Has anyone considered or played around with this idea?

Has anyone considered or played around with this idea?

Has anyone considered or played around with this idea?

When starting a PbtA game, your group could decide to give the campaign a certain flavor by choosing to “open” one of the playbooks. This would give all characters access to choose moves from that playbook. You might start with that playbook’s starting moves in addition to your own, or it might involve some effort to unlock.

As an example, a DW campaign in grim dark world where there is only war might open the Fighter: everyone gets a fun weapon and is more capable in combat.

Obviously this warps the PbtA philosophy of character uniqueness; I’m not super interested in discussing whether its a good idea or not in that light, aside from mentioning that it can be thought of as a (probably?) simple, easily accessible hack of the base game.

19 thoughts on “Has anyone considered or played around with this idea?”

  1. Characters can already take moves from other playbooks; they can all have [misc. other playbook move] from their very first advance, if they wanted to.

    Or are you suggesting giving everyone +1 move at character creation, as long as that +1 move comes from [agreed upon playbook]? Or everyone gets [specific move] at creation?

    PbtA games aren’t really afraid of “overpowering” characters, so +1 free move (if that’s your idea) doesn’t actually matter in that regard.

    Its primary impact, that I see, is going to come from “everyone having X”, impacting upon the uniqueness of either someone playing X, or everyone having moves in common – which is not an aspect you’re interested in discussing. But it’s not just “but he’s not unique anymore!” It’s also “everyone is doing X,” which … you know, overlaps with your “theme” idea. If “everyone gets a car, a la Sprawl Driver,” well… it’s a mobile game, now, right? OTOH, the Driver gets all sorts of bonuses from his car’s Power that other playbooks don’t, so if you’re giving them all the full Driver abilities rather than just a car… you’re addressing more than just theme.

    I don’t see it really impacting the fictional flavor of a campaign very much, except for certain moves (e.g., if everyone has access to priestly magic; or everyone has a savvyhead’s workstation, or a hocus’ followers), but largely because of the fictional consequences of everyone being a cult leader, not so much because of the move itself. If everyone got +1 cold, for instance, or +1 armor, I don’t see it having any meaningful impact at all except watering down the classes that fulfill certain roles based on having more cold or more armor (e.g., the Battlebabe does stuff other characters don’t because she rarely fails Act Under Fire – she’s not really the battlebabe anymore if no one gives a fuck about AUF).

    In all, I guess it depends on whether everyone is getting the same move, and whether it’s a move with significant fictional consequences (e.g., Hocus’ followers) or a move that directly relates to the niche-defining abilities of a certain playbook.

    So… which of the dozen versions above are the ones you’re actually talking about? 🙂

  3. So if Fighter was open, you could, when advancing:

    Pick an advance from your playbook (as standard)

    or

    Pick a move from the Fighter playbook.

    Interesting idea. What if masks are a theme? Metro 2033. Faceless. Or space fighter pilots taking from Driver? Ooh. Me likey.

  4. On second thought, the clarifying question needs to be asked: which PbtA game?

    DW restricts its multiclassing moves more heavily than, say, AW. In DW, for instance, the bard has 3 multiclass moves; the druid specifically gets 2 ranger moves, etc.

    In AW, on the other hand, every playbook gets 2 moves from another playbook by default (except child-thing, with 4); and 2 moves from their own playbook, suggesting that things are already pretty “open.”

    “Opening” up a playbook is going to look really different for a DW Druid, where it’s a huge change; a DW bard, where it makes almost no difference at all; and AW, where it’s unlikely to make a difference, but I guess might, if a player was feeling really squeezed by that 2 move limit.

    Although, again, the impact here varies between “are we giving everyone one specific move; are we giving everyone 1 free move from another playbook; are we giving people nothing but the opportunity to use another playbook as “your playbook” for spending advances, etc.”

  7. I think the way to do it might be to take the playbook out of, well, play. Add the starting moves of the playbook to the basic moves list and say that anyone can take the playbook’s advanced moves as they become available. Nobody can pick the Fighter playbook because everybody’s a fighter to some extent, in other words.

    It’d double the amount of stuff every player has to know and probably have a weird effect on balance, but it’s probably worth trying. I feel like Dungeon World is the best test bed for this idea because the classes have very simple and obvious niches by comparison to something like Masks.

  10. Nice!

    Another idea could be to just take the most significant move and make a custom move for the campaign.

    So, for example, a game set in the Golden Compass world could have every character with an animal companion like the ranger.

    If someone want to play that booklet, just give them a free advancement.

  11. J Stein I have not actually played or fully read AW yet (shun the heretic!), so I didn’t realize it was fairly open by default. In a game that has a lot of playbooks like AW I think that makes sense on its own. But yeah, it’s definitely going to depend on the game and the playbook; it obviously wouldn’t make sense for Monsterhearts. But a game full of Hocuses sounds… kind of amazing.

    The idea stemmed from one of my groups preparing to play(test) Impulse Drive – I thought it might be cool for a Star Trek-ish game to open the Intellect to every character, so they could each have some specialized knowledge and generally be a competent member of an advanced civilization, given the flavor of the setting. Or open the Warhorse for a more 40K-ish military-based campaign, or the Infiltrator for a crew of elite clandestine operatives. And then I realized it could be a generic hack that could be applied to many other PbtA games.

    Wright Johnson That was intended, yes.

    Aaron Griffin The Warren’s system is kind of the opposite of this, but that’s also an idea I’d love to play around with; there’s a finite set of basic moves and each player chooses among them to build their character, with no “common” moves. It would (theoretically) emphasize group cohesion and teamwork.

    Andrea Serafini Good alternative for groups that don’t want to fly as fast and loose 🙂

  12. I’d be pretty cautious about trying this, mostly to preserve differentiation, as others have mentioned. Maybe instead of opening up an entire playbook, just give everyone a single move, like Andrea Serafini suggested.

    One change I might make to his suggestion would be to disallow the class the move came from.

    So if I was running an all vampire game of US, like Jason Martinez posted about. I might disallow the Vamp playbook, give everyone the Eternal Hunger move in addition to their normal starting moves and have the other Vamp playbook moves be stuff a player could take as an advancement, like normal. That would, I think, keep everyone from feeling too samey and make sure that the shape shifting vamp (wolf), the demonic vamp (tainted), the magic using vamp (wizard), the otherworldly vamp (fae), etc. still felt very distinct from one another even though they’re all vampires.

  14. In kind of the same vein…in Midsummer (my own urban fantasy PbtA game) there are Realm Books. When you are in a realm (Oz, for example) you get access to the moves unlocked in the book. The book is shared by all the PCs. At start, each Realm Book has rules for choosing stuff. Just like creating a character. And you improve the book just like a character.

  15. Makes sense. Most PtbA games have a designed limit of 4-5 players max but usually have many more play books then that, so unless a player chooses the same playbook that got gutted, uniqueness should still be preserved.

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