An interesting discussion is arising in the 24 hour rpg community over at rpggeek. Are games Powered by the Apocalypse their own game or a modified version of Apocalypse World?
I described my submission as Powered by the Apocalypse to help communicate the play style of the adventure while using what I feel are different rules for stats and very different (albeit poorly explained since 24 hours) moves.
This may disqualify me from winning (which I’ll be sad about but is not the point) because it may not be an original game.
From reading Vincent Baker ‘s comments on reusing rules, it appears he would consider any hack that uses his concepts but original text applied in new ways as distinct from Apocalypse World.
For me, I consider Powered by the Apocalypse to be more about the principles of game design (such as quick character generation, open endedness, be a fan of the players, and moves vs the games fiction). Thus I would consider many of the AW hacks I’ve read to be distinct.
So, recognizing that the line is an arbitrary human construction and really it shifts based on personal preference and isn’t really there at all, what is the line between an AW hack that is just reskinned Apocalypse world vs an AW hack that is its own game?
Some games to consider:
I’m playtesting something for Ben Lehman that I only know is an AW hack because he told me so in the introduction. It is diceless and usually a solitaire game and has no playbooks (to start).
Paul Riddle’s Undying is PbtA but is also such a different experience that I has to look closely to see the AW stuff under the skin. It is in my opinion a great hack that recreates the moves effectively and the blood mechanic creates a very enjoyable game of resource management that also results in effective story. Is it its own game or a subset of AW?
Legacy reworks Apocalypse World to focus on lineage and society generation. Same setting, different focus. I’m not familiar enough to go into more detail but I’m hoping to change that. Is it its own game or a subset of AW?
Over the Edge vs Vampire the Masquerade- they were developed in tandem and in their early stages overlapped (both still retain the dice pool mechanic). Are they the same game or different?
Of the games I’ve played that one that might qualify as the most overlap maybe the Nobilis hack and Monster Hearts. Both are awesome and have redone moves and playbooks to focus the setting. I love both. They seem to rely more heavily on the text of Apocalypse World for structure.
I have an opinion, but I’m curious what everyone else’s thoughts are.
Paul Riddle was supposed to be tagged in this for his work on the awesome game Undying.
Avery Mcdaldno for her work on the awesome Monster Hearts as well.
Wish I could remember the name of the Nobilis guy cuz I really like his work.
Unless you’ve just reskinned it (and arguably even then), it’s its own game. Just because two games are mechanically similar doesn’t make them the same. Monsterhearts is nothing like AW to play. Sagas of the Icelanders is nothing like AW to play. Night Witches is nothing like AW to play.
But even if they were, how many D&D-like games have been entered into the 24 hour comp? From my limited experience: plenty.
Just having Moves and 7-9 partial successes doesn’t make something a rehash of AW, in my eyes, any more than playing a barbarian and rolling a d20 makes a game a rehash of D&D.
Seems easy to clarify that saying “Powered by the Apocalypse” is a lot like saying “D20 system”.
I agree with what the last two posters said. Most hacks are PbtA in the same way that a lot of RPGs in the 80s and 90s were powered by D&D.
PbtA is a system just like d20 is a system. Each game using those rulesets is distinct.
We all seem to be of a similar mind (at least at the moment). The other designers are voicing a concern that using PbtA allows the people using a headstart that the designers who come up with an original system don’t have and thus an unfair advantage. For the purposes of the contest it seems like a fair critique (though Joshua Fox ‘s comments about DnD reskins should logically also fall under this).
That may need to be a different thread but it is the environment from which the question arose.
a headstart that the designers who come up with an original system don’t have
I wonder. Is any game really completely new? I can see precedents for most games I come across. Even if most of the components are re-used, you still have to figure out how to fit them together for your game, and write the game from scratch (I guess for PBtA you might copy and paste some principles over or something.)
Or to put it another way: your game needs to be tailored to whatever you want your game to be about. If it is, that will take effort regardless of where you start. If it isn’t, it’s not a very good game and probably won’t win.
Alone on Silver Wings is about the best possible counter-argument to this that I can muster.
(It’s powered by the Apocalypse because it uses Moves — in fact every rule in the game is a Move — and also because it is literally powered by the literal apocalypse.)
Also, it absolutely does give a head start, so that’s something to give consideration to for contest rules (i.e. I’m pretty sure some game contests exclude frameworks like PbtA, FATE, d20, etc for exactly this reason.)
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Ben Lehman The head start and use of some pre-existing stuff written by someone else is one reason I’m trying not to be too emotionally invested in the outcome of the decision for the contest.
The line is still quite interesting. I wonder if I had hidden the PbtA nature of the game if people would have noticed? I think it would have been dishonest not to pay notice previous work, though I also feel no work exists in a vacuum.
One could make the argument that no game is truly original in this regard.
I’ve found the basic style of AW to be pervasive: I was toying with a fantasy game where characters had narrative abilities only (i.e. ‘Take a hostage and negotiate’ or ‘Lead the party out of danger’), which were resolved by drawing from a bag of black & white tokens. About a third of the way through the design process, I realised it was an Apocalypse World hack: totally different character creation and conflict resolution rules but still absolutely AW.
As has been said, AW is more than a game, it’s a model (a manifesto?) for good game design and it’s useful to ask “WWAWD?” when resolving a design issue.
I think pbta hacks are distinct as games, but I also agree that in a contest context, using themcan be an unfair advantage vs people making up something whole cloth.
Sure, there may be nothing truly original, but it does represent a significant hurdle that pbta users can bypass, especially under a time limit.
So I’ve been part of the discussion on rpg geek, so I might as well double down. The thing about doing an AW hack right is that it’s a lot of design choices, which creates a lot of work. AW was crafted so that every mechanic had a specific and purposeful effect on the feel of the game. Unless you want the exact same feel (in which then your not redesigning a game) then you need to rexaxime and real tool each aspect. Perhaps using the game design principles is a form of a head start, but it also adds extra work. Of course there are other head starts that aren’t as one sided. Experience reading many different games, experience designing games, choosing a simple concept, heck just about anything can be a head start in a design competition with a time crunch. The thing is that these choices show in the game. The time you spend or don’t spend differentiating from AW will come through to the reader. The counter arguement was that a designer could save time using the fudge resolution system, but then the game would feel like it is obviously just a skin on the rolling mechanic, and it will take a lot of work to make the game feel unique.
David Rothfeder Glad you could join. I thought the discussion on this end might help us identify what helps us identify AW games vs not and get into some bigger design questions.
David Rothfeder
One thing I think that AW does that is different from say Fudge is the core idea of “mechanic has a role in forming fiction and gameplay or mechanic isn’t present.” We can even make new custom GM and player moves or concepts that help establish the tone or feel of the game.
I wonder if we follow the (in my opinion very useful for all GMs) MC advice in AW world and incorporate that into our game (which is probably the most tangible thing I used besides 2d6), I wonder what that makes it.
Maybe the idea of “about” as in what the game is about would be a good determining factor? I have a monsterhearts game that has ended up being about interdimensional exploration instead of teen sexuality and eventually some of the moves we never use could be reamde to better reflect the game. So it was born from Monster Hearts, has some mechanics like monster hearts (strings) but is “about” something different?
I’m not sure.
As for the contest piece, I don’t mind if my game is disqualified from winning. It’s there in the rules so it’s one potential interpretation that I used existing systems, which is a rule breaker.
I’m also curious what other games would also apply to? Eventually there has to be a PbtA game that wouldn’t be breaking the rule of “no prior work”. Would Undying satisfy that condition (since it has no dice and has the blood and debt mechanics instead of Hx and stats and stuff)? I’d say yes, but I’m not sure what others would say.
I got what I wanted anyway (I made a game) and am interested in the design question.
If you made a game, you’ve already won.
what helps us identify AW games vs not
I think that is an excellent question. What, for example, do AW and Dream Askew have in common? Not that much, I would argue, but DA calls itself PbtA.
To me, PbtA can mean anything from “I reskinned AW” to “I wrote a completely different game that has some design roots in AW, and I want to acknowledge it” to “I want to market my game as PbtA”.
PbtA is a set of broad mechanical structures, a play (mostly GMing) philosophy and some great, system-integrated play aids. You can take any or all of that and be PbtA. But whether you designed a game that stands up in its own right is a separate question.
Patrick Scaffido, while I’m happy that I created the game I did regardless of success in the competition, I would feel disappointed if it was disqualified because of using the AW frame work. A lot of work went into the game as well as a lot of originality, and I feel like there is more to the game than some of the one to two page games that I’ve seen out of it. I don’t mean to disparage them (and I admit that I have a healthy competitive streak), but I just find that it would be a shame because games like ours were not counted because we chose to use what we learned from other games. I definitely agree that there is a line where an AW hack is no longer just a reskin. Even Monsterhearts, which is incredibly close to AW, feels completely different because of the inovations Avery made (like strings). The thing about rp design is that it’s all been done. Maybe not literally, there are probably novel mechanics yet to be discovered, but at this point it is more or less impossible to write a game that doesn’t use concepts seen in other games.
For differential diagnosis, consider two of Avery McDaldno’s games: Monsterhearts and Dream Askew. Both are PbtA. Neither one is “just a reskin”. MH changes the rules slightly and the setting drastically. DA changes the rules heavily but the setting is nearly compatible with AW. To my mind, you could call Dream Askew “a version of Apocalypse World”, but not say the same of Monsterhearts.
Patrick Scaffido, when I started Undying, I started with the AW basic moves and worked on it from there. In the first 24 hours, Undying would not have met the contest rules. At its origins, Undying was an AW hack. It didn’t become diceless until its fourth re-write. It took six re-writes in all to produce it commercially. What makes Undying a unique and different thing from both AW and VtM, are the years and years I spent making it, not its origins.
To echo Marshall Miller, I think making a thing you’re happy with is the victory. If you can take this strong start and continue forging it into its ultimate form, whatever that is, that’s the icing on the cake. Sorry this contest didn’t work out.
Russell Borogove I haven’t read Dream Askew. Can you give me the elevator pitch? Either way I like Avery Mcdaldno ‘s work so it’s going on the “to investigate” pile.
Paul Riddle I think it shows in the game play how much of it is original. For the game I submitted, I started with some non-AW mechanics (crafting magic items) and then decided I wanted to include AW style discreet moves and it went from there. I’ve read some of the earlier Undying betas and it is quite interesting to see how it developed into such a strong game.
RE: The contest not working out, I’m alright with it though no official decision has been made yet. Either way I made a game I’d been meaning to make for awhile and contest helped me find a setting that I find interesting to set it in.
You know, in my submission I actually messing with the rolling system. It’s still roll 2d6, but it averages the results (rounding down). The quick math makes a similiar but somewhat worse success distribution, but more interesting is how much gets truncated. I also was interested in what a huge deal a +1 or -1 made.
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Patrick Scaffido Dream Askew is mid-slow-motion-apocalypse instead of post-apocalypse; players are part of a “Queer Enclave” of marginalized people in that situation. Setting is very compatible with AW: there’s a psychic maelstrom, there are scarcities, there are gangs, etc.
Mechanical departure 1: It’s diceless. The move outcomes of AW become moves in DA, divided into Strong, Regular, and Weak moves that correspond to AW’s 10+, 7-9, and 6- outcomes. When you do a Weak move you earn a token and you spend a token to do a Strong move.
Mechanical departure 2: GM/MC responsibility is shared. There are 6 situation playbooks in addition to the PC playbooks covering different realms of GM responsibility, with rules to help avoid conflict of interest between player and situation playbooks.
Russell Borogove Sounds interesting. I’ll have to check it out. Reminds me a bit of Storium from how you describe it.