I’ve never played PbtA, though it doesn’t seem too complex.

I’ve never played PbtA, though it doesn’t seem too complex.

I’ve never played PbtA, though it doesn’t seem too complex.

So it might seem bizarre that i’ve chosen to use the engine for my own project, mixing wuxia and scifi. The reason for this is twofold:

1. I like a system that makes teh GM’s job as easy as possible.

2. The playbooks (though i’d call them something more thematic) allow for more esoteric setting/character concepts to be realised in games.

TO that end I envision some of the basic moves as thus:

Rise Up Against – facing oppression evil and injustice.

Face Your Destiny – overcoming a particular obstacle (bit vague)

Honour Another – for social interaction

Proudly Wander – ‘to boldly go’ or travel/navigate.

Killing intent – when you use vengeance to fuel your actions (refer to Storm Warriors where Wind takes on the power of Evil to defeat the Big Bad and risks personal corruption – or the Dark Side of the FOrce).

Petition the Intellects – the August Intellects (AI) or indeed any interface with tech action.

22 thoughts on “I’ve never played PbtA, though it doesn’t seem too complex.”

  1. Seriously, play some PbtA games if you want to use the engine. It will give you a better sense for how the various moving parts interact. You can find on-line games aplenty. Reading some will get you about half way there.

  2. I’d play with some experienced people before jumping into using it for a design. There is actually way more that makes a pbta game successful than the resolution mechanic and the playbook structure. The MC agendas and do’s and don’ts are actual rules. Also the choice of what is a move and what isn’t completing drives the feel of the game. If all of your moves are ‘roll to overcome this type of obstacle’ then the game will come off as one note. I’d probably try out a game of Apocalypse World or Monster Hearts, they are probably the easiest to see how move snow ball creates the plot.

  3. The Halls of Gaming are littered with PbtA games written by people who didn’t truly grok PbtA games.

    It is not a generic system that can be borrowed and hacked. It is a deeply complex machine that can, at best, only be glimpsed outside of play.

    At least the good ones are.

    The dime a dozen bad ones, no even talks about any more.

  5. I’m someone else that can’t play much either, but I’m holding off on game design because if I can’t playtest a bunch I can’t make a game good.

  7. G. Whistler Zero harm in trying!! By all means try!! But much like trying to build an actual engine by understanding that gasoline and some sort of pressure and some sort of spark are involved, trying can be exciting and fun, but may not give you the results you wanted, and reading a few manuals and tinkering with a few other similar engines might help get you what you want faster 🙂

  13. Pedro Pereira and Mark Cleveland Massengale are both kind of right! If you want a game design to tinker with or use as a jumping-off place, AW is a good one. “Moves” is pretty much a signature of PbtA games like Blades in the Dark, although how the moves are implemented varies from game to game.

  14. There are games that are pretty much designed to be the genetic structure to build a project around. Fate, both Core and Accelerated; and Cortex Plus/Prime can easily do wuxia genre mash-ups directly and with little fuss.

  15. All this said, the names of your potential moves are evocative and interesting! The hard part is figuring out what happens when you roll+stat and hit/partial/or fail. What do I roll on to Honor Another and what happens when I miss? What are the GM’s options for moves against me then? Speaking of GM, what are the GM Agendas, Always Say, and Principles? Don’t answer here, but do think about the answers as you’re tinkering.

  16. Meguey Baker Moves are just a thematic formalisation of how the game resolves actions. Every game has that to some degree, usually in the section covering skills.

  18. Ya know, I came back and re-read your triggers and something clicked for me. Not that it’s a bad thing, but they sound less like move triggers, and more like story shifts, or arcs. Might be useful to know about a PbtA variant that is a lot like a Fate story compel.

    I first saw it in Masks a couple years ago- it is called a Moment of Truth. It’s a moment where the player decides something that is the playbooks bit of interest or fatal flaw. They’re supposed to do this as a bit of a solo moment. Its aimed at agreeing on a suitable scene, and narrating the results with the table according to a loosely defined script.

    Or you could keep it real simple: use those moves as XP triggers.

  20. I mean there’s more than one way to skin a cat. You could have those be move triggers, but moves tend to include the specific consequences and success results, which may be a great fit but often it’s not if how you want these to trigger will necessarily vary a lot.

    But you still want to ensure those are happening in your game a lot, that is a good reason to make it an xp trigger.

    If you want to have them be infrequent things with a bit of a narrative railroad the players get to customize, the Moment of Truth mechanic might be an useful way to include them. Like: “when you face your destiny as the Researcher, decide if you accept your fate or refuse it, and if you accept it then _, if you refuse it, _” etc

  21. Mark Cleveland Massengale I would counter that Blades is vastly different from what we recognize as PbtA. It’s not “when X, roll + Y and consult chart…” it’s a very different set of fictional triggers.It’s much more like a traditional skills-based game in general play cycle though massively informed by PbtA ethos.

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