PbtA/*World Enemies.

PbtA/*World Enemies.

PbtA/*World Enemies. So I know how they work in a few different hacks, but it seems to me that if you were going to create a supplement with enemies that you wanted to be “generic” for as many hacks as possible it would be fiddly to get the enemies just right. In your opinion which system’s enemies embody the most commonly-used enemy rules. Which elements (agendas, for example), should be present in any enemy, no matter the hack?

7 thoughts on “PbtA/*World Enemies.”

  1. Hi. Sorry to be a naysayer, but such a supplement doesn’t sound like Playing to Find Out. I have much more fun as a player and MC when the MC makes the campaign to fit the players, not the other way around. Generic agendas sound… generic. My threats need to have agendas that directly conflict with the PCs at my table, not something made up ahead of time.

    NPCs are so easy to make in most of these games that it’s trivial to do it at the table or after the first session, as AW suggests. Masks villains are a bit more complex and can be created ahead of time. I’d look at Masks for inspiration. It has a list of villain goals and agendas that is pretty good and possibly applicable to many genres.

    As a consumer, I’d be interested possibly in genre specific books of threats or one with categories of threats, like “Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game.” I realize this contradicts my opening statement about playing to find out, so I guess I’m saying that your idea has merit. I’m just not sure how many agendas and threats have universal use.

    I’d find it most useful as inspiration for customizing the threats in my games, rather than as something I could transplant whole into a PbtA game.

    A section of custom moves for different styles of threats would be rad, too, and more transplant-able. Good luck! Hope some others have better feedback.

  2. Thank you so much for the response, Bryanna Hitchcock. I think that I must not have expressed myself like I meant to. I was thinking more along the lines of generic game stats such as they are for this rule set that could be used to make an NPC more compatible with a multitude of different acts. I don’t mean anything generic or flavorless as far as setting goes. So if I wanted to create a rat man pack for Uncharted Worlds, would it be easy to poet it over to Worlds in Peril? I guess I am asking which hack has the most easily translated monsters? I like so many systems it is hard to know where to start.

  3. So if there is an enemy that someone wants to use with another rule set, which hack provides the clearest stats for making that easy to do.

  4. I think with stats the problem you run into is that in many PbtA games, including AW itself, enemies don’t really have stats. For how much harm they can do and how much harm they can take, you look to the harm rules, not the threat description. So your rat-men might do 1-harm in AW, 2d4-harm in Dungeon World, give the condition “Clawed Up” in Worlds in Peril, etc.

    Special moves, like “when a rat-man bites you, roll+Hard to see if you’re infected with the plague,” will need to be fine-tuned to fit the system, which may be as simple as changing the stat involved, or may need you to completely rewrite the move, depending on the move and the system.

    The other parts of enemies, their agendas, descriptions and MC moves, can be translated pretty easily between any system, even systems that don’t have formal rules for such things. Just play them accordingly.

  6. A thing i use for apocalypse world – and i think it may work for pretty much every *world product, is to customize the GM moves you may use with your monster.

    So, an example from my Apocalypse world campaign:

    CRIMSON, CHIRURGEON AND CHIEF OF THE CONFEDERATION.

    Instincts: Be a moral compass.

    Moves:

    – explain the political consequence of an action, yours or other’s.

    – Use your political power.

    – Heal someone, if you’ve the right material.

    – Make a deal, and keep yourself true to it.

    Eventually, you may ass custom moves for a specific character, like:

    When you show Crimson a scientific project in full details, and he approves it…

    …the GM will tell you how Crimson helps you to realize your project.

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