How to introduce newbies to the system ?
I mentioned this in the ‘Apocalypse world – session one’ thread by Dale Jennings
Important : this is not an attack on the system.
It just hasn’t clicked for me, but at the same time I feel like there is something to it.
I think I’m not alone in this state of intermediate confusion.
As it is … the system tends to feel too mechanical.
I’m pushing buttons that do stuff. I don’t feel like I’m playing a role as a player.
And as a DM I feel like I am pushing buttons too.
Transcripts in the rulebooks read like “I do this action and I get this result”.
It’s like reading about a D&D session and see players mention what dice they roll (I roll an attack : D20 = 15) and the results (it hits for D6 = 4 damage) instead of the roleplaying itself (“I stab the orc in the knee and the GM says it screams in pain”). That’s nice and all when teaching mechanics, but it doesn’t teach how to be a player or DM in the system. It doesn’t really tell me how an adventure works. Why can’t I have a map with stuff ?
I sort of get the idea of the system, because roleplaying games should be about roleplaying instead of throwing a bunch of dice. Any system that helps both the DM and player with this is a good idea.
One thing that also kind of bothers me is that every PbtA variant feels the need to re-invent the names of core mechanics, which only creates more confusion when attempting to mix or switch settings.
In pretty much any D&D clone the stats have the same names.
Skills and classes may be slightly different, but there usually isn’t a need to rename the core classes like fighter and thief either.
To me this makes me wonder if the system isn’t keeping newbies out. Or at the very least making it tough to learn simply because it does require a paradigm shift to anyone more familliar with the ‘classic’ style of roleplaying.
Of course one could argue that this is because one system has almost half a century worth of community building and tooling. Some of it has even become embedded into our language (or at least within geeky communities) to the point we can even make jokes that everyone can understand (cf: the episodes in the big bang theory that display this hobby).
So … how do we introduce, teach and learn this system so we can ultimately grow the community and perhaps one day rival OSR.
Any links ?
Any tools ?
Any cool stories about how you learned or taught the system ?
I feel like the best thing to do is to try not to come to the game with baggage, basically. Empty your cup so you can fill it, and all that good stuff.
Why are the PbtA games different, with different stats, and moves, and tech? Because they’re different. To dive in assuming it’s just reskinning for the sake of reskinning is weighing yourself down with misunderstanding before you even begin. Everybody does it! Inside and outside the community, honestly. I definitely do it, and have a hard time sliding between different flavors of PbtA on the regular. Have to reread my books frequently to keep them straight in my head, haha.
This is honestly the biggest thing I see from everyone who says they don’t grok PbtA. It seems it’s always people who don’t follow the GM sections by the letter, or who start tinkering with classes before finishing the book, or who pick and choose when to activate or ignore moves regardless of their triggers.
To be clear, not fighting you or anything. But this is my answer: people come to PbtA and are too busy trying to play some other game in their minds to actually start playing something PbtA-flavored. I started out that way too. I just didn’t get it. I learned it — and unlearned my preconceptions by playing with folks who did get it. PbtA is a game that lends itself very, very well to having someone explain it face to face because it’s not about teaching mechanics, it’s explaining a technique or thought process.
You should play the game with an experienced GM/MC. If you’ve read the material and don’t grok it, just get someone to run the game.
To address a few points where I can:
> I’m pushing buttons that do stuff. I don’t feel like I’m playing a role as a player.
This is a common sentiment and I don’t understand where it comes from. The moves are not 100% of what you can do. You can do EVERYTHING ELSE OUTSIDE OF THE MOVES and the outcome is simply decided by fiat. It’s when you do a thing that is a move that the dice are rolled.
> Transcripts in the rulebooks read like “I do this action and I get this result”.
This is because they’re not transcripts of actual play, but are examples to teach the reader how to use the system.
> One thing that also kind of bothers me is that every PbtA variant feels the need to re-invent the names of core mechanics, which only creates more confusion when attempting to mix or switch settings.
I don’t know of any PbtA game that suggests you “mix or switch settings”. The games are much more focused than the general “you can do anything” RPGs of the 90s.
The games don’t tend to change core mechanics, though. They change basic move. But it’s the IDEA of a move that is a core mechanic, not the moves themselves. The reason move names are changed is because, like in the transcripts, the names of these moves will be used, and it keeps the actions on-genre.
The experienced DM is a chicken/egg paradox …
That guy had to start somewhere.
How does one start from scratch/ground zero ?
Empty your mind ?
Great idea, except it doesn’t work like that for everyone. That feels like “there is no spoon”.
It’s not helping to be honest.
I have no problem grokking D&D, because it’s pretty easy to explain and a dungeon crawl is pretty self explanatory too (describe room / do combat or solve puzzle – rinse & repeat as players open doors ).
Which brings me to the second problem/challenge of PbtA.
The books tend to be so free form, so lacking in actual content as it were that it is difficult to find a starting adventure that just works for newbie players and DM’s alike.
ron d Hi, I’m pretty sure folks can learn to play and GM Apocalypse World and various other PbtA games, so don’t despair! Read the book, especially the chapters on the MC’s principles and agendas. Then, find a game to play, or at least watch on Twitch. Maybe think of it as the difference between having someone explain baseball to you, watching a game, and playing a game. You get a very different understanding of the game via each viewpoint.
ron d it feels a bit like you’re being combative. I’m here trying to answer your request for help, but if you just want to argue about why d&d is better for you, that’s not my jam.
Some people just understand the material when the read it. I definitely did on first read. Took a bit to perfect it, but it made absolute sense. I’m suggesting you find a person like that to learn from. This isn’t much different than d&d and other rpgs – start with an experienced gm or facilitator.
A few other super important points I want to make!
1. Apocalypse World is not the game for everyone. Some folks just don’t dig it, the way I don’t dig Toon or Warhammer 40K. No big deal! There are now actually hundreds of ttrpgs available!
2. Some PbtA games are deeper hacks than others, and what you may see as simply renaming stats may or may not be, based on that game alone. PbtA is not a core system that all these games are just settings or modules for, it’s an approach to design that the individual authors find useful.
3. You can have a map. Have all the maps. What’s on your map? Where’s the water? Where’s your food supply? Where’s the high ground? What direction makes the wind blow toxic? Who lives behind that hill and why do you want to keep them there?
4. As in point 1, I’m not interested in rivaling the OSR. Folks love what they love and that is Fantastic I hope lots of folks who play PbtA also play OSR. Because why the hell not?!
5. We, by which I mean Vincent and I, teach Apocalypse World by jumping right in at the convention table. “Ok, so which of you is the gunlugger? Cool, here’s your playbook; Dremmer’s got you tied to a chair and they’re walking back and forth sweating bullets. You may want to read a situation! Ok, see here where the stats are? Check those out, and chose what your stats are, and then this is the basic Read a Sitch move. While you’re doing that, which of you other players is the weirdest? Ok, you’re a Brainer…”
I don’t expect everyone to be able to do this.
I do expect that folks who want to run will read the book, print out the sheets needed for the 1st Session, and follow the rules we wrote. If that doesn’t “click”, folks have had a lot of success with basically whatever PbtA game they play second, because the concepts sink in. So maybe Monster of the Week or Masks or Monsterhearts or Uncharted Worlds. There are a LOT of options!
Meguey Baker MotW and Aw2 do the best jobs of explaining the game of any PBTA games i have read. I would suggest those two to any new to the style pbta player.
Michael Phillips Excellent, thanks!
Aaron Griffin that renaming, in a good drift at least, are important because they aren’t just reskinning. Even though both are combat related moves. The Harm move from AW is not actually the same thing as Cartel’s “When you get Fucking Shot” even though they are both ways of interacting with when bad things happen to you.
Meguey Baker I used to suggest dungeon world, but that is really only for players. The same familiarity that makes it easy to learn to play gets in the way of learning to GM it.
“How to introduce newbies to the system ?”
Here’s my actual introduction pitch for a 4-hour convention table full of brand-new players:
“It’s 50 years since the world broke. You’re a total badass, you get to do wicked cool stuff, sometimes it goes catastrophically wrong. Here’s the thing; there’s people around, plenty of bullets, plenty of fuel, plenty of people – but you few are the only people with any vision to actually make something of this mess. Here are the playbooks, choose what looks cool to you. We’ll need 2d6 and some pencils…”
Michael Phillips Excellent point re: Dungeon World!
I tried MCing Apocalypse World without anyone teaching me the game, and without having played in a PbtA game before. And you know what?
I crashed and burned hard. The game was a disaster that ended after three sessions.
But I learned from my mistakes. I joined G+ groups, listened to actual plays, and asked for advice. I liked the style of the game and wanted to know what I did wrong.
If you don’t have anyone to teach you, you’re going to make mistakes. Just like with everything else. Some things aren’t going to make sense until you see them in action at the table.
Meguey Baker It is a good cold start if you have never played D&D. For both of those people…
Dungeon World is where things started to click for me. Because I was familiar with the tropes of fantasy games, I could better see what the PbtA rules were doing.
Chris Stone-Bush I’ve watched that happen! I ran a convention 1-hour demo, then when time was up the table was So INTO it that someone said “ok, I get it, I’ll run it from here!”. I warned them that they really did need to read the book, but they waved me off with “I’ve been running games for years and I was just here, I got this.” 30 mins later, the proto-MC came over to the booth and said “you were so right! I want to play so bad! Take my money and give me the book!!!” ^_^
Michael Phillips LOL. I’m currently running Keep on the Borderlands. It’s just as fun from this side of the table as it was when I was a kid and it was the brand new module.
Meguey Baker I am considering running Saltmarsh et al. for similar reasons.
Some links and tools!
For a one-shot of Apocalypse World, run by Adam Kobel, co-designer of Dungeon World:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7jim47nx8g
For a one-shot AP of Monsterhearts:
http://oneshotpodcast.com/tag/powered-by-apocalypse/
For understanding PbtA as a design approach, also useful for understanding Apocalypse World directly:
http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/simple-world.pdf
For a quick rundown on a lot of different PbtA games, to see how they are different:
player.fm – +1 Forward (podcast)
This is all really excellent stuff! Hopefully it is more helpful to OP than apparently I was! I dig all these links, Meguey
Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock No guarantee I was more helpful re: the OP, but here’s hoping! And thanks ^_^
To the OP I would say, “Don’t let the MC Moves fool you.”
They are literally just everything you have always done in every other TTRPG.
They’re called “Moves” because Apocalypse Engine games put a lot of emphasis on the MC being a “Player” as much as any other. They’re there to spark your imagination and facilitate the minimal-prep, improvisational style of MCing—what’s commonly called “playing to find out.”
How you introduce new people to Apocalypse World is you print out the sheets and have people fill them in. You ask questions and then you barf forth apocalyptica. Don’t worry about “doing it right” or if it will be “balanced”—you’ve come to Apocalypse World to escape such trappings!
Think of it like a pilot for a TV show. Do we like these characters, scenery, tropes, etc. enough to option an ongoing series? Do we need some recasts or reshoots?
Fuck around and have fun with it. It’s just a game after all! 😊
ron dI think the best way to learn this game is to jump right in.
I ran my first pbta game some months ago; it was Monster of the Week, and I did it all completely wrong! Coming from other game systems I had a preconception of how a game should work and run. I prepped, had a story arc in mind, list of NPC’s, maps etc. This is not the way to run a pbta game. The system fought me – hard. I managed to wing it through, dumping big sections of prep along the way, and using only the broadest strokes of my prep (maps, NPC outlines etc.), but it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
I approached Apocalypse World completely differently, and followed all the advice from the book. I did zero prep (well almost none q.v.), and the first session was like “holy shit, what the hell am I doing here!?”. It’s scary as hell to sit down and run a game without prepping if you’re used to a D20/DnD game. But this is exactly what you need to do. As the session progressed we began to define the world. We did it co-operatively, with the players sharing more of the input than me. I just put the icing on their cake. In hindsight this feels right – after all there are six of us at the table – they should therefore do five times the work, right?
If I can use the analogy of a bike ride, it’s like this:
D20/DnD – I plan a bike ride with friends. I research the route, plan the date, plan the ride, including rest stops, where to eat/drink, and even how much it’ll cost us each for refreshments. They just choose a bike and turn up, following all my directions.
Pbta – I plan a bike ride with friends. We all meet up with our bikes and some change, and cycle somewhere for the sheer joy of it, deciding on the route, when and where we stop, and all the rest as we go. I’m still nominally the ride “leader”, cos I said “let’s go ride a bike”, but that’s it.
See the difference? Let go of a lot of the responsibility, and just have fun. Go along for the ride and see where you end up.
I mentioned my “prep” earlier. This was it:
Read the AW book thoroughly, especially the MC chapters. Go to Youtube and have a look at Adam Koebel’s AW sessions. Revisit the book, and note the basic moves on an index card. Jot down a few ideas for each playbook. Re-read the book, again.
Angel – someone staggers in coughing blood all over the place – what do you do? Who is this person? Do you know them well? If so, do you like them?
Gunlugger – Harley is getting in your face, shouting the odds – what do you do? What did you do to piss him off? How many of his friends are backing him up, and why?
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Visualise a few ideas for scenery, but don’t commit to using any of them! I jotted down a list –
The red waste
Ruined cities
Underground army base (a la “Resident Evil”)
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Maybe generate a few NPC’s too – there are some generators online. I just wrote a list of names I thought would be cool for AW – my favourite – Radweld. Bear in mind your players will be creating a lot of the cast to, during the first session. This is part of the conversation you’ll have following them around, during session zero. Follow all the excellent rules and advice in the AW MC chapter for session zero.
During the first session (session zero), keep the index card of basic moves in front of you. During the conversation, when you’re getting to know the characters, keep an eye out for opportunities to trigger those moves. Ask the players if they’d like to. Everything that happens is triggered by what they do. When they roll a miss (6 or less) it’s your turn to introduce something – make it interesting! Challenge, them, threaten them, hurt them. Heck, even try to kill them (you probably won’t).
Don’t be afraid to go slowly, explain you’re learning the game too. Look stuff up, use the rulebook. If you can’t find a move (yours or theirs) follow your gut. Make a note to look it up after, ready for next time. Make lots of notes about everything during the session. Place, people, things etc. Note them all down. I also set up a voice recorder, so I could listen later, if I forgot any details (I haven’t yet – I made lots of notes).
You could also have a look at some of the books out there about improv gaming – “Unframed” by Engine Publishing I would recommend highly. It boils down to saying “yes, and”, or “yes, but”, following what the players create.
Most importantly just have fun. Also be aware that the first time, or few, you may not “get it”. That’s fine too. You may not find pbta to your taste, or you may need a few goes to get it. Either is cool.
But the reward, in my opinion, is if you stick at it, and you do get it, you’ll find a breath of fresh air to your gaming. There’s something very liberating about letting go, and empowering your players. You’re there to have fun just as much as they are, and none of you really know what will happen next. The story starts to take on a life of its own, as you play, and you all get to find out what happens together.
I say all of this from the grand viewpoint of having run exactly three pbta sessions. My first, pretty awful, MotW game, and a grand total of two Apocalypse World sessions. However, even after that limited experience I can see how much fun this game will be, and during session one (our second session) I swear I could actually feel my brain begin to “grok” the game.
My advice – just do it. Jump in, run a session. See how you get on. What’s the worst that can happen? After all, you can always go back to the “safety” of DnD if you don’t like it. But you just might find yourself hooked…
Have fun, and take your game to the next level.
I ran a game of The Sprawl yesterday evening with a bunch of players some of whom had played PbtA before and some who were relative newbies. I printed out the playbooks but forgot to print out the Basic Moves sheets. Now I’d normally regard this a a fail but it focused the players (and me) on narrating the game with out looking at the moves (except for the custom moves on the playsheets). Did wonders for the game as everyone concentrated on narrating what they did rather than reading the basic moves sheet and basing narration on that. Try that and see if it work better for you.
“As it is … the system tends to feel too mechanical.
I’m pushing buttons that do stuff. I don’t feel like I’m playing a role as a player.
And as a DM I feel like I am pushing buttons too.”
I get this. I felt the same way at first. But the key, for me, was to understand that you are not exactly supposed to look at your playbook/MC sheet and say “I want to do this thing that is written here”. You are supposed to roleplay, and when you roleplay an action that is listed as a move – then the rules kick in. Just as in trad games.
The options given as moves, or by moves, may seem like buttonpushing at first. But I think they are best thought of as a way to formalise what you probably have been doing all the time in other games. If they ever feel restricting it is probably because the intention is to nudge the roleplaying in a direction that fits the theme of the game.
This is also, as others have pointed out, why the different names for the “same” moves are relevant. Not only can the name itself signal a certain theme, the moves are usually not the same at all. Dungeon World’s “Hack & Slash” is similar to Urban Shadows’ “Unleash an attack” and to Apocalypse World’s (1st ed, not sure about 2nd) “Go aggro” and “Seize by force”. But they are not the same. The wording and options differs, because the games are supposed to tell different kinds of stories. Violence in a political urban fantasy setting means something else than violence in a mad max-style world.
You are right that this means that there is a bit more of a learning curve when moving between these games, compared to games that are basically clones of each other. Of course that is the case. The learning curve is there because there are differences – both subtle and obvious – between the games, and these differences are what makes them interesting to play in the first place.
Thanks for all the comments so far 🙂
Even if it may not be of immediate use to me I do hope it helps others with similar questions to mine.
No, I’m not trying to be combative. I’m just trying to get a read on the system and how it works, because it is different and the lack of pre-made stuff is so weird to me.
One thing I have noticed is that a lot of these PbtA inspired games tend to place players in opposition to each other. It’s less PvE (player vs evil/environment) and more PvP (player vs player). I’d definitely would want to avoid intra-party conflict and find something that’s more players vs the world.
Michael Phillips
One thing that definitely needs to be explained is how/why those moves that appear to be identical aren’t. If anything that is the one thing that doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
ron d If you want a game that explicitly places the players in a group meant to work towards the same goal, Monster of the Week or Dungeon World might be worth looking at.
That being said, I think most games support PvE (to the extent that there’s an E to be v’ed; I feel like AW intentionally pushes against that idea, for instance), even if they have mechanics to resolve PC conflicts. It’s a question of table consensus, kinda like how DnD doesn’t explicitly have any mechanics to prevent PvP but “We’re gonna stay in the party for the duration of the campaign and not fight each other” is a perfectly acceptable and quite common ground rule.
I wouldn’t call it “PvP” exactly, I think it is more like “character-driven drama”. Characters are not necessarily enemies, but there may be friction and conflicting interests. Which I think makes for more interesting stories.
But yes, PbtA games seems to have more focus on inter-character relations than traditional games. Even games like Dungeon World, that are very PvE oriented, have their bonds, and whatever it may be called in games I haven’t read yet.
Seeing Dungeon World is part of a current ‘bundle of holding’ deal that’s definitely one to check.
( bundleofholding.com – Dungeon World +3 )
Mattias Swing I agree that it can make for interesting stories, but it also requires people to be acutely aware of boundaries and to not take things personal. That is possible with close friends, but strangers less so.
It’s why most games tend to avoid it.
ron d I see your point. I rarely play with people who have a problem with taking things personally like that these days, but I know what you mean. I didn’t think of it at first.
Mattias Swing I guess it takes a bit of luck and the right kind of people.
And while that is always true for every game this style definitely appears to depend on it for quite a bit.
Since nobody has mentioned it, I’ll recommend reading the “Dungeon World Guide”:
drive.google.com – Dungeon World Guide pdf version 1.2.pdf
It was an eye opener for me.
Unlearn what you’ve learned is the best advise. The game will fight you every step of the way if you try to run it like a D&D game (meaning, you know, pre-planned set pieces that you shift around to force the players into). Play the game as written, no exceptions. And be prepared for a rough start because yeah, it’s different.
I personally find the mechanics-heavy APs to be super-useful. That RpgPundit AP you posted in the other thread? Who knows how that game was actually played? He has a player interacting with a reflecting pool of some kind and ending up teleported into the dark forest. How did that happen? Did someone fail a roll and the DM ‘put them in a bad spot’? Did the DM have a custom move associated with the reflecting pool? Did the DM just decide right there that it was going to happen regardless and just made it happen? Who knows? All I get from the RpgPundit post is an entertaining short story. It’s fun to read, but not helpful.
Compare that to Dale Jennings APs, where we get less of a narrative but way more info on what happened during play (a PC suckered someone, missed, and the MC ‘turned their move on them’ by having an NPC get the drop on the PC, resulting in the PC triggering ‘eye on the door’ or whatever it’s called to find their best way out). Way more useful if your goal is to learn about how the game is played.
Also, as mentioned above, the game’s MC moves are just an explicit codification of what so-called ‘good DMs’ have been doing all along on their own. Apocalypse World just makes them explicit.
PS — stats change from one PbtA game to the next because stats, in these games, usually aren’t physical attributes the way they are in D&D type games. Instead, they’re usually psychological qualities. Thus, different games want to emphasize different qualities for their genre. AW characters are hard, sharp, weird, etc. MASKS characters (who are superheroes) are dangerous, superior, mundane, freakish, etc. Meg and Vincent’s Dark Ages characters are bold, brave, strong, etc.
I’d recommend reading AW’s MC section if you’re going to try Dungeon World. I don’t find DW’s rules for GMing to be very helpful on their own without the support of having already internalized the PbtA way of prepping a game.
Actually, I’d recommend reading the MC section no matter what game you’re going to play. PbtA, D&D, GURPS, whatever. It’s that good at making explicit what you as the GM for any game need to do. It totally changed how I GM games.
ron d Have a look at the space world – 8 thread on here, when you have time. A good write up of the narrative with examples of game moves highlighted. May be just what you’re looking for 😀
Christopher Wargo railroading players from set piece to set piece is never a good idea, regardless of the system. As such many of the ideas in PbtA style games really aren’t that strange compared to good practice in other systems.
I do agree that working against a systems’ intent will land you in a whole heap of trouble as you fight the system, which is why I want a better reading/explanation of how to learn this system than ‘just do it’ or ‘unlearn ye olde ways’.
It may be my background in programming, but I prefer generic skills/attributes over domain/theme specific variants.
And that’s before I consider the language barrier that makes it difficult to parse thematic styled attributes that rely heavily on domain specific slang.
Rodrigo Flores reading that pdf now. I hope it clicks after I’m done.
ron d “It may be my background in programming, but I prefer generic skills/attributes over domain/theme specific variants.”
If this is the case, then PbtA games may not be for you. These games are engines designed to produce narrative in specific genres. They have specific sets of concerns and the mechanics drive towards very specific kinds of stories. AW is for telling stories about how community deals with scarcity in the post apocalypse. DW is for telling high fantasy adventure stories. US is for stories of intrigue and politics in a fantastic city. Each game feels and plays differently, because they are trying to produce very different narrative effects, and their mechanics are changed, sometimes substantially (The Undying), to achieve those effects.
Jesse Abelman I think it’s more like trying to find what makes it tick, how to get started and finding a theme/setting that works (for me).
The dungeon world example that Rodrigo Flores posted has answered a lot of questions already.
The real difference between PbtA and ‘standard’ mechanics is in how it focuses on ‘roll when needed’ style of game with a lot of options for players to modify the world.
At first the latter part reads scary, but the DW text did manage to explain that the real trick is in having moves with options that aren’t obvious good choices when partial successes are rolled.
I am reminded of how kids play their ‘cops & robbers’ (or ‘cowboys & indians’) games. That sort of stuff only goes bad if kids get to do things that never have consequences and no one corrects them. The Southpark season 8 episode 1 “good times with weapons” is an example of that kind of play.
I won’t say that I grok the system completely, but there definitely is a light at the end of the tunnel.
The language barrier is definitely part of the problem (for me).
It’s the descriptions combined with the rather generic nature of certain moves that made it feel like ‘pushing buttons’.
The only ‘problem’ left is finding more detailed adventures that help novices like me get started. The single page freeform summary style a little too light in terms of prep work for my taste.
Thanks everyone for your patience and info 🙂
It has been enlightening