Author: James Mullen

Yesterday, we conducted a Frankenstein PbtA experiment: we each picked two moves from different PbtA games and threw them together in the melting pot to see what kind of game they suggested. The moves could be from anywhere in each game, so basic, peripheral or playbook, but the concept required that they all be treated as basic moves for our game.

We ended up with moves from Dungeon World, Velvet Glove, Apocalypse World and Masks, among others: the combination of these lead us to create a setting about magical female spies for a fantasy kingdom who went into situations to prevent wars and other conflicts from breaking out! It was epic and fun and we even got a serious story out of it in which our characters judged and executed a young noble.

It briefly gave me the urge to compile an encyclopedia of PbtA moves and pack it with rules for the ‘create your own unique game & setting’ our MC presented us with.

Some of the inspiration came from Crowsmantle, which encourages players to collaborate in creating entirely new moves and other mechanics for the game; our MC for that just thought “Hey, you could just use existing moves from other games,” and it snowballed from there.

I’m toying with a playbook move for a sort of comic-relief character whose main schtick is that they mess things up but serendipity saves the day. One of the moves I want them to have is Clueless, which prevents them from making the equivalent of Read a sitch in this hack.

The overall thrust of the move is that they always miss when they make the information gathering move, but when any PC makes that move and misses, including themselves, they choose which move the MC responds with and what form it takes.

Is this too over- or under-powered? Not interesting enough? Thoughts would be appreciated.