Hello,
So, I recently bought this system and managed to test it with friends and I’d like to give a comprehensive feedback… And because I couldn’t get hold of any offcial e-mail here I am 😉 Prepare for a long one.
tl;dr: It looks good, it plays fine but it seems to lack a bit of polish and I think some mechanics could be done a bit better.
First of, let me tell you, I love this system. I love any apocalypse world hack, and well done hack is all the better. I also love superhero stories so it’s hard for me not to love Worlds in Peril. Having said that… I don’t think Dungeon World is bad but I think its one of the weaker additions to the Apocalypse Engine family and while I still play it a lot with friends I find it mechanically lacking. You basing WiP on it means it will have simmilar shortcomings.
Basic moves:
I instantly fell in love with the idea of every move using different stats and was kinda dissapointed to see you didn’t go this route with “serve and protect”. I’ll give you a quick example – The Brotherhood is fighting a raging monster to protect the orphanage with a few mutant kids inside. The monster throws a car in general direction of our unlikely heroes but it sails past them and flies straight at two kids watching the fight. Now, Magneto can declare he uses his control over magnetism to catch the car and I as MC will ask him to roll for the move with protect stat, so far so good. However Quicksilverdeclares he’s just gonna run there, grab the kids, leave them somewhere safe two blocks away and come back instantly – and thats the roll+Manouver. Scarlet with will use her probability manipulation to slightly change the air currents, trajectory and speed of the flying car and make it land besides the kids – that’s for me roll+Investigate. Jagernaut on the other hand will just headbut the flying car back at the monster – roll+Smash.
I’m kinda on a fence with having seperate moves for protecting someone else and yourself. I understand why it’s tempting to have both, but at the same time if you’ll look really closely they are nearly the same both in fiction and mechanically.
I’m also on the fence with use environemnt move. I like that it lets you impose conditions without doing “take down” move all the time but… both examples in the book (throwing manhole cover at the sniper and using cement to stop the mooks) it seems that the player actually uses “take down” in a creative way – simillarly to how you described rolling takedown with +Investigate.
The “seize control” move. For an Apocalypse World veteran this move is one of the best ever created in the original system. It encompanses so many combat, and social situations and is extremely versatile. Your version on the other hand is insalnely limited specific and therefore rarely comes into play.
Finally “Discern rea…”, sorry I meant “Examine”. In my many sessions as MC and player in DW I found this move to be weakly done because answers to most questions are just too obvious. You took it nearly word-by-word so it has the same problems here 😉
Origins:
The origins are well done and really tought out but at the same time… messy. They neeed one more editorial pass, I think. I mean just look – “Death in the family” starts with the paragraph that is named (“Haunted”). It provedes both description to the origin and is a move in itself, as it provides specific mechanic. Thats fine. However the very next move “The accident” also starts with named paragraph (“Changes”) it provides the description, some questions that help to flesh out your character and… no mechanics. So it’s not a move in Apo Engine sense. Then a bit down the line you have “I’m back from the dead”, which once again starts with paragraph that describes the origin, gives you a sentence to finish, has no mechanics… and this time has no name either. It just seems a bit messy and not thought out completely and would be so easy to fix I can only imagine it was simply overlooked.
There is also lack of one origin – a person who became a superhero because she genuinly wanted to be one. I’ll give you a few examples in fiction: DC Captain Marvel (SHAZAM!), MCU Captain America (neither The Accident nor My Mission really work for him), Netflix Daredevil (again you could argue accident or death in the family, but neither is the reason he became a super hero), Hiro Nakamura nad Peter Petrelli from Heroes, the father (whatever was his name) from No Ordinary Family and very simmilar father from The Incredibles. Just a suggestion for any one who likes to write hacks 😉 (or I’ll just do it myself :D)
Drives and Advancment:
Oh, this one is a mess. Tell me, how many drives can a character have at the same time? Can she grab a new one after opening the previous? What happens to the moves she opened? This are all the questions I got from my players and the book didn’t help me to answer them. I like the idea of getting exp from doing specific things in fiction (it’s simmilar to the Marvel Heroic RPG sollution and I loved it there) but I feel it’s very hard to actually get a miningful number of achievements. And by the way, how quickly should characters develop? Should they be able to finish one drive per session? Or should the single drive be something that goes through multiple sessions or even whole campaign?
Also, why would I want to spend 4 of my precious, hard to get Achievemnts to get something I can also get by using Push move – as in, why is there an option to add new things to the power profile and why the hell is it so expensive?
Finally, Powers:
They are great. It was another great idea to leave them mostly in fiction… buuuuuut… They are too far in fiction. I just feel there should be some kind of mechanics connected to them, something like – “Easy powers should not require a roll most of the time, unless you use them in creative way that may actually not work. Difficult moves should trigger a roll, defy danger if nothing else is more apropriate. Borderline moves should always triger a move and the roll should be at disadvantage (-1).” There should also be some mechanic of using a “possible” power (as in the one you already written down as possible). I think a Push covers it, but it isn’t stated anywhere in the book so it’s just my guess. And as for impossible powers, mayb eit’s just me and my players but we all instantly thought they would be something that is impossible, so it will be done in the finale 🙂 We were kinda sad that book states otherwise.
And just to nitpick, there is no “powers that are advantages” section on the character sheet even though you mention it in the book :D.
So… yeah. Let me state one thing. We had a ton of fun creating heroes and the world and the play itself was… a bit clunky, but thats expected from the new system that we don’t yet fully know. Despite this post focusing on negatives and things that could, or should be improved in “next printing” the game is VERY GOOD. I’m only sad I didn’t know about kickstarter campaign or I’d throw some money in much eralier. Sorry for a wall of text and for any errors I most definitely made and I’m to lasy to correct. Cheers and keep up the great work 😉
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One more thing that seems important but I managed to completely forget about when writing my “review”. The book says next to nothing about secret identities and the only mechanical support for them is “fit in” move. For such a staple of the genre that’s not enough. When we played we actually ran into the problems like – what if my hero wants to take some “covert” actions using his civilian identity? That wasn’t hard to pull off, we just used fiction and some moves like “defy danger” and “seize control” can be used creatively when you want to play out scenes and there is “gather intel” so we managed. The bigger problem was with bonds. We actually toped the play and got into lenghty discussion how burning the bond in the city while in civil clothes can hurt the image of a superhero. We managed to get a satisfactory explanation in our fiction but I think the bonds system especially should provide mechanics to show that heroes are kinda two different people. Or it should at least be explicitely stated in the book with good explanation how to manage the problems that may arise .
Hi there, thanks for the review! There are some things I agree with here for sure, and there were a lot of blind spots that crept up when I was writing the game and got it to playtesters. It’s always amazing to me how different people interpret the text in different ways, and I’ve got a ways to go in regards to writing well and clearly but I’m working on it.
Lots of cool ideas, I’d like to make a section here in the community for hacking so people can post their own ideas for moves and stuff, ’cause I’d love to see them and I’m sure there’s a lot that can be improved upon. I think some things boil down to taste I find (adding mechanics for Bonds seems wholly unnecessary to me as you can resolve Bonds whenever you like, not just at that moment whether you’re in civilian clothes or not), but I’ll definitely be the first to admit that the game isn’t perfect and I’ll definitely be keeping track of ways to change it that appeal to everyone.
I don’t see how Seize Control is in any way limiting, but I did write the game so maybe that’s blinding me :). The lack of a move name at the beginning for some books vs. others is probably something I should have cleared up, but it really has zero bearing on the game (it really doesn’t bother me to be honest as there are mechanical differences that usually separate them. I get it though!).
Hard limits and guidelines for powers could prove helpful for some players, but solutions like requiring rolls under certain circumstances would be both cumbersome and difficult for players to pull off without Burning Bonds – and not really needed to be honest, at least in my mind. Working towards multiple Drives usually solves itself pretty quick – any character working towards multiple Books is going to look pretty strange in the fiction, and is probably going to have trouble unlocking stuff, players are usually pretty good about deciding what they want to do with their character. All the important character development and advancement actually happens outside of the Achievement Points system in my opinion – personal relationships with Bonds, powers with Pushing, and personal growth by working towards/shifting from Drive book to Drive Book. The Achievement Points are just an additional bonus for interfacing with the advancement system – I’m not going to set rules that force players to advance their stories, it’s on them to drive them and the incentives to do so are there.
I like the Serve and Protect suggestion, though, it was actually one of the moves that we tested but didn’t end up going with. Multi-stat moves are pretty polarizing for a lot of players – it seems to be a love it or hate-type situation.
Rest easy about the nitpick: If you look on the character sheet, there is a section for Advantages on the second page.
Also – You should totally write up any Origins you feel are missing. Can never have enough Origins.
The powers profile helps to limit what you can attempt with your powers. It is a guide to help the EiC decide if the action would trigger a move or if it could be attempted at all. Hulk probably doesn’t need to roll to rip a car door off but Cap probably would.
I would say that a character should be working on one drive at a time but doesn’t have to complete a drive to move to another. The fiction should determine if their drive changes. The pace at which you unlock moves is totally up to your gaming group but since unlocking most moves is rather complicated I would think one or two moves a game session would be optimistic depending on the number in the group. The game was intended so that you play the character you want out of the gate without the feeling of having to level up. We all love the feeling of advancement and achievement so it is included but not a primary focus.
Adding a new power is different than pushing a current power. Think of it as a secondary mutation. You can’t push telepathy to develop diamond skin.
The origins are by the way not meant to be all inclusive. We will continue adding new ones in every suppliment we put out and encourage creating your own.
Thank you for answers I kinda figured it would be something like that and that’s what I told my players when they asked. I just think the “perfect” rpg book would answer for the questions before they can be asked and while nobody is perfect we all strive to be, right? 😉
Definitely. If the book isn’t clear, then I didn’t do my job right. Sorry for any trouble it caused.
You are way to hard on yourself. I really like the game and am planning on running it. We will be running it in the Marvel universe so we know the boundaries of the heroes. My only complaint is not having more Worlds of Peril stuff to look at. Much love.
Rick Barrow That’s great to hear, thanks so much!