that if I talk to the players they will be reasonable and drop one of the concepts so the game could be more focused, but I want to make it WORK somehow. But at the moment I have no idea how unless I restrict one of them and force to adapt. But it feels kinda odd.. If I favor the Driver then I have to force the Hardholder to go somewhere and loose his cool settlement, or make it boring for him sitting in his hold p[laying his own game and if I favr the Hardholder, then the Driver feel like his character is out of place, cause he is chained to the hold! I need advice, /tg. How it's possible to run a fun game for everyone?

The first idea that came into my head involves establishing two important settlements, one being owned by the hardholder and the other being run by an NPC. These should be close enough together that they have to care bout what goes on with the other but also difficult to travel between. The Driver is therefore one of the few people who can freely and frequently travel between the two locations which makes him kind of important in terms of trade, movement of people and flow of information, which directly ties him to the kinds of things the hardholder will be worrying about.

This is why you are explicitly told to do chargen and worldgen concurrently at the table with all the players, user.

But the two are not at all mutually exclusive, nor should you chain the Driver to the same stretch of road. What's in the hold? Stuff. What do people want? Stuff. What does the hold lack? Stuff. What can you find in places other than the hold? Stuff. There are a half-dozen different things the hold could need, 20 different ways that the Driver could be, and a thousand different apocalypses he could be driving through, which makes offering any advice limited. He could drive an armoured bus that moves the only doctor around (who might be the Angel using his car as their workspace) between various clusters. He might be a lone motorcycle rider who goes where no one else dares to find rare trinkets he sells. He might cruise around in a Camero killing other people because he thinks all the highways are belong to him. The Driver and Hardholder might work together for the community, the Driver might be hired on a contract basis to fend off the Chopper in return for gas and repair work, the Driver might be extorting the Hardholder and living like a king because his truck is the only way to get clean water back to the hundreds of thirsty mouths.

This is a situation where you need to actually read the book and follow it's advice about starting the game, and "yes, and" your way into working out the relationship between the two. Don't tell the Driver where he's going to drive or why, any more than you'd tell the Gunlugger who they shoot and when they pull the trigger.

user's answer here is plenty and way better than anything I could give, but I might as well add a little reminder.

There is no reason for characters to act and work as traditional party that's tied together at hip.
As long as the characters are part of same word and interact with each other and common npcs often enough to be part of same story, you can just have them do their own separate things.
That does require some juggling from GM to share the spotlight around and it requires players to be patient as they sometimes have to just be audience member.
But I think it's worth it, gives you so much more freedom of what characters can do. And this goes beyond Apocalypse World based games too, but I feel it works there and works less well in some other games.

backing up what said, there currently a show on the roll20 youtube channel where they're playing AW. There was recently a large scale battle where both sides were being led by PCs, and this game in general was been full of PvP conflict, AW does that sort of thing very well, I'd actually encourage it if I were you

meant to reply to

Simple.
The settlement is on wheels.

Of course, a Mortal Engines inspired apocalypse, it's so obvious

To be fair if there is a game where shit could get unexpectely nasty is something like US, I guess.

I was thinking something more like the hardholder's people are merchants that live in trailers and/or cattle is the way to go in our new deserts, but why the hell not?

Personally I want to do a waterworld/gargantia apocalypse. Hardholders have ships (that can be in a "formation" with others, probably under sealords), drivers are solitary sailors with smaller boats, and yes, the smokers are probably a model for somechoppers, though I'd think smaller motoroboats with not much range are the usual way to go.

I guess you're right. It was my mistake to ask my players to choose the roles before the first session, but they haven't exactly created the characters. They've just told me what the would have picked anyway, so I'll print out only the sheets that are needed. Then we'll go through the whole process.

I get your point guys, I totally do, but just for the sake of discussion and better understanding - hypothetically lets say that the players gathered around the table. They all browsed the playbooks and out of 4 players two picked the Hardholder and the Driver. And the reason why is because one saw a settlement creation tables and wants to play in running the settlement and the other one saw an opportunity to be free and always on the road. Now it doesn't even matter much how they will be linked through history, I just wonder myself - if I would play a hardholder how much sense would it make to venture out of MY hold MYSELF if I can send my minions or my comrades better suited for that (like a driver for example). Then again if I sit in the hold constantly than even if I get spotlight and do my own things then I'd be a bit disappointed that I'm not doing the cool stuff with the rest of team. I had an impression that AW is a game about the characters, about their interaction with each other as much as with the NPCs and it even says in the beginning that the players should begin playing as a team even though their characters don't have to be friends. I have trouble in wrapping my mind around how it's possible to run a game which would satisfy all the players if some concepts (or the ideas the players have about the concepts of those roles) are so fundamentally different. The easiest way to solve the problem would be to ask one of the players to choose a different role. Which feels weird, because I got the impression that the game could be playable and enjoyable with ANY group composition. It drives me crzy for the last couple of days

If player goes "I guess I sit on my castle and don't get out" and then cries about how boring it is to just sit in his castle doing nothing. Then the player is idiot and that has no known cure in current medical science.

Ask the players how they are connected.

Seriously. You don't have any reasons to be the one that gets out THAT information, hell, it's probably better as the MC to not go full Tolkien and worldbuild all by yourself in any moment. Nor there is any reason not to say "that's cool guys but we need your characters to interact often", to explain that with off-fiction reasons.
You probably should ask them to have a cool bond with each other and work from that.

Other players at the table, btw?

There's your problem. Play AW vanilla then come back. 90% of pbta's are trash.

Read the rules and actually follow them with a proper session 0.

Meh. Honestly I didn't really see that much shit. The only PBTA that was screaming into the trash it goes from the first minute was tremulus to me.

Now if you say that 'hood isn't that inspired, I might agree, but still.

>The only PBTA that was screaming into the trash it goes from the first minute was tremulus to me.
ah yes Tremulus, the game in which learning the you can persuade someone so good you learn some of the eldritch truth of the cosmos and then use that information to get a hunch about someone

One guy is settled on a Gunlugger and the last player really like the Skinner. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see any potential issues with mixing their expected playing styles together in on game

I've read them and I will run the start of the game b ythe book, don't worry. I've read the options for character connection as well. The rulebook doesn't give me the answer on how to cram two different gameplay concepts in one game. I guess I won't find it until I try and play it out in practice, however I want to provide my players with as smooth and enjoyable experience as I can. That's why I'm trying to find out what do other people who actually played the game on how might work and what would feel more rewarding and what not.

Personally I've always had a bad time with a Gunlugger in play. The people who play them always tried to make everyone else a little bitch to make their character look badass.

>The people who play them always tried to make everyone else a little bitch to make their character look badass.
the trick with playing in a group with the Gunlugger is remembering that, by definition, the Gunlugger is the most dangerous single person in the post-apocalypse. With the possible exception of the Faceless there isn't anyone who's walking out of a 1v1 with the Gunlugger. Embrace that idea and think of ways to make it interesting, give them challanges which can't be shot in the face, put them in the middle of powerstruggles with factions competing for their services, whenever people attack them they should know by reputation to not start a firefight and attack in other ways

No, there isn't. I asked because maybe they can put connections at the table as well.

If I was the Skinner I'd consider something like
- the driver is a cool guy than can take me safe from the hardholder settlment to the warlord fort. If only he kept his hand away from my ass.

I was the Gunlugger:
-the hardholder pays better than that fucking driver. But alas, it's not like you can choose jobs, and nowdays it's making wasteland bands reconsider some of their ideas.
And you don't simply walk into the wasteland, right?

See? They could have the solution right there. Don't be afraid to tell them directly the "problem"-

Waiting on my 2nd edition AW to come in, but I also have Urban Shadows, World Wide Wrestling, Monster of the Week, and Monsterhearts.

I find that the games can work but you have to have players who buy in and are somewhat proactive. Thats' why I think Wrestling succeeded where as my Urban Shadows campaign failed, because in the latter most of the players couldn't function without being explicitly told how things worked. If I offered them the chance to create the rules of a supernatural they hmmm's and huh'd until the one proactive player stepped up.

In Wrestling, the drug addict ended the campaign getting married after surrendering the royal rumble to his crush.

Yeah, if you don't have proactive players it's pretty much impossible to play something like a PBTA.

To an extent I think a succesful PBTA should have very sexy playbooks. Ones that players should scream in their head "jesus, I want to play this dude/dudette right now!".

The AW rules work best with the origional AW MC agenda and setting. I mean you can bend AWs rules for almost anything but that just means they are going to be lackluster.

>Ones that players should scream in their head "jesus, I want to play this dude/dudette right now!".
this is why I loved Masks. If I ever played it instead of GMing I don't know what I'd play because I've already thought of characters for basically every playbook

Thank you. Maybe I'm just a bit too stressed about running a completely new game for my players. Your post (and all other btw) somehow reassured me. It should work out. I just have to relax and just go with the flow when the time is right

I can agree with that. It's another reason why I think Wrestling worked a bit better than Urban Shadows. And why I am leaning towards picking up Masks, because it oozes cool character playbooks.

Like what this guy said

Best part is you don't have to figure that out. Put that shit on the players laps and have them tell you why a driver and hardholder are so close... Etc.

Not necessarily. To me something like Monsterhearts is VERY good, at the very least on par with the original.

Take your time, most of all. For a first play it's not really a problem if you don't play or play little.

I can agree with you on MH. I hope that MH 2e isn't a step backwards.

I'd recommend anyone who's have even the most mildly positive experience with the PbTA system to try out The Sprawl and Blades in the Dark, which are probably the most fully realized applications of the systems design philosophies outside AW itself

I play in a Blades in the Dark game with my Wednesday night online group and it's one of the best experiences I've had in fifteen years of gaming, so I figured I'd try introducing Apocalypse World to my Sunday night D&D group in the hopes that the fiction-first approach would get them out of their murderhobo tendencies and help them roleplay a bit more.

>What I expected
Character drama, hard choices

>What I got
Four weeks of A Chopper, a Driver, a Gunlugger, and a Battlebabe as the leaders of a shamelessly murderous group of psychopath biker-raiders, robbing and killing the populace of every settlement they come across. Between the Gunlugger counting as a small gang and the Chopper's gang counting as a Medium gang, they steamroll absolutely everything in a constant orgy of hyper violence. All dissent is put down with murder.

I honestly don't know what else I should have expected.

what about the many countdown clocks which were surely going unattended as a result?

>And why I am leaning towards picking up Masks, because it oozes cool character playbooks.
I wonder if Masks could be hacked with Worlds in Peril's freeform superpower system.
I love the idea of it's powersystem, but it's playbooks suck and move list is little lacking.

I just finished up running an AW 2e game, and it went fantastic. Best game I've ever run, best game my players ever played. Now, one of my players is running Urban Shadows. They don't know the rules great, and they aren't great at improv either. What should I do at the table to move the game forward, keep the game fun for everyone, and not steal the spotlight from the MC or the other players?

If you feel you have a good grasp on how to GM PbtA style game, give him some advice outside of the game.
Talk about what kind of prep he does and what he could be doing.

What pbta systems aren't shit?

>Apocalypse World
>World Wide Wrestling
>Blades in the Dark
>The Sprawl
>Monsterhearts
>Masks: The New Generation

>World Wide Wrestling
I would love to try WWW at some time, but I feel it requires a party invested enough in wresting, and I'm not sure if I'm even enough into wrestling to get most out of it.

The ones I read or played in greentext. The book, not the sheets.

Action Movie World!
>Adventures on Dungeon Planet
Read. Meh.
Battle Between the Worlds
Bootleggers: Smugglers Run
Cartel (forthcoming)
City of Judas
Deniable
>Dream Askew
Read. I guess that if you have players really proactive and that know their shit, is pretty good.
>Dungeon World
Played. Banter everywhere on this. It's not that innovative now but it does what it is supposed to do, and pretty well aside from the bonds.
Epyllion
>Fellowship
Played a oneshot. Honestlly seems to rock.
Freebooters on the Frontier
Ghost Lines (downloadable)
Grimm World
>Heroine
Read. Meh. A shame, it doesn't really put out tools what the awesome it should do. It probably works, but a shame nontheless.
>Inverse World
Bretty gud.
>Legacy: Life Among the Ruins
Read. Stick to AW, if you ask me.
Legend of the Elements
Masks (forthcoming)
>Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands
How the hell is this a PBTA? Anyway, seemed good, but we played to little.
>Monserthearts
Probably my best gaming experience. as a campaign. Couldn't recommend it enough.
Monster Force Terra
>Monster of the Week
It does what it should but it's not THAT interesting.
>Murderous Ghosts
Interesting. Try it.
Nanoworld: A Game of Clones
>Night Witches
Seems beyond awesome.
No Country for Old Kobolds
>Sagas of the Icelanders
A little too old for its own good. The moves, reading them, are still pretty damn weird in a good way.
Sexy Time Adventures
Spirit of '77
Superhuman
>The Hood
Kinda generic but who knows? Only read.
The Sundered Land
>The Warren
Seemed simple and efficient. Really wanna play.
>tremulus
Shit. Wouldn't try it.
Uncharted Worlds
>Undying
For the life of me, I can't imagine how it plays out. At least is pretty original.
>Urban Shadows
Seems solid.
Wolfspell
World Wide Wrestling
Worlds in Peril

>How the hell is this a PBTA? Anyway, seemed good, but we played to little.
It's not like anyone can really tell Vincent what is and what isn't a PbtA game.

Yeah, but seriously, the only thing that MIGHT seem PBTA is the fact that you select options for things at chargen (like if your PC is hot because s/he's fiery and/or rich) and MAYBE the fact that eveyone says something and generically puts out a predetermined question.

Yea. Well maybe Vincent is being an artist, pushing the limits of what PbtA means, or he is being greedy little bugger, knowing well that Apocalypse World is popular and brand sells.

Meh. He could put out a revised Poison'd.

Not that it really needs a revision, but still.

Anyway on the PDF share thread people are asking for Mobile Firebrands and Epyllion.

I'd be interested in No Country for Old Kobolds and Legends of the Elements.