Hello all,
my players want to play in a longer game. They choose from 8 different Games and UW won out! So, we are heading into a longer UW campaign, the first PbtA game I will ever run pretty much. only played once. I read so much and watched so many actual plays already I think I understand how it works.
The Question I have are:
What are the most common mistakes you made as a new UW/PbtA GM?
What did you miss out on campaign creation and wished you had done?
What area of UW you found lacking and felt the need to houserule?
I would love to hear from many of you.
1) Leveling up – I ended up writing Moves related to the story and setting as an alternative to their career and origin moves. And, of course, slowed it down a bit.
2) NPCs – more of them, and more rooted in habitats and factions
I’ve not run or played in an UW game yet, so I can’t answer question #3. But I can help with the other two.
1) My first game of Apocalypse World (the first PbtA game our group played) crashed and burned hard after only three sessions. Part of that was because I didn’t make enough MC Moves; both when the players rolled misses and when they looked at me to continue the conversation.
Because I didn’t make moves, the players had nothing for their characters to react to, meaning they made fewer moves, meaning there were fewer 7-9’s and 6’s for me to advance the fiction. The whole game entered this horrible death spiral and imploded.
So, my advice is to keep things interesting. Make sure the players have lots of things for their players to react to. Doing that will keep the moves flowing, the dice hitting the table, and the narrative moving forward.
2) In that same AW game, I did not spend enough time establishing the setting. I didn’t get everyone on the same page of what the world looked like, what the characters did, or how they were connected. Part of the reason the players made so few moves was because they didn’t really know what to expect.
So my advice here is to take a good long time on the set up so that everyone is on the same page about what, where, why, who, and how of things.
Good luck? Even if things go badly, you’ll still learn from your mistakes. 😀
I just had a Monsterhearts campaign go bust. Mostly this was a communication failure about what tI’ype of game we were all looking to play. Maybe that’s less likely for you because your players picked UW, but I’d still recommend being very clear about what type of game it will be at the start.
PbtA games can be a big shift for veteran gamers of more strategic types of games. Power Gamers who want to optimize their characters can find ways to do that here, and that is okay as long as they have the clear understanding that this is a story-driven game and telling a good story together comes first.
I’m also playing in a Masks campaign. Our GM has had a hard time transitioning from Pathfinder to PbtA when it comes to running combat. It’s too easy to fall into old habits of initiative order, forgetting to make moves in response. This results in dull sequences that are easily overcome.
For combat, throw out everything you know from systems like D&D and keep the combat as part of the story, part of the role play. Set the scene, give PCs something to react to, ask them what they do. When they do things, have your NPCs react by making moves. Let their successes and failures both influence what happens next.
Don’t go around the table letting each person take a turn in order – that might be most fair, but it’s not the most interesting or the best story. Ask “what do you do?” to the person who logically makes sense to take action next.
If people are sitting back and watching, reel them in. “You just saw your buddy have a plasma cannon shoot him across the room. What do you do?” “While your friends are fighting that, you notice six more marines heading down the hallway toward you from behind. What do you do?”
Oh, you want to run across the kill zone to get to that plasma cannon and take it away from the enemy? Awesome, roll Face Adversity with Physique to see whether you get there safely…
10+ you dodge bullets and photon torpedoes and get control of the plasma cannon.
7-9 you get there, but there’s a hard choice involved. maybe a teammate got shot. You can help him, or you can fire the plasma cannon. Or maybe the cannon got damaged by the crossfire as you approached it. You’ll probably only get one shot out of it, and it might explode. Still want to use it?
6 or less – most likely you got your ass all shot up running into the middle of all that fire like an idiot and are now bleeding out in the middle of the room, and someone else has to save you. Maybe you’re in a suit that’s armored, but managed to get your oxygen supply shot and are venting air.
You want to close and lock the door to the hallway behind you, keeping those marines out? Fantastic. Easily done. And now, while you were doing that, here’s what all the NPCs do with my GM moves during that time. You turn around from the closed door and see…
Another easy trap to fall into is letting the players roll on something and then having a fail be “you didn’t do it so nothing happens.”
If it was important enough for them to roll, something happens either way the roll goes. Failure has consequences. This is an opportunity for you to make GM moves – use it! It might not always be obvious. Let’s say the player was trying to open a lock and rolled a 6. Of course, the lock doesn’t open is the obvious outcome… but what else? Maybe bad guys show up behind them? Perhaps they set off an alarm? Maybe the door they were trying to access opens anyway, but there are dudes with guns pointed at them right on the other side! Always make your GM moves and move the fiction forward.
Oh Jesus Christ, yes! If a move is triggered, you have to resolve it, and if the dice come up as a 6-, you have to make a GM move. That’s how PbtA games work, and not following those rules means your game will fall apart real fast.
. For later, I have things to add
See Sean Gomes’ message: Far Beyond Humanity Update #4. He spoke about making revisions to the Advancement system and that should benefit your long-term game.
Great info all of you! 🙂 A great community here.
Christian Biskup the moves aren’t all the players can do. They’re just what you roll dice for. Everything else just happens.
Yeah, I’m totally with Aaron Griffin here. The moves are not just a list of actions the characters can take, and they are certainly not the only things the characters can do Christian Biskup. The moves are just mechanical effects that trigger when certain, usually narrative, conditions are met.
That would be a good thing to make clear to your players Marcus Burggraf. The Basic Moves are not a list of possible actions.
We might be agreeing without knowing it Christian Biskup.
Dice rolls are only trigger by moves, yes. No one is disagreeing with you there. And if a move gets triggered, then it has to be resolved, yes.
But, I think I disagree with you about that thief example. The Thief has a move related to disarming traps. No other class does. But that doesn’t mean only the thief can disarm traps. Anyone can try that. What it means the Thief has a special move that triggers, while anyone else trying to disarm a trap will trigger a different move. Like Defy Danger.
Not having a certain move doesn’t mean the character can’t do that thing. It just means another, usually more general, usually subpar move will trigger.
Chris Stone-Bush You just blew my mind and explained one of my biggest PbtA gripes away. It was a “CLICK” moment where so much came together and I understood.
It took me a while to grok that too Marcus Burggraf. 😉
Sometimes a Basic Move covers the attempt. Other times it’s a GM move. Like “Tell them the consequences and ask.”
Christian Biskup when there’s no player facing move, the GM should be issuing GM moves. This keeps the drama flowing. So when someone says “I want to swing off the rafters and jump on the mech” and no move matches, it’s on the GM to make a move in response. (“When everyone looks to you to see what happens”)