Author: Meguey Baker

Patreon Linkfarm!

In addition to my patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/Meguey) and Vincent’s patreon (https://www.patreon.com/lumpley) , many of you have PbtA-based patreons! Podcasts, play aids, maps, actual play reports, design process, whatever.

Drop a link and an elevator pitch for your patreon below, and thanks!

Words by Vincent Baker, co-signed by me:

In Apocalypse World I say that roleplaying is a conversation.

What I mean is, let’s take talking together out loud to be the medium of play. Instead of taking place on a board and pieces, or in cards arranged in decks and hands, or in pixels on a screen, the game takes place in the words that you and your friends say to each other.

In a board game, you need rules for how to place, move, handle the pieces on the board. In a card game, you need rules for dealing, holding, playing, reading the cards.

In a roleplaying game, let’s say that you need rules for talking: what should we talk about? How should we talk about it? How should we respond to what others say?

In Candyland, you have just a single simple rule for moving your piece. In Chess, though, you have different rules depending on the situation. The different pieces move differently, there are rules for pieces blocking and capturing each other, there are special case rules like castling, check, and en passant.

Same thing in rpgs. The game’s rules for talking can change depending on the situation.

For example, you can think of Apocalypse World’s basic moves as being like the different ways that Chess pieces move.

A pawn steps forward one space; when you have your character attack someone, ask the other player whether their character’s going to stand up to you or back down.

A bishop slides along a diagonal; when you have your character act under fire, the MC offers you a bad deal or tells you how your character falls short.

So that’s my basic proposal: in games where talking together is the medium of play, you can and should have different rules for talking about different subjects.

Thanks for listening!

Hey folks! Just a friendly note to say you are all excellent and I’m glad you are here. We had a great time at PaxUnplugged and it made me want to play and design games! We loved seeing Bluebeard’s Bride and The Ward at the con, as well as hearing about all the PbtA play at Games on Demand. We got to hang out with new friends and old friends, and hear about their games.

If you have a PbtA game in even the earliest stages of development, I’d love to hear your elevator pitch!!

Gary Furash asked about player input in PBtA games, and the resulting conversation inspires this question to you all:

What are some of the best questions you’ve asked as MC of a PBtA game?

(Please indicate which game, because I’m curious to see if there’s a pattern there!)

(AW) “So what do you do with the bodies of your dead?”

(AW) “Brainer, what’s the startlingly unexpected thing on the walls in your room?”

(AW) “Chopper, where and how are you refueling now that the bridge is out?”

An open letter re: Powered by the Apocalypse

Dear friends, fellow designers, critics, and concerned citizens,

It was a going topic, not to say a sore point, at Gen Con, so please allow Meg and me to define once and for all what “Powered by the Apocalypse” is.

“Powered by the Apocalypse” isn’t the name of a category of games, a set of games’ features, or the thrust of any games’ design. It’s the name of Meg’s and my policy concerning others’ use of our intellectual property and creative work.

This policy appears in all of Meg’s or my public statements on the topic, we hope, and we try to include it in our answers to all private inquiries. It’s possible that some of you have never happened to encounter it before this, but our hope is that it’s more or less common knowledge. It’s stickied at the Barf Forth Apocalyptica forum, for instance.

Here’s the policy:

If you’ve created a game inspired by Apocalypse World, and would like to publish it, please do. If you’re using our words, you need our permission, per copyright law. If you aren’t using our words, you don’t need our permission, although of course we’d love to hear from you. Instead, we consider it appropriate and sufficient for you to mention Apocalypse World in your thanks, notes, or credits section.

It’s completely up to you whether you call your game “Powered by the Apocalypse.” If you’d like to use our PbtA logo in your game’s book design or trade dress, ask us, and we’ll grant permission for you to do so. This isn’t a requirement of any sort.

In other words: Is Apocalypse World an inspiration for your game? Enough so that you want to call your game PbtA? Did you follow Meg’s and my policy wrt publishing it? Then cool, your game is Powered by the Apocalypse. Get with us if you want to use the logo.

To answer one of the funnier questions posed to me at Gen Con, Meg and I (a) consider Apocalypse World to be significantly inspired by Apocalypse World, in that the game’s design and text express the ideas that inspired them, and we (b) sought and acquired our own permission to publish our words. Thus, yes, Apocalypse World itself is Powered by the Apocalypse.

The directory here at apocalypse-world.com/pbta follows this definition and no other. For ambiguous cases, I’ve relied on explicit guidance from the creators, as in the cases of Blades in the Dark (included), The Bloody-Handed Name of Bronze (included), and Malandros (not included). If you “disagree with,” or more properly don’t understand, a given game’s inclusion, I hope this clears it up for you.

Again, “Powered by the Apocalypse” isn’t the name of a kind of game, set of game elements, or even the core design thrust of a coherent movement. (Ha! This last, the least so.) Its use in a game’s trade dress signifies ONLY that the game was inspired by Apocalypse World in a way that the designer considers significant, and that it follows our policy wrt others’ use of our creative work.

Meg and I are happy as always to answer questions about this, but aren’t likely to entertain any arguments contradicting it. As far as we’re concerned, this statement is definitive.

Thank you for your kind attention, and sincerely, your true friends and colleagues,

Meg and Vincent

P.S. From Vincent, a couple of personal notes:

1. After I first published Apocalypse World, I quickly understood that I had signed myself up for any number of confused and circular arguments about what “Powered by the Apocalypse” secretly really means. But friends, you didn’t! And while I know that there will always be confused and circular-thinking people to bring those arguments to me, you don’t have to be them, if you don’t want to.

I’d encourage you instead, if you can, to take the above statement as straightforwardly final. Leave the confused and circular wrangling about what games are “really” PbtA and what PbtA “really” means to people who can’t help it.

2. I understand at second- and third-hand that there are people out there who make it their business to shoulder in on other game creators’ decisions about whether to use Meg’s and my PbtA logo, or even to try to lead their judgments about whether their PbtA games are “really” PbtA. I can only see this as an illegitimate effort to manage and incorrectly enforce Meg’s and my policy, in a manner materially hostile to Meg’s and my interests. I am its enemy. Those people can please reign themselves in and knock it the heck off.

Love, truly, Vincent

http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta

YAYYYYYYYY!

Also WHEW!

It’s been kind of a long 30 months getting to this day.

http://apocalypse-world.com/

Hey folks! Check the controls you set on your posts; I’ve seen a couple lately that no one can reply to because they are set to “no comments”

Carry on!

Over in another thread, terminal night raised a common-enough issue: “how to make enemies more than big, dumb meatsacks with a gun”

AW does this by giving you a ton of different sorts of fronts and threat-types and such, but still, there comes that moment when one wants a little more variation than whatever happens to be your personal usual default enemy. So what tricks or tools or techniques have you learned or designed to give your adversaries dimension and nuance as well as the occasional “meatsack with a gun”?