Most PbtA hacks are to the theme with minor variations on the rules (such as changes to Hx, or how experience is gained). This leads me to two questions:
1. What is the most drastic hack/overhaul out there?
2. Are there any hacks that focus on changes to the MC outside of simple thematic changes to the principles/agenda?
1. Blades in the Dark? I mean, the PbtA roots feel like they’re there… maybe Undying, since it hews closer to those same roots?
2. Dream Askew completely excises the traditional GM and instead has different players responsible for their own character and certain threats facing the settlement.
Dream Askew’s pretty far out there, but it’s kind of a hack of a hack. It doesn’t use dice, and doesn’t have a GM.
Kevin Farnworth I think “removing the MC” is within the bounds of “hacking the MC”, so that’s cool. I actually did have some concept of sharing MC duties in my head when I wrote that (maybe moving ownership to the players, or even scene framing).
Marco Andreetto Mattia Bulgarelli Manuela Soriani with Dilemma?
And Morderous Ghosts?
Thanks Simone Micucci! Yeah. Dilemma at the end of creation results so different from AW that seems another type of engine.
I don’t know what this game is. Got a link?
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I still don’t fully know how to Dreams Askew. I just stare at it longingly.
It will be published by narrattiva in november for Lucca comics and games.
yeah Vincent’s own hacks seem to be the ones that go the furthest afield. Murderous Ghosts, The Doomed Pilgrim, stuff like that.
Alfred Rudzki, I actually asked John Harper about that during the Blades in the Dark kickstarter. His take is that while he was very influenced by AW he saw blades as its own entity and not a hack.
I’d also add Undying to the list.
I don’t know that I’d say they’re minor variations on the rules – one of the things I love about the PbtA family of games is that most feel like they’ve broken down AW and rebuilt it rather than just reskinning it. I mean, they’re immediately familiar but they also feel really different.
Murderous Ghosts, Doomed Pilgrim, Dream Askew all feel pretty drastically different. Nanoworld is drastically different in that it’s very condensed but still obviously PbtA.
Marshall Miller Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound diminutive. By “minor variations”, I meant more that the changes are within the context of the existing game – new stat names, additional stats that function like other stats, new moves or gear, etc.
While there are outliers, I think a lot of hacks exist here – staying in the same room that Apocalypse World exists in. What I’m trying to find are the hacks that open a window, or kick a hole in the wall.
Aaron Griffin My unreleased but playtested hack qualifies. It does away with stats completely and has nine “core” moves, all other special abilities or ‘modifiers’ simply modify the success/failure conditions of the core moves. It also has a new conflict escalation mechanic and other features that are new and/or hacked out of similar narrative games.
An open playtest will be coming in November, after it has been through my editor a few times and tested at a game camp in late October. Even among PbtA players it seems to be unique enough to stand out.
Lemmo Pew Sounds cool. Hit me up if you ever want reader feedback!
Marshall Miller Sure thing! I just started a Patreon for folks to get a sneak peek of the work in progress. https://www.patreon.com/lemmo
Besides removing the MC (Dream Askew and Murderous Ghosts), it looks like some of Vincent’s recent (unfinished) experiments have headed down the co-MC path. Apocalypse World: Dark Age suggested alternating MCs session to session, and his Amazon game is for two players and n MCs instead of n players and 1 MC.
Are there any hacks out there that rotate MCs within the same session? Seems like a novel mechanic that would be interesting to play around with.
Yes, Dilemma is the love child of Kagematsu and AW, with a touch of Gaiman-like supernatural element (or so our playtesters consistently said).
Mostly I’m just leaving a comment so I can see what other people say, but as long as I’m here, I might as well agree that Murderous Ghosts and Undying are the two most “out there” AW hacks (that were actually described as AW hacks by their creators).
I disagree that “most PbtA hacks are minor variations on the rules”. I feel that good PbtA hacks (like Monsterhearts, Monster of the Week, Saga of the Icelanders, Dungeon World, The Sprawl, Nightwitches, The Warren, World Wide Wrestling, and many others) all push the AW framework in a very different direction.
It depends on how you define most. There are a lot of random half made hacks that basically wallpaper a new theme on the rules. Some of these add new rules, but for the most part they copy what’s done in AW (I might be guilty of this myself). If your counting by numbers, these games are likely in the majority. However, if your looking at games by the attention they get, the games which innovate off of AW definitely beat out the paint jobs.