20 thoughts on “Hi, there! Other than “City of Mist”, what other PbtA games don’t use playbooks?”

  4. Simple World

    World of Dungeons

    No Country For Old Kobolds

    Edit: although, if I may nitpick, City of Mist is going to have playbooks, it’s just that you’ll be playing four of them at a time instead of one. What it doesn’t have is traditional stats.

  5. Cowboy World, which is in the last stages of playtesting.

    It has 3 Attributes: Body, Mind and Soul, skills, and Character Aspects that can be invoked as in FATE.

  6. Thanks, folks. I actually own Uncharted Worlds and Worlds in Peril, and never occurred to me looking at Origins and Careers and Drives etc as playbooks, but now I see they’re “dismantled” bits of playbooks.

    I’ve never checked The Warren because the its premise doesn’t appeal to me. Now I’m curious about how characters are set up in it.

    James Etheridge​​ I suppose you’re right, but as I had the impression (from the previews) most of character traits would be player-defined, I didn’t take them for playbooks. I reckon it would be somewhat similar to what happens in Uncharted Worlds, only with more player input, then.

    So far, it looks like Cowboy World is the closest thing to what I’m after. Where can I learn more about it?

  7. Sergio Maximo Jr. In The Warren, everyone has the same basic/special moves but they each get to choose a unique move to set them apart. During pay they accumulate more unique moves (and also lose moves).

  9. Cowboy World actually has a lot of moves, but they are available to everybody. Characters are differentiated by their skills and fictional Character Aspects. A Soul+1 character plays completely different from a Body+1 character. A train conductor who is actually an assassin plays very different from a gunslinger with a serious drinking problem.

  10. Mark Cleveland Massengale​ you’re possibly right. I guess what I’m really after is a way to use the basic structure of the system while creating characters is a more freeform manner. In other words, ditch playbooks.

    I understand that while the Apocalypse World Engine is pretty hackable, it’s not a generic one. Playbooks are a damn elegante way to set a game’s tone and the idea of what players are expected to do in that particular setting. And don’t get me wrong, I like them. It’s just that I don’t think they’re suitable for every setting. Sometimes you just don’t have enough archetypes (or don’t want/need them) to justify codifying characters in playbooks.

  14. Wynand Louw Well if there are common moves, then by definition there will be less of them. But I digress.. it wasn’t meant as a jab. Sometimes less (specificity) is more (generally useful). A GM could have infinite variants of the Invoke __ move (I know that’s not the actual name, but that’s what I am imagining so far to avoid the use of playbooks) which sounds like it could super neat. or: Did I get it wrong?

    How far along in the development do you feel you are at with the game? Maybe you need all the eyes you can get? (I would also be interested in testing it or running it to see the benefits of the design)

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