Working on my playbooks for #NahualRPG, I’m realizing that they’ll have a lot (about 20ish) of improvements options to buy with “XP”. What do you think about it? Is that too much?
Working on my playbooks for #NahualRPG, I’m realizing that they’ll have a lot (about 20ish) of improvements options…
Working on my playbooks for #NahualRPG, I’m realizing that they’ll have a lot (about 20ish) of improvements options…
More choices as far as character development is concerned is always better. The typical Dungeon World playbook has about 18 advanced moves.
it seems like a lot. Having a relatively small number of advances promotes focused choices and speeds gameplay as players use less playtime to look through the options.
I think a big part of what makes it work (or not) is how many of those choices are unique or semi-unique, and how many are reserved as late-game advancements.
For example, Monsterhearts skins have 14 options all together: 9 regular playbook advances and 5 season advances.
But those 9 regular advances are really just 4 different choices: advance a stat x4, new playbook move x2, new cross-playbook move x2, and gang x1. Those take up a bit of headspace, but it’s not so many options that it causes choice paralysis.
By contrast, AW has 10 above the line advances, but they’re more customized and specific than the MH ones, so they take up lot more headspace. The stat increase moves aren’t standardized across playbooks, and there are more custom options.
All of Dungeon world’s advancements are functionally equivalent to the “choose a move from this playbook”, but each playbook has 10 different options for low-level characters and then more for high-level.
I think AW and DW are about the limit of what works in PbtA. You might be able to get more advances from a strictly numerical standpoint, but that means cutting down on the headspace that thinking about each advancement demands.