Hi all

Hi all

Hi all,

very new to PbtA. Never ran, never played. I came here from the Kult quickstart that is a kind of PbtA derivative. And in order to understand it better I dug into PbtA. I will admit, in the past I HATED PbtA. I simply did not get them with Dungeon World the one I was primarily exposed to. But after watching Adam Koebel Run PbtA on Roll20 I am intrigued and want to dig deeper.

How well does it work with many players? I feel there is a lot of communication going on and the group I ususally play with has 6 players.

And is there any “Swashbuckling” or “Conan” like Hacks around?

13 thoughts on “Hi all”

  1. Hi! I’m glad that Kult brought you into the PbtA community. I can’t wait for the new edition to come out either (I also backed the kickstarter). Anyway, regarding the number of players, generally speaking most PbtA games are not design for big groups. Three or four players is usually the ideal. More than that and the game starts to break. There could be some exception out there I don’t know about, but I doubt it. The way PbtA games normally flow is not suited for that many players. And often the games themselves are aware of this and say so in the text.

    Also, if you are still having doubts about how PbtA games are supposed to be played and how the are different from other games (other than watching the great Adam Koebel in action), I’ve heard many people recommend reading the Dungeon World Guide as a way of understanding them. Supposedly is what made many of them finally get what PbtA games are all about. You can get it on the DW downloads page for free: http://www.dungeon-world.com/downloads/

    Good luck with your game and don’t hesitate to ask any other doubt you may have here.

  3. Thanks, guess this answers most of it! I feel after reading PbtA and Kult QS that 2 players seems kind of little, but doable much easier then more players, so thanks. The DW Guide is really useful and already explained a lot to me. But the videos was that showed: It is not that different from a normal game. Just an actual play video that would actually show and name the GM moves used is nowhere to be found sadly,. Will keep an eye on the community and hopefully participate once I had a chance to actually play the game!

  4. Two players it’s totally doable! I’ve doe before and it works really well. It focused the play a lot in the relationship between them.

    Regarding the GM moves, the reason of why you never see them mentioned is because you are suppose to “Cloak your moves in darkness” or something like that. Meaning that you should never say the name of the move, instead just narrating the effects of it. Instead of saying “ok, you got a 4. I’m going to use the Separate Them move” you are suppose to say something like “you manage to open the lock. But as you go throughout the door, it closes again behind you, leaving everyone else on the other side. You are alone in the darkness of the cathedral, what do you do?”. Anyway, have fun!

  5. I have no experience with Kult or the new PbtA version. But I find it difficult to run PbtA games with more than four players. It’s not that the rules don’t work or the mechanics fall apart or anything. I just feel that players get too little spotlight time with more than four (plus the GM) sitting at the table.

  6. I’ve only played in a couple of PbtA games, and so far I’d say that 3 players is the sweet spot; 2 players was fine but it didn’t give quite enough to bounce off and 4 players was okay but as Chris Stone-Bush mentioned it results in just a touch less spotlight time than I’d like.

  7. Hijos Del Rol  As a learning exercise and showing :Look, it isn`t as complicated as you might think” this would be a great “training” video. Just have them edited in as a subtitle or something after the game is recorded just so one can get a feel for how PbtA does what it does. Getting a game on my schedule is challenging atm hence I rely a lot on AP to learn new systems.

  8. Hi Marcus Burggraf, welcome. There are more hacks than I can list at this point, although many of them are here: plus.google.com – Nearly all the PbtA games in print! In not any great order! Monserthearts…

    As for how many players you need or can accommodate, part of the design of Apocalypse World, and therefor of many PbtA games, is a flexible number of players. One GM and one player is doable, but arguably more work for both people, because nobody gets any downtime while other people are in the spotlight. I like running for groups of 3 to 5 players, and I’ve run for 8 but it involves lots of juggling and players able to deal with lots of time off-screen. My suggestion: read whatever PbtA game you are running, and have the first session with as many players as you feel comfortable running for, and then figure that if not all of them can show up, you run for a subset. Other PCs are assumed to be busy doing their thing, and when that player can make it to game night, then you get to write a Love Letter (at least in many games) to find out what happened off screen while the rest of the party was dealing with the stuff you were laying down.

  10. Having run for larger groups, I feel like the trick is to minimize the number of NPCs, and let conflicts and relationships between the players become even more central to the game than they already are. Loop the backstory and special circumstances of each character to each other. Follow the book advice about creating PC-NPC-PC triangles, but make them quadrilaterals or pentagons instead. If you’re lucky you can use your moves and principles to create PC-PC-PC triangles, no NPCs needed. That means that everyone or nearly everyone at the table can be invested in each scene because it’s important to their characters. Some PBTA games work better for this than others–Core AW and Monsterhearts, for example, can thrive when it’s just the PCs and their drama, while games like Dungeon World or Masks really need external antagonists.

  12. Marcus Burggraf A “example of play” video with the GM moves called out in the subtitles would actually be really cool. Sort of like how in Apocalypse World 2e, the extended example calls out the GM moves when they happen. Honestly, as actual play becomes more common on Twitch and elsewhere, that sort of intentional “Example of Play” video seems like it would be a lot more useful than the classic written version that comes in most RPG books.

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