So AW and many PbtA games have playbook advances that include “take a move from another archetype”
The thought being, once the character is established, one of the directions it can grow is outward, expanding or changing its focus.
An event in one of my recent games made me realize another, admittedly wonky, way of allowing the character to expand in a new direction:
*Take a basic move from another PbtA game.
Thoughts?
I did suggest this in a MH game Saturday that a certain character needed Read a Sitch
Fun and funny for a kind of weird dimension hopping game (read: jumping between PbtA games) probably, but not something I would entertain in a game otherwise.
That’s basically just asking the MC for a custom move
Eric Duncan, that’s more or less the situation that prompted this musing. The mortal in my MH game took Heightened senses. But in fiction she wasn’t becoming more werewolf-like so much as she was becoming more Masks-beacon-like.
Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock, I wasn’t thinking so much about dimension-hopping as about games that already have thematic or setting overlap. Like, if you want your MH character to explore the larger monstrous world that exists beyond the high school, you could take “hit the streets” from urban shadows (but roll with dark since there are no factions). Or if your Masks character is going in a Harry Potter magical struggle direction, you might adapt the moon magic move from Epyllion.
I’m thinking this is probably more appropriate for a below-the-line advance, certainly. It’s really just a way of encouraging and codifying custom moves.
Oh man, is that ever cool.
Alan Scott Using moves from other games is a great starting point for making your own custom moves, either for a specific flavour-appropriate playbook, as a custom move used for a specific situation, or as a new general move.
This will of course cause drift from the core concept of the game you’re playing, but if you and the group are comfortable with that, it’s a great way to shape your play experience to your group’s tastes.
Some of the Adult Moves in Masks are exactly that. In a controlled manner.
Taking inspiration from other PbtA games is fine, but moves from PbtA games are by no means interchangeable between games. If I’m playing Apocalypse World and take the “pulling strings” move from Monsterhearts, what does that even mean? What about the further-afield PbtA games like Undying and Murderous Ghosts?
I’d go with the suggestions above instead. If you want to make this player-facing, give them an advance like “You and the MC can make a custom move together” and use moves from other games as inspiration. But don’t just hot-swap moves.
It’s very important to keep in mind that not all PbtA games are the same. The basic mechanic may be identical, but implementations can be quite different.
More than just the mechanics, it’s about the genre: we’re having a conversation depending on a specific genre, with certain tropes.
Picking a move from another PbtA is at best diluting the conversation, and at worst, can break the consistency of the game.
My understanding is that a certain game limits the moves you can have. Let’s say you’re a messed up monstrous teen in MH and you pick a move that helps you understand people (à la Read a Person): you are specifically ruining the purpose of the game IMO.
So, I wouldn’t do that, unless you know what you’re doing and everybody is cool with the specific move you’ve picked.
I suspect sometimes it would just make the game not fun to take certain basic moves.
See, I agree with most of the above (moves aren’t made to be hot-swappable, et al), but I think this sounds like a great way to get messy and learn about the game.
Part of the ethos of PbtA games is hackability, to the point where AW itself has an entire chapter about it. I think these games are built with the assumption that some groups are going to screw around with the core mechanisms, even if they lack the experience or a good reason to do it beyond “let’s try it”. I love that!
By all means, talk it through with your group, then try it out, revert it if necessary. RPGs are messy; that’s why you usually play with people you know and trust.
I think taking moves from other games wouldn’t be a problem if you take a moment to think of how the fiction of those moves would affect the fiction of your game. For example, using any of the maelstrom moves from AW in MotW would mean your bringing the maelstrom into your game which would actually be pretty cool. Now you can include monsters from this dimension or even explain magic as the manifestation of the maelstrom in our physical world. Honestly I’ve found most half decent MCs can make all matter of unusuallness into a fun concept at the table including crossing elements from different games.