I would like your guys' opinions. I have never played a Powered by the Apocalypse game...

Which one did you play? There are lots of shit ones and few good ones.

>I have never played a Powered by the Apocalypse game

Give it a try, dawg.

You'll get a lot of the D&D/PF Defense Squad here, but really you should just try the game. Approach it with an open mind, and importantly, follow the rules.

If you're running the game, follow the GM Moves. They're important guidelines for setting tone and creating appropriate fiction

If you're a PC, rule #1 is that you say what you do, and interact with the rules when you happen to say something that invokes a rule. Don't say "I Go Aggro", say "I try to rip the rifle out of his hands" and then go from there.

Pick a game that interests you and play that game like you've never played an RPG before.

Doesn't matter. If the gimmick he mentions is the 'snowball or worse' effect of an

>it's an "unlearn everything you know about RPGs because this one is a special snowflake and does it all differently but just trust me it's worth it guys XD" episode

Sounds like your favorite variant is Oncology World, because you're cancer

Why would you not approach a new RPG as a new experience?

Some things might be familiar, sure, but why make the assumption? I've seen people run into no end of problems with systems because they made assumptions about how they worked rather than taking the system as presented, and it's always struck me as dumb. If it ends up being familiar, cool, but actually check first and, if the system does do things differently, then you're about to experience something new, and that's often a cool thing.

Both creators like D&D.

I read through the rules and I'd love to try it out.
But I have no group so...

I like the Move approach to tackling problems. It's really fast, and if the game is designed for a specific setting well enough, it's usually really fun. Want to kill a lot of zombies? You got moves to do that. Want to be an awesome cooking prodigy? Got moves for that too.

I don't like how the players write their own story. As a player, I want someone else to write the story as I play a piece in that story. If there is no sense of mystery for me, and I already know where it's all going, I tend to become disinterested.

As a GM, screwing with the players's expectations is what drives it for me. If the players are making things up as they go, what do they even need a GM for?

So I like World games that combine Move-based gameplay with traditional GM narrative.

it's a terrible system

>'snowball or worse' effect of an If there is no sense of mystery for me
Why would there be no sense of mystery for you? It's not like you're in control of what the other players and the GM say.

The thing about PbtA is that it is not good for long-term campaigns. Vincent Baker himself says that an AW game should be less than 15 sessions. The whole point of the system is the snowball that builds to a climax, and then ends. Trying to stretch it beyond that is like reviving a tv show that the original writers ended after 4 seasons, and trying to make it into 7.

I GM:ed Dungeon World once. Did a one-shot with my D&D group. It was fun. It didn't take much effort. The way you are forced to GM is useful for other games. You should try it if you haven't.

It doesn't scratch my problem-solving-OSR itch and I think I would get bored with it after a while. But 4-5 sessions? Sign me up!

Also, this AP is fun: youtube.com/watch?v=qQx4pNVq8Xc

I like Blades in the Dark quite a bit, but from what I understand it's pretty different from other PbtA games. I like how it lets the PCs be pretty flexible while still having specialized roles, and as a GM it's super easy to run the kind of stories I'd like to do, mostly heists and compounding bad life choices reaching a boiling point.

I don't think it's for everyone though. My group is split over it, with half really enjoying it while the more crunch loving guys didn't like it.

And they received copious help from people who know the Apocalypse Engine inside out, yet the popular meme is that "they didn't understand PbtA."
I feel like people shit on it unfairly around here. I ran it for a long campaign with a mix of veteran RPG players and noobs and we all loved it, yet to hear Veeky Forums tell it, the game is irredeemably garbage and is so bad it's unplayable. I miss when we had good threads for * World games.

I'm , and I don't think that it's irredeemable--just that the generic and starting combat moves are all bad and make the D&D-done-poorly "take turns rolling until several numbers reach zero" way of playing the default. You're often going to be penalized for doing things other than simply attacking because to try anything different means either making moves with higher stakes for yourself and less to gain (and without baked in guarantees), or by having to make other moves alongside attacks which is again less safe and often limits your characters options over time because of the negative outcomes that come with failure.

For the most part simply stepping away from D&D-like health pools and D&D-like damage dice rolling would dynamically improve combat. Having that in the mix with everything else PbtA does just draws things out too much.

And don't get me wrong--when I say "D&D-done-poorly" I am fully aware that that's something like half of D&D games with most play groups.

>I was wondering why do you think it seems so popular?
casuals

>I may be missing out on something not having played or payed attention to PbtA
yes, you missed out on something. every self-respecting gamer should at least understand how pbtA works. that doesn't mean however you need to play or like it. but at least understand it.

PbtA gives up on simulating characters in a world. instead it's all about characters in a story that is being constructed by play. the building blocks of the story are "moves". there are general ones that everyone has and moves that are essentially specific to class. moves are tailored to genre/setting and represent typical types of actions a hero of that class might take in that genre/setting.

mechanics are typically very light but one thing is noteworthy: test results are not binary success/fail. they have a 3rd notable result: success with complications. that serves to make the emerging story more complex, more drawn-out, less easily resolved with just a few rolls.

that's basically it.

they haven't just given on the game aspect but also the simulationist aspect. that's why everything gets resolved via pre-defined (and very broad!) building blocks called moves. the games lack granularity in action resolution because to them the overall story matters.

>Don't say "I Go Aggro", say "I try to rip the rifle out of his hands" and then go from there.
see? moves are story building blocks, essentially. very broad building blocks. you'll see that once you understand what else falls under "I Go Aggro": all kinds of combat shit.

>It has a lot of vocal proponents who either dont care about the G, only the RP

I think it's fair enough for me to stop caring about the G. I've been driven out of so many games because people only cared about the G and not the RP and if I didn't system master and learn to love the Caster Supremacy I'd end up worse than useless.

This. You should at least look at PbtA and also Fate, if for no other reason than to further inform your own method of play.

I ended up hating Fate and liking the idea of, but not the feel in play, of Apocalypse World. But it helped me bring some good ideas and philosophies back to my own more preferred systems.

It's biggest strength is filling in game roles that are out of the ordinary, such as in games like Night Witches, a game about the historical Russian, all-female bomber division. But when it comes to something more traditional, like fantasy, there are far better tools. If I wanted to do fantasy but wanted something different than D&D or the like I'd use The Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, DCC, etc.

There is one game I think it works BRILLIANTLY with and it's pretty damn unique, even compared to other PbtA games, and that's Undying. It's probably my favorite vampire themed RPG because it only cares about the main points of vampire stories: Eating, Sleeping, and centuries long political power plays. The game focuses on your interactions with other vampires in the region and, instead of a traditional grid, you have a relationship map that shows who owes who what favors and who has a grudge against who. Mechanically it's less RPG and more worker placement board game but it does allow for some great roleplaying moments

1) McDonalds hamburgers are pretty good for the price. Especially the 2 cheeseburgers. I swear I'm not fat, I only eat there once a month or so.
2) Dungeon World is a really lame AW port with D&D mechanics lazily slapped on.
3) Blades in the Dark looks okay but I haven't looked that closely at it. Pretty restrictive in how you run the game in terms of pacing.
4) Apocalypse World, the original game, is really really good. If you can get over it being different than D&D (which is easy cause it's a completely different genre) and you can get into the idea of it, it's a lot of fun. However it is not "better" than D&D or any other games, it's just really really good at post-apocalyptic character drama shit. I highly suggest taking a look, it's edgy and has sex rules but you can ignore those if you don't want to use them. I bought the AW softcover so I finally read all the rules and man I want to play it, it seems like the gritty post-apocalyptic game I always wanted to run.

>Everybody hates Rvfvs.png

I am unironically shilling for Apocalypse World. It's really solid. Seriously worth taking a look. The "2d6+stat v.s. 7-9 or 10" is meant as a "story node" type of thing. So basically it's freeform RP for the most part (I've watched the game writer actually run the system so I'm not talking out of my ass here completely) until you reach some kind of conflict, then you roll. Which is how any game works, but Apocalypse World's only got certain instances when you roll. So like, if you're picking a lock or something I guess you just do it, or don't, up to the GM. But if there's a way for things to fuck up and get worse, then you roll. So like if you're trying to pick a lock while a guard is nearby. All the Reddditors constantly blather on about not rolling unless failure results in super-interesting cascade of events because omg pointless roll suck amirite??? but just ignore that shit, just give it a chance. Redddit and their shill shit scared me off of Apocalypse World for a good few years after it first came out, I finally gave it another chance and I love it now. The spinoffs are shit, though.

Here's the video if you want to see it being played. youtube.com/watch?v=-NcanVthL8A

He dug his own hole

>"Hey user, I'm going to run Apocalypse World, or maybe one of the varients... want to play?"

>Don't say "I Go Aggro", say "I try to rip the rifle out of his hands"
That's Seize by Force, not Go Aggro.

>And they received copious help from people who know the Apocalypse Engine inside out, yet the popular meme is that "they didn't understand PbtA."
The help received most likely didn't take the form of those knowledgeable people reading the entire thing and pointing out its flaws. Besides, how else do you explain why they managed to get every core aspect of Apocalpyse World wrong?

>If done correctly, every move snowballs on any result.

I'm running Streets of Marienburg, but with some of the standard moves from Dungeon World thrown in for flavor. Say one of your players goes to whallop an NPC upside the head with a piece of lumber in a back alley and rolls an 11. How would you have that snowball without making a hard/soft move against them?

It could be Go Aggro, if you're doing it to make a point and not in an actual fight. For example, if a Hardholder was tanking the gun out of the hands of one of his lackeys because the flunky was ranting about killing everyone in the Hocus' cult and the Hardholder is not about that.

SbF is only in a fight, where both sides are prepared and willing to do violence.

If the group isn't into the game including actual sex, I turn the sex moves into things that trigger when you are intimate in sense of a personal, unguarded moment. Confessing a deep secret, tending a wound, even getting drunk together and celebrating. Anything that would bring two people close together.

As far as suggested reading goes. I'd say grab a copy of Apoc World and read it. It has some good advice and insights into why things work the way they do. And , it being the progenitor of the whole trend, it's worth reading.

Then, grab a copy of Monsterhearts (preferably 2e.) Even if teen monster angst isn't your bag. It's one of the best examples of someone who truly understands the system and why it does what it does. Taking it and making it their own by putting a genre spin on it, modifying moves and mechanics etc. It also, I think, better lays out the GMs advice and how to run the game than even AW does. And it's a more enjoyable read.

Retard alert

>other people like it, so I don't

It has some cool ideas, but also some major flaws.

It relies a lot on improvisation. Most people are bad st improvisation.

It relies a lot on player input into the world, story, encounters, etc. Most players are bad at that.

It expects deep characterization and social roleplay. A lot of people are bad st that.

It's a lot like FATE. It can be good, but it requires a group of people who are all very creative, very commited to roleplay, and more interested in the story than levels or fighting or loot. Very hard to find a whole group like that.

99% of PbtA games are complete and utter shit. This is coming from someone who fucking loves Apocalypse World. The system has the same issues that the D20 OGL did with less regulation, so any hack that thinks they're the best dev ever makes their own PbtA game. There are some gems though just like M&M is a gem of the D20 cesspool.
So there you go OP, pick up the good ones off the PDF share thread (Apocalypse World, Masks and Blades in the Dark) and give them a go.

>It could be Go Aggro, if you're doing it to make a point and not in an actual fight.
Not really. Physically ripping a rifle out of someone's hands is in most circumstances Seize by Force, because you're using force/violence to get a hold of the rifle. If you were to threaten violence in order to make them drop the rifle, that's Go Aggro.

>For example, if a Hardholder was tanking the gun out of the hands of one of his lackeys because the flunky was ranting about killing everyone in the Hocus' cult and the Hardholder is not about that.
That doesn't even sound like a move, unless the flunky was so far gone that he'd make a stand against his boss.

Look at Seize by Force. Even on a 10+ you either
>don't take definite hold of it
>suffer more than little harm
>inflict less than terrible harm or
>don't impress, dismay or frighten them

"Done correctly" refers to the Moves themselves, not the GM's application of them. A correctly written Move always includes consequences that will trigger further moves down the line, always significantly changes the situation that triggers it and will not automatically solve the situation unless the GM specifically makes it so.

>Games like Dungeon World and Blades in the Dark have huge communities and buz and have me curious.
Blades in the Dark isn't even a PbtA game.

This confuses me, too.
Sure, there are some similarities, but it is in no way or form a PbtA game.

>It's a simple system, comfortably wedged between storygames and the more traditional games.
Yep.
>It has a lot of vocal proponents who either dont care about the G, only the RP;
Not really. The mechanical part is as important as the story part, or at least that's what the game's creators where going for. Whether they succeeded or not is open to discussion. People who think of PbtA games as "storygames" are kinda missing the point. I'd even say I think they tried to make them as close as boardgames as they could without going full dungeon crawler or werewolves/mafia.

>Most people are bad at improvisation.
And like everything else in life, they won't get better unless they do it. Better to get those first shitty 4 or 5 sessions out of the way so you can start on your collection of never-do-that-agains.

wow, those are pretty nasty results for 10+ in PBTA. I'm used to 10+ being 'Yeah, you did the thing and you did it damn well'

>I'm used to 10+ being 'Yeah, you did the thing and you did it damn well'
And that's the most damning misinterpretation of source material that drags a lot of AW hacks down.
'Yeah, you did the thing and you did it damn well' is only on a 12+ and only if have specifically chosen that advancement option at what is basically the end of a character's progression instead of retiring them.

Seems to work pretty well in Sprawl. I mean, making it 12+ AND an Advancement means that actually getting an unambiguous success is nearly impossible even for people who did focus on it. It doesn't sound like it fits thematically with a lot of games.

You are using physical force to make a point, not violence to hurt. The key difference between SbF and GA is that the former is always in a situation where two or more parties are ready and willing to hurt each other, while the latter is about forcing someone's hand with the threat of violence. Disarming someone who doesn't plan to shoot you is GA, and several of the 7-9 options (back off, get out of your way, give you something they think you want) could apply.

It doesn't make sense to say it's SbF, because taking a gun from someone like that inflicts no harm and you suffer no harm because they are not resisting with violence.

In a perfect world it would be covered by the Chopper's move about controlling his gang, but in this example it's either no move or Going Aggro. (Provided, of course, that the Hardholder is willing to follow through on the implied threat and lay the security dude out for disobeying).

The problem is that an unambiguous success is boring and moves nothing forward. It's a speed bump, which is why you can only find it at the end of a character's play-relevant life.
Of course, if you can spin an unambiguous success so that it fulfills the conditions I outlined in , that's perfectly fine, but I haven't seen any games do that yet.

In my case, the player would likely choose to get a black eye (-1 harm from an unarmed npc), lay the guy out (player's harm +1 on the NPC, who never handle harm as well as a PC), and drag his unconscious body into a house or something (take definite control of the NPC).

3 out of every 4 times the players never have things go the way they want. I like to give them their success if they legit roll that 1/4 chance. If this is going to snowball, it's only because hitting someone with a 2x4 is unlikely to endear them to you, and he saw the player's face.

>The problem is that an unambiguous success is boring and moves nothing forward. It's a speed bump, which is why you can only find it at the end of a character's play-relevant life.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Success can be interesting as long as you are making people roll when the event itself is interesting, rather than making them roll for everything. It also does cause thematic trouble in PBTA games where you are supposed to be playing seasoned experts (Like the aforementioned Sprawl)

Let me rephrase that.
An unconditional success contributes nothing to the ongoing situation. Quite the opposite: it ends an ongoing situation, stops it dead in its tracks, kills its momentum.
Moves are meant to snowball. Moves being made leads to further Moves being made.
Unconditional successes are the antithesis of snowballing.Unconditional successes stop further Moves from being made because they only resolve situations without creating other situations in their place, thus removing the possibility of Moves occuring.

And you can easily play seasoned experts even in the original Apocalypse World. That doesn't mean they have to be successful.
Apocalypse World's core impetus and also the core idea of its system is that things go wrong. If you want to play a game where things don't go wrong, then maybe PbtA isn't the right system for that.

It's not a matter of things not going wrong, it's about the fact that things can't ever go right which doesn't sit well. It doesn't really separate 7-9 from 10+ with 'No matter how good the roll, things won't go right'.

Scenes also DO need to end at some point, unless you plan to have it be a 'Over the course of a single night' sort of event so having a success end things isn't inherently bad.

>And you can easily play seasoned experts even in the original Apocalypse World. That doesn't mean they have to be successful.

Mind you, it's pretty hard to see people as experts if they never actually succeed unambiguously. It also rather promotes 'I'll pick the one that is functionally a non-issue' (Like not scaring a guy when you just killed him)

Moves snowball outside of a scene. Don't have the book on me, but I think the first or second GM move is 'bad things happen offscreen'.

> resolve situations without creating other situations

Going Aggro and Size by Force are going to create history though, and not the good kind. Nobody likes someone taking their shit. I suppose you could argue that's just another off screen move though.

>It's not a matter of things not going wrong, it's about the fact that things can't ever go right which doesn't sit well.
Okay, I messed up the phrasing. I meant to write "things always go wrong". And the difference between the roll results is the difference between a small new problem and a bigger new problem.

>Scenes also DO need to end at some point, unless you plan to have it be a 'Over the course of a single night' sort of event so having a success end things isn't inherently bad.
Yes, and scenes DO end when all immediate situations have turned into long-term situations. And even AW's non-successes can end situations if the GM interprets the consequences accordingly.
The point here is that the game builds and sustains its own momentum while giving the GM tools to throttle it when necessary. If you throw unconditional successes into the mix, you reverse the dynamic. Instead of building momentum, they cause it to randomly sputter out, forcing the GM to invent new situations to get the momentum going again, until the next unconditional success kills it.

>Mind you, it's pretty hard to see people as experts if they never actually succeed unambiguously.
So experts on cancer can't be seen as experts because they don't manage to actually cure cancer for good?
An expert is simply better at what they do than a layman and does generally succeed at what they attempt if there are no adverse external circumstances. But that's not the point of the game. The point is that there are adverse external circumstances. Always. And if there ever aren't, you just don't roll.

Going Aggro and Seize by Force don't have unconditional successes, so I'm not sure how they relate to what you quoted.

Most DnD players are because of bad habits.
Also I'm having no problem finding people who can properly play, they are mostly just normal friends and family and not spergs in a LGS or Veeky Forums, maybe that is the main difference.

Remember there was a new edition. What is and isn't seize by force changed, when SBF became a battle move.

In fairness, sometimes that's appropriate.

I'd say you have a functionally unqualified success if you take no harm and do normal harm to them, getting what you want in the process. Most of the 10+ options are gravy for SBF and GA.

>Seize by Force don't have unconditional successes

I don't have the book on me, but I remember an example given in the book when a PC rolls an 11 and then uses a chainsaw to chew a dude in two, terrorizes the remaining thugs, and then gets the fuck out with no harm from that roll.

So AW hacks with unambiguous successes are not designed well?

What is this "snowball snowball snowball" meme?
I read the entire rules and I have no idea where this came from.

Yeah but sometimes it's also a pretty weird situation in many others. Like how a Sprawl Fixer (if it was changed to be like this), the archetype all about finding stuff and contacts can't find what people want for the job without adding another subplot along the way.

>And you can easily play seasoned experts even in the original Apocalypse World. That doesn't mean they have to be successful.
Nonsensical.

>An unconditional success contributes nothing to the ongoing situation. Unconditional successes are the antithesis of snowballing.Unconditional successes stop further Moves from being made
Factually wrong. Success with Advantage, create new situations and opportunity. Bonuses push player to try further moves, secondary effects produce new tests. Bad things can happen offscreens. Conflicts escalates (a good lesson from Dogs in the Wineyard). You can produce infinite examples: if you massively damage a mob and send it running, you now have a chase scene, that will trigger generic/specific moves depending on the setting.
Successes are never 'unconditional' in a literal sense. They can be full successes with an added twist.

Yes. Players must suffer and fail at all times, even when the dice says they technically succeed. That line of 'be a fan of the players'? That was a typo.

'Unanbigous successes' are ok if they add something tha can be used as a hook.

It's a porn meme from the sex move in AW, check pornhub or other SFW sites for explanation.

Y'all are idiots. Rolling a success is a success is a success. If you can't figure out how to make success interesting that's because you're bad at gming.

The successes are conditional on the GM's favorable interpretation of the option not chosen. See my point about the GM getting to throttle momentum.

Tendentially yes, necessarily no.
If they have some other method to maintain or generate momentum in spite of unambiguous successes, they are fine. I just haven't seen any hack do that yet.

>I read the entire rules
Well, you apparently haven't read the table of contents or the chapter "Moves snowball" starting on page 151.

How is that a weird situation? Of course you're going to rack up a few debts and step on some toes tracking down something that you're not supposed to find.

Successes with advantage do not create situations and opportunities that the players MUST act on. Only ones they CAN act on, usually with the result of turning another MUST into a CAN. Only MUSTs contribute to momentum, CANs destabilize it.
If a Move creates a problem, the players must act on it sooner or later, which means further moves are certain. If a Move creates an advantage instead, the players can act on or maybe not, which means further moves are possible, but not certain.

It's "be a fan of the players' characters". And the game is not devoid of success, it's devoid of absolute success.

You seem to have a very weird and specific view of what PbtA is meant to be that doesn't really line up with anyone elses. Can you go into where that comes from?

Elaborate,

>Successes with advantage do not create situations and opportunities that the players MUST act on. Only ones they CAN act on, usually with the result of turning another MUST into a CAN. Only MUSTs contribute to momentum, CANs destabilize it.
How and if they act it's player choiche: agency. Everything is CAN, or better, you MUST is just a semantic argument. When your 10+ gives a conditional bonus, players MUST act on these conditions or lose the bonus. Same as negative events, player MUST/CAN act to avoid penalties.
Furthermore: bad things can happens onscreen. This is an examples where there is not MUST as you inted it.
A full success can create unindented consequences where the players MUST/CAN act.
Your MUST and ABSOLUTE successes are bad concepts/deifnitions.
Surely in PbTA there are CANs and FULL successes.
I hope I am understood.

>How is that a weird situation? Of course you're going to rack up a few debts and step on some toes tracking down something that you're not supposed to find.

So a character literally focused around a concept shouldn't be able to reliably do that concept without additional costs?

Well this thread quickly devolved into a 'Hey, my way is the one true way to play'.

>choice
>your MUST
>can happen offscreen
>intend
>definitions
My english is shit.

I guess what I don't get is that people are complaining about this "snowball" meme being bad, like somehow more moves is some bad thing. Moves are what you do in the game, of course there will be more moves. That's like saying "But if I take my turn, then I'll have to take another turn later, it's bad because taking my turn snowballs into taking more turns later."

Pretty sure nobody said or meaned that, but I'm too lazy to re-read the thread.

this is your brain on pbta

In PbtA games, characters aren't built to be better at things than other characters. They're already specialists by the nature of their playbook, and can be expected to effortlessly succeed at things they're good at unless a move takes priority. There is no "perform first-aid on a bunch of civilians" move or a "pick a lock" move in the good kind of hack. DW is a bad example.

Just curious how good is Urban Shadows, will be playing a game soon and is our first pbta game. The style of GMing, as far as reading the book let's me know, is pretty much what I was already doing in other systems so that doesn't bother me too much.

Well, this is easily the greatest weakness of PbtA shit. There's a very strict way to play them, they're almost a boardgame with characters. People who call them rules-light are retards who don't understand how the games work.

The basic ideal the games chase after is that the system needs to make the genre happen regardless of what you think going into it . If an alien race ran into the mechanics of one of these games, with none of the fluff, they ideally would end up playing the same game because everything is supposed to lead into everything else. The games aren't perfect at this, obviously, and some are particularly bad at this, like Dungeon World.

So yes, there is only one way to play these that actually works. If you fuck it up, you get a broken system that doesn't function well at all. The learning curve is obnoxious, and the way to play is hard to explain.

I honestly haven't looked into Urban Shadows specifically, but I'll fire up the pdf reader and tell you if I see anything that looks bad. I'd assume it's not terrible.

> If you fuck it up, you get a broken system that doesn't function well at all. The learning curve is obnoxious, and the way to play is hard to explain.

We've got at least 3 anons, maybe more, arguing about how to play it, and they sound as if they enjoy it. This leads me yo suspect it supports multiple styles of play, as long as they are character, rather than plot/setting, facing.

Is there a podcast of this you would recommend that gets it spot on?

Well, the reality of the 3 anons is that some of them probably have a better grasp of the game than the others. Nothing's stopping people from enjoying broken systems that don't function well at all.

But at least the basic philosophy of the games, where you focus on the characters instead of the story, leads to better games elsewhere, so it's a net positive I think.

I'd link you to podcasts and such if I knew any, but sadly most of the people who record themselves playing these games preface them with political leanings and such and I'm not a fan. I recommend listening to the Walking Eye Podcast's take on Monsterhearts for a good example of the system being played right, but don't look too far into their stuff if you don't want a facefull of poorly thought out anti-cultural appropriation arguments

It's very clearly inspired by many aspects of PbtA games.
Only reason why I'd say it isn't one, is that I don't see Powered by the Apocalypse logo in the pdf anywhere, on a fast glance.

To be fair, people stick PbtA logos on anything even remotely inspired by PbtA. I've seen it on fucking single-page freeform exercises.

Blades in the dark is different enough that even if it had the logo I wouldn't call it one.

Actual play, analysis, introspection, comparison among PbtA systems and comparison with other systems.

Yeah that works too.

Very true. Annoying Reddit spacing, but that's really the only problem I have with your comment.

So, basically it's just your personal perspective that you're asserting as the one true way?

Good to know.

>reddit spacing

This meme needs to die. People have been posting with clear formatting on Veeky Forums for longer than reddit has been a thing.

That depends on how one defines PbtA game.
I remember reading Vincent himself writing about how vague thing it is to define and that it's not based solely on things like Playbooks, or 2d6 7-9 for partial success and 10+ for good success system.
Ultimately it's a semantic thing and doesn't actually matter. Each individual PbtA game has to be judged on it's own anyways.