A ramble I wrote on some of the deeper workings of the Apocalypse World engine. No practical application whatsoever, but may be of interest to some of you.
http://ponderingsongames.com/2015/04/18/musings-on-the-apocalypse
A ramble I wrote on some of the deeper workings of the Apocalypse World engine.
A ramble I wrote on some of the deeper workings of the Apocalypse World engine.
I agree and disagree…and it was an interesting read 🙂
Keep it going.
Good insight!
Pretty interesting way of looking at Apocalypse World style play. I highly suggest checking out other PbtA games, especially the one that started it all and Monster Hearts. Both those games will make you see some other sides of the game besides just the basic dice mechanic. Frankly I feel Tremulous didn’t do a good job with their remix of Apocalypse World. In other PtbA systems besides Tremulous, the playbooks and playbook specific Moves tend to have more individual flavor and really help sculpt the various characters creating story flavor. Tremulous also really misses the tension between the player characters that happens from the onset of other PbtA games.
I will add I felt the Tremulous rules for creating a setting is really good and it is an interesting add-on to PbtA-style rules.
have you played Burning Wheel? i’d be curious how you would compare the dice roll systems between the two games
Vincent Baker Guess I’m officially not crazy, then. At least in this regard.
Colin Fahrion Thanks, I do want to try both Apocalypse World and Monster Hearts. Finding time is another issue. I suspect the lack of tension between the characters in tremulus could be due to the emphasis on their opposition with the weird. Uncovering the mystery is the goal in that game. From what little I know of AW it’s more about staying yourself in a dangerous world, and MH is about finding yourself in the bottomless heap of teenage and monster issues. Whether or not tremulus could have benefited from greater focus on characters’ desires and the conflicts they bring is another matter.
Adam McConnaughey Sadly, no. We’ve tried to learn it once, without anyone who knew the game in the vicinity. Being cocky experienced gamers as we were, we went for the overly complex combat almost immediately, and it broke us. It’s another game I’d like to try, but not without someone to teach it.
Ooh, thank you. I think this explains the disconnect my group had with Dungeon World.
We’re a bunch of MIT nerds, and so prepping the ever living daylights out of plans is a thing that happens.
And then the dice hit the table, and say Something Bad Happens.
(I think we’re supposed to check the fronts at this point)
But having prepped away all the obvious plausible failures, picking the lock always results in…a knife-wielding maniac. To the point where it becomes a running gag.
Because prep is eliminating plausible sources of failure more effectively than it’s eliminating the chance of failure.