Alfred Rudzki posted about random encounters with PbtA folks over a disappointing game of D&D, which I started replying to. I ended up with this, a sort of personal essay about my discovery of Apocalypse World and the effect it’s had on my life. I’d be very interested to know how many other people have followed this difficult trajectory into narrative games. I grew up fascinated by role playing games but without like-minded friends. I felt a little ashamed by the nerdiness of this fascination, and was always bewildered by the arrays of mechanics and number crunching, so I never got to play a game.
I GM’d a few abortive, half-hearted attempts over the years with friends and family members, but nothing stuck, though I had a growing pile of large, hardcover RPG books in my closet, pored over at night.
Then, at university, a guy offered to take me to a Pathfinder game at our local comic shop. I was thrilled, invited a friend of mine, Tess, and counted the minutes until I’d finally get to play.
When the night came, the GM was bored, phoning it in and seemed like he had someplace better to be. Character creation was bastard-long, and one of the other players kept insisting that myself and Tess had to be his elven brother and sister. I wanted to play a human rogue and she a monk, but he assured us that elf was the better choice for our classes.
Once character creation was over, the game began, and wouldn’t you know it, we were in a tavern which was attacked by orcs.
Almost immediately an argument broke out about initiative, and books were produced. The guy who offered to bring us to the game made excuses and left. My friend and I talked quietly while people said things like “By the gods!” (really) and pointed furiously at tables and errata.
Eventually, the first debate was settled and the gnome warlock settled back on to his tiger/wolf mount (he kept forgetting what he had chosen so sort of switched back and forth at whim). The orc fight began in earnest. For whatever reason, I was just about dead last in the turn order. I listened as people positioned themselves around the bar, fighting orcs with varying degrees of success until my turn came. I was behind the bar, and on the other side the fighter was engaged with an orc who had his back to me.
I decide to vault over the bar and creep up on the orc to slit its throat. Roll athletics. Fumble. Flat on face. The GM moves on.
This was not the exciting shared narrative I had anticipated. The mechanics were not an elegant engine that powered a story, they were as stultifying and inhibiting as I had always thought they were. So much of the game was math and waiting. Waiting for a turn, waiting while people look up rules, waiting while hitpoints tick down.
This was a game of disempowerment and watching strangers argue about things I didn’t understand or care about.
I made eye contact with Tess. She nodded, and I interrupted the rules debate by holding up my phone and pretending to answer it with wild, panicked eyes. Oh, my, but we really had to go. We fled.
I gave up on role playing games. I figured they just weren’t for me. I drifted into boardgames for a while, and the random element scratched the story generation itch for me with games like Betrayal at House on the Hill. Wanting to know more, I began researching boardgames, watching Tabletop and Shut Up and Sit Down obsessively. These sources led me by degrees to indie roleplaying games, Fiasco, Dungeon World and Apocalypse World. I bought PDFs voraciously, read everything I could. I’ve since GM’d several games of tremulus, a full six-episode arc of Apocalypse World, a Saga of some Icelanders, Monsterhearts, countless DW games and others. I’ve recruited a large and able gaming group and we’ve never had a rules question at the table. People just get it. I’ve shown other GMs the system and made them converts. One of them is going to be running a private game at Burning Man.
My group are all non-gamers, but the PbtA system is so intuitive that half an hour in, they’ve all got it down, the first time they play. I am aching for the Dungeon World war supplement with a gnawing hunger, and likewise the various tremulus releases on the horizon. These are the games I’ve always wanted to play. I often wonder how many other people have had this kind of wish fulfilment through these approachable, liberating games. If you’ve managed to read this far, why don’t you tell me how you discovered PbtA?
Aw. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr Baker, thank you.
This made me smile really big 😀
Yeah great post!
I have similar things to say about yours and Matt Wilson’s games Vincent. 🙂
Sub!
Dungeon World ruined Pathfinder for me.
Great article. But I was a little surprised to read that everyone got the rules after 30 min. I did tremulus once and not everybody was fluent with the rules at the end if the evening. How do you explain the rules to your players ? Or do you the rules for them (in the background)? That works for other systems as well. But it demands a experienced GM. Reading the rules alone doesn’t seem enough. So how did you learn those games ? Did you watch another GM? This is usually a great way to learn a game. But only with the book it’s hard to learn it on your own, don’t you think ?
It took me a while to get my own head around the AW rules, but luckily the PbtA culture is really inclusive and helpful, with numerous guides and swift answers to questions here and on reddit, etc. I also found that the more PbtA games I consumed, the more I understood the intricacies of the system.
After reading several books and internalizing the moves and so on, I just familiarized myself with the basic moves and then got to know my player’s playbooks. From there, I’d just say “Okay, don’t read the move sheets, just tell me what you want to do, and I’ll let you know when you need to roll. So, Dogface and Zee Zee are outside, kicking up a stink about something. Any idea what that is?” and so on. At about the half hour mark, everyone has seen most of the basics and are starting to get curious about their playbook’s unique capabilities. Interest in the system is organic after that.
These games only really need the GM to be fluent with the rules, the players just say what they want to do. The trick with tremulus is creating a mystery without being able to parcel out clues with skill checks, so I’ll normally give out clues I make up on the spot, and figure out how they tie in to the mystery in my post-session write up.
It was pretty hard to learn in a vacuum, but you’re never really alone on the internet. There are many wonderful, high-quality articles and essays on running PbtA games, and once you figure out it’s not about planning a story, but facilitating one, it’s all smooth sailing.
Benjamin Brown yeah, this kind of gamingstyle you fled from is actually best portrayed here:
http://youtu.be/eCWOCPxPmus
But i would remark, that its maybe not so much a matter of the system, you know. Back then we played Classic Rolemaster or Ad&d like Dungeonworld today, but of course had to handwave most of the rules. We used them essentially as a toolbox, to improvise a fantasy story together, even if the system itself didnt really support it.
(But the colorfull crit descriptions of RM where grand, i m even using them today as Inspiration)
Roland P ….. that is hillarious. My first time seeing the video.
This was exactly my experience. Apocalypse World and its “family” of games literally changed my life in a dramatic way for the better.
I always loved the idea of rpgs, and being a game designer I kept thinking long and hard as to how I could “fix” D&D, but it never even occurred to me how many of the underlying assumptions were completely unnecessary or even harmful to the type of play I was look for. Discovering *world games (and all the other indie rpgs out there) was like taking my first breath of fresh air after a life lived in a smoggy city.
…oh and i also want to clarify that i dont think that system doesnt matter.
My experience with *AW games is great so far and a better alternative to classic systems than story oriented games that are heavy on metagaming.
DW actually supports the gaming style i prefere and the kind of storys i want to tell and i dont need to find a way around the system to make it work – it became my goto system for all my fantasy needs.
(Next up is Apocalypseworld which im very eager to try out!)