I bet you’re wondering how PbtA evolved and which games were inspired by which other games. Here’s a rough draft of a figure cross-referencing them all. There are a couple gaps — feel free to help me fill them or point out any mistakes I might have made.
I couldn’t decide whether to list PbtA games that were inspired by one of AW’s offshoots as also having been inspired by AW so that’s where there might be some error.
John Harper Stop being so inspired!
Very nice! Could you do some kind of connectivity diagram, or is there not enough data for that to be meaningful?
I had wanted to do it as a flowchart but so many of 2nd and 3rd wave games feed into multiple 1st wave games that it gets muddy and hard to interpret really fast.
Nice. I should note that Uncharted Worlds is like 60% Dungeon World- 40% Apocalypse World in inspiration
Sean Gomes Uncharted Worlds was one of the 2-3 where I had to estimate the start date. Can you give me a more precise start date?
Whoof, my first thought is “the dawn of effing time”. Feels like it.
I think it was a few months after Dungeon World, and a bit into Mass Effect 3. So late 2012. 2013 is a good guess, that’s kinda when it transitioned from “a one-shot for my gaming group” to “hey this could work”.
(Uncharted Worlds started as a Mass Effect fan-hack of Apocalypse World, where each species was tied to one of the stats: Krogans were Hard, Asari were Hot, Salarians were Sharp, etc).
Circles of Power is also strongly inspired by Dream Askew, FYI.
That is a massive list.
I suppose you could also index them according to citation to see which games were most influential (heavy bias toward early games). It would probably look like this:
40 Apocalypse World
16 Dungeon World
16 Monsterhearts
6 Sagas of the Icelanders
3 Simple World
3 Night Witches
3 The Warren
3 Urban Shadows
3 The Sprawl
3 Dream Askew
2 The Regiment
1 Monster of the Week
1 World of Dungeons
1 World Wide Wrestling
1 Blades in the Dark
1 Masks: A New Generation
1 Velvet Glove
1 tremulus
I say probably because I don’t have sources of inspiration for some of the newest games which might add a couple to the list or change the order a little and AW would be higher if you count all PbtA as having been influenced by it, even if it’s not mentioned directly.
There’s Aaron Griffin’s Uncharted Wonders, which is an Age of Steam hack of Uncharted Worlds. Seemed really cool, even in the early stages. I’m not sure if he’s still working on it though. Last I saw it was at v0.4, back in December.
Yeah it was very very early and rough. I was aiming for an improvisational exploration set of moves and principles that never seemed to click. I’ll come back to it at some point!
Please do, I really liked where it was going. Hell, if you come up with some nice improv-exploration mechanics I may counter-steal them for planetary exploration in Carta Galaxia.
Kult – Divinity Lost should be on that list.
kickstarter.com – KULT: Divinity Lost – Horror Roleplaying Game (RPG)