Tell me one specific thing you like about a PbtA game you like.

30 thoughts on “Tell me one specific thing you like about a PbtA game you like.”

1. Sagas of the Icelanders has giant holes of competence around the basic moves, so the actions of the characters are constrained and they often don’t have the right tools to solve problems “correctly”.

2. The Let It Out move in Urban Shadows.

   When you let out the power within you, roll with Spirit. On a hit, choose 1 and mark corruption. On a 10+, ignore the corruption or choose another from the list.

   » Take +1 forward on your next roll

   » Extend your senses, supernatural or otherwise

   » Frighten, intimidate, or impress your opposition

   » Take definite hold of something vulnerable or exposed

   Edit: What I like is that it’s a super open move that packages up “use some super natural powers however you want” but it’s not really like a concrete move that really settles anything. It’s almost entirely a setup move – a built in player facing move snowball!

3. Corruption moves in Urban Shadows. It’s easy to say “the dark side is pretty tempting,” but these are set up to provide both a slippery slope you actually want to slide down, for better or worse.

4. Apocalypse World (and I suppose most other PbtA games). Every time you engage a move the fiction must significantly change. You can never have that situation where you are stuck rolling the same move over and over to attack a guy or unlock a door or whatever because some major shit must go down every time you touch the dice or otherwise trigger a move.

5. Jason Pitre I love that too! It’s a really cool example of how to use mechanics to reinforce a setting!

6. Friendship Gems in Epyllion and the Epyllion focus on Help or Hinder after the roll. Other players give you gems for fulfilling their virtue, and you add the number they’ve given you when you help out. Also, constantly asking who can or will help on a 6 or 9.

   Players constantly looking to help or give gems keeps the entire table fully engaged, even in a scene with only a single character in it.

7. I love when you use the Read a Person move on another PC in AW, it forces them to both think and talk about their characters inner life in a way that feels more natural and play driven(to me, anyway) than having their beliefs written down on their character sheet beforehand.

8. GM not rolling dice.

9. Damage die based on class in Dungeon World, rather than based on weapon.

10. The Savvyhead’s Workshop.

11. 1. The MC moves list.

    2. First session rules

12. Retire to safety in Apocalypse World.

13. The extensive advice on how to use moves to spotlight or engage with each of the Mask playbooks as a GM.

14. Oscar Iglesias it feels odd when I roll dice as a GM these days, thanks to PbtA.

15. As Corruption is already taken, let’s go with Jaded from The Watch.

    Oh wait, same thing. Having two advancement systems, one from losing your soul and one from being awesome is super great.

16. Craig Vial FUCK yes.

17. A puzzle piece clicked into place when I realized that a GM move need not necessarily follow from the immediate fiction. A PC rolls a 6- on their “seize by force” move to grab the MacGuffin away from the baddie. I don’t have to adjudicate that as a “failure”. I can “announce future badness” instead: great, you’re sprinting away with the MacGuffin, but you notice it’s leaking, dripping this ugly phosphorescent trail that leads right to you …

18. Fiction first. When I ask the players “what do you do?” They can just tell me without staring at character sheets. Particularly good for new players.

19. The Moment of Truth from Masks is something I love. It gives the player a really great idea of what exactly their playbook does best, what they are at their strongest and brightest and best. It gives players the opportunity to do that two-page-spread in the comic where they are just awesome, then it’s gone.

20. Rather than have a paragraph for each NPC, The Warren has one line telling you how to roleplay each animal.

21. Aaron Griffin That’s interesting. In our group we almost never used Let it out. We never found what that was all about. The implementation of Masks, called Unleash Your Powers, worked much better for us. I think the reasons :

    – You define your power themes at chargen.

    – There are only two things to choose from in the move.

    – It is clearly a fallback move.

22. I really dig Hit the Streets in UA. Roll to get help from a contact. Make one up, if you have to. On 7-9, they have their own problems currently. – It’s a side job generator, activated player side!

23. Spirit of 77 making Background and Role combinable, instead of writing dozens of playbooks.

24. I adore all of these answers. I kept trying to think of my own but they all seem like rpg advice or ways to act better in games. I think as a whole it’s helped shape our discourse about the aims, objectives and role of the GM. It’s affected all games I’ve run, but the mechanics flow best with these attitudes in PbtA.

    In my general wittering to people about writing, I have often used advice from PbtA games like “draw maps, leave blanks” and “ride your supporting cast like stolen cars”.

25. I like how the MC Moves are a list of tools and techniques that I’ve used for years, given names, so when I take them out and use them, I can acknowledge it and notice when I don’t use one as often.

26. The tone and language choice in AW. The brainer isn’t just somebody with psychic powers their the “weird psycho psychic mindfucks”. You never just say “I want intimidate the guard” nah man you gotta go up and get aggro in his face and even then he might “force your hand and suck it up “.

    After reading AW I firmly believe that your game should be written just how you want it to be played and if you write it like a history textbook that’s how people are going to treat it. Please don’t dump your fiction in neat little paragraphs, instead let it bleed into every part of your game.

27. John Perich I also sometimes just put the Hard Move in my pocket and bring it out later if I don’t have a clear idea at the time of the miss.

28. Turn Someone On in Monsterhearts. The fact that I that it almost perfectly models the fact that as teens we have so little control over what turns us on, but that it still gives agency to the player of the turned on character re how they respond.

29. I love the Hx system in Apocalypse World (2e, specifically). The questions in character creation do an amazing job of setting up the relationships between the characters and the basic “who knows you better/worse” question at the end of each session provides a simple mechanism to reflect on how those relationships have changed, without becoming overbearing.

30. In AW (but also every other PbtA game), the conflict resolution system is startlingly simple, but incredibly nuanced.

    Roll 2d6 and add your attribute. Something always happens, no matter what result you get, and often there are hard choices which the player has to decide on, making the consequences less something the GM rules from on high, and more the choice you as a player are willing to accept.

    This disclaims responsibility for bad things that happen, and also includes the player in the creative process.

Comments are closed.