Category: Powered by the Apocalypse

How do you MC your game?

Hi everyone, looking for a bit of help. I am quite new to PbtA, currently running my eighth or ninth session of Apocalypse World for a group of relaxed friends who have never played before either.

I like the system so far but I find that the moves are so specific, each player needs to have a moves list in front of them so that they can read the rules for whatever they are attempting to do. i had to print off extra moves sheets to hand around so that everyone had a copy. is this necessary? is there any way to play PbtA other than spending half the night reading each move to decide how to progress?

for example, the players set a trap for an enemy. i remembered reading rules for setting traps and ‘if you’re the bait’ somewhere, so I ended up flicking through the rulebook to find out how to portray this situation, when all i wanted to do was have a player roll immediately. am i missing something? I find it difficult to maintain the moves snowball mentioned in the rulebook because I don’t know every individual move in my head and I can’t stop to read a list of them every time I need to respond to a player’s action. and then once a move is being made, that still needs reading to work out what the result of a dice roll will be. some games, all the players need is their character sheet… my experience so far is that Apocalypse World is not one of those games.

And sub question, what’s your style in general? do you tend to drop players into the middle of a situation and expand the story outwards or do you follow a more linear sequence of connected events? How do you create and maintain a moves snowball throughout active scenes?