If you had to choose one game to sell people on the PbtA system, what would it be?

If you had to choose one game to sell people on the PbtA system, what would it be?

If you had to choose one game to sell people on the PbtA system, what would it be? Which game has the best distillation of the rules for first time players?

26 thoughts on “If you had to choose one game to sell people on the PbtA system, what would it be?”

  1. Monsterhearts jumps to mind first. It is one fine distillation of PbtA with a really powerful bit of writing behind it. After that, Apocalypse World itself.

  3. Dungeon World, probably. Everyone is familiar with fantasy tropes to some extent, so I feel new players would be able to easily understand what’s going on in the narrative. That familiarity also makes it easier to understand the rules when reading it.

  7. I’d probably see what genres the group was interested in. If I was going in blank, I’d probably bring along Dream Askew, Cartel, Monsterhearts and Monster of the Week.

  9. I think it’s an incorrect but common assumption that games with the fewest rules are best for new players.

    In my experience, games with the clearest directions, rules text, and delineation of role tend to fare better among true RPG newbs than some very free-form games with few or very broad rules.

    also having clear and familiar genre expectations can help people get past the “what should I do?” part of it

  10. Spirit of 77!… No, really! =D

    In DW players had to undo decades of expectations and customs cultivated by DnD that go against our Agenda. It was easy, but it was not true Apocalypse for a few sessions. 

  12. DW has too much D&D mechanics pollution to understand PbtA. You will not fully get PbtA until you play AW, imho. Don’t get me wrong, I love it: it’s a fun game, just not representative of PbtA.

  13. So many of the games are so good at what they do and so very well written. Dungeon World is an easy sell for a wide audience and is easy on the players. If you’re handing a book off to a new-to-PbtA GM, a number of people have said that The Warren is particularly easy to run. Monsterhearts and World Wide Wrestling are going to be homeruns once you’re at the table.

    Just focusing on the first time players aspect, The Sundered Land and Murderous Ghosts may not help you with other PbtA games but might be good entry points to the hobby.

  16. Monster of the week. It explains the rules very well and it’s a game style most everyone knows from X-Files, supernatural, Buffy, Angel, and so on. Since most everyone is familiar with at least one of these shows.

  17. I’d also have to go with DW, though I think my favorite implementation is Masks (unless you count Blades in the Dark, which I don’t really).

  18. For the clearest presentation of the rules for new folks (as in, I can hand them the book and they can run a fun game on their own), I’d go with Monster of the Week.  As others have said, Dungeon World benefits from genre familiarity, and I’ve used it to sell lots of people (experienced and completely new to RPGs) on PbtA style games.

  19. Another vote for Monster of The Week. It’s broad enough to cover X Files, Agents of Shield, Buffy, Supernatural, Constantine, The Shining/The Omen, Dresden Files, hell even Long Island Medium. And it doesn’t require you to make up a whole new setting; i.e., it’s the world we know, being attacked by stuff we don’t. Plus the rules are really well written and the playbooks are all fun. 

  20. Ben Morgan I really like Masks, for a group interested in a supers game. Blades is fantastic, and super evocative, but I agree that it’s too far removed from PbtA to qualify. Personally, I’d probably run with Dungeon World (for all the excellent reasons discussed above), but it would depend on who you’re introducing to PbtA, and what their expectations are.

  21. Douglas Santana Another vote for Spirit of 77.  While not ‘pure’ AW, it’s pretty accessible.  Monster of the Week and Urban Shadows are both fair to middlin’, IF your group likes those flavors of urban fantasy.  The Star Wars World hack is pretty good if you need to bridge the gap between AW and space opera and don’t want to do the world-building required by Uncharted Worlds.

  22. If they’re actually going to be reading the book (or parts of it), Monsterhearts is hands-down the best.  it’s written with a cards-on-the-table style that not only communicates the mechanics of the game, it also communicates the philosophy of he game.  Might be a little bit tougher of a sell if your players aren’t fans of that genre, though.

    I’d avoid a game that’s too much like what they’ve played before.  If they’re D&D players, don’t start with dungeon world.  If they’re White Wolf players, don’t start with Urban Shadows.  It’s a little bit too easy to bring existing expectations from previous games when you do that.

  23. I have read both Dungeon World and Apocalypse World, and have played Dungeon World a few times.

    With AW, I found it very hard to read…almost like it was a bit over my head.  Just found it to be very confusing, but maybe that has to do with my unfamiliarity with the genre as much as anything.  The sex moves also kinda threw me off.  I can’t see them EVER getting used with my group.

    With DW, I ran into the noted problem of de-programming from D&D.  I can SEE the power of the system, but DW is a little to close to the game I have been playing for almost 20 years.

    I was looking for more suggestions on the PbtA games that I would be less aware of.  Thanks for the recommendations.  I’ll give all of them a look.

  24. I like people suggesting Masks and Cartel, when neither are out yet. 🙂

    I may be an outlier and say Fellowship! It gives principles to the players and teaches them explicitly that violence isn’t the main way to solve problems. Coming in from crunchier systems, that’s major.

    It also gives players CONTROL of their backstory. You’re explicitly told that you’re the steward of your culture’s history. What a difference from games that come with 30 pages of rules & 20 pages of Setting Background.

  25. Here’s a link you might like, to most of the PbtA games available in print:

    https://plus.google.com/111023399555426942490/posts/HYKupuSgHkC

    There are tons of good answers above, mostly the ones that ask: well, what sort of game are you looking for? If your group wants a dungeon-crawl that’s a lot different from superpowered teens or monsters in high school or etc etc etc.

     

    If you had to choose one game to sell people on the PbtA system, what would it be? AW, hands down, every time. Except when the right answer is The Warren.

    Which game has the best distillation of the rules for first time players? I’m going to be   slightly  pedantic and say the rules differ as needed for the different games but if you mean which game best captures the system in a super accessible way, I might suggest Action Movie World  from Flatland Games http://www.flatlandgames.com/amw/ After AW, it may most closely capture the original system while having, granted, more widely accessible language.

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