I want to try my hand at a PbtA game but I've never played one, I'd have to be the one preparing it. What is a good one to get the gyst of the style and get people to try it? Which ones are a trick option that sounds cool but are actually unplayable?Any advice, rec or useful anecdote is welcomed.
>>93927255Monster of the Week is the far and away the best one, and it isn't even close.
Brindlewood Bay (OP image) is a lot of fun, but is probably too much culture shock for a group of D&D folks. It's maybe one of the most different from standard rpgs.Masks: A New Generation might be one of the best for learning how the system works, but it really wants to be a short campaign (6-10 sessions?) rather than a one shot.Monster of the Week is good for one shots, but the rulebook isn't the best for actually learning the game, and the "Investigate a Mystery" move is a bit weird.If you can stand Baker's writing style (I personally hate it), Apocalypse World 2nd Edition does a really good job of teaching the game, although it also wants a short campaign, not as much as Masks though.Avatar and Root are more complicated than they need to be. Dungeon World is shit, and will actively confuse you about how to properly play the game unless you spend time reading stuff outside the rulebook about how not to fuck it up. Avoid at all costs. Lots of the shorter ones, like Bootleggers sort of rely on you already understanding how PbtA games work to fill in some of the blanks.Thinking about it, I think Urban Shadows might be the best starting point (if you don't like Baker's writing in Apocalypse World 2e itself). It does a good job explaining everything and it isn't terrible for one shots (although it wants campaigns more than Monster of the Week does.) It's a bit more complicated with the factions and debts and all that, but the rulebook actually does a really good job explaining it all. In the same way, Monsterhearts 2nd Edition has a really good rulebook. But again, Monsterhearts would be crap for 1-shots.
>>93927255First edition Apocalypses World is good, they seriously fuck it up in the second edition by removing threat of character death and depowering all conflicts to lean into the drama game. Its the one to start with because none of them have been as good, it was never intended as a generic engine it just got popular and everyone came out of the woodwork trying to jam it into their favourite genre fiction. Freebooters on the Frontier is interesting to try but overwrought compared to any of the osr games its doing the same thing as. Dungeon World and Fellowship both do better jobs of the variations of dnd commonly played than dnd. Dungeon World for Guardians of the Galaxy but fantasy, Fellowship for grey tone Tolkienesque journey.
>>93936345>First edition Apocalypses World is good, they seriously fuck it up in the second edition by removing threat of character death and depowering all conflicts to lean into the drama game.What a bizarre reading of the rules changes...For those who are curious, it's just that 2nd Edition added an optional rule for switching up your character playbook and coming back as a different kind of character instead of straight death (you CAN still choose to die if it makes sense). This is a very Mad Max kind of rule, and it doesn't remove the stakes, your character fundamentally changes.No actual combat or threats are removed from the game, and the rulebooks is MUCH clearer about Seize by Force and other combat stuff than the 1st edition. Just generally better explained.And while PbtA does get slapped onto stuff it shouldn't be, plenty of other games (Masks, Monsterhearts, Urban Shadows, Monster of the Week, etc.) really make use of the system, sometimes in more interesting ways than original Apocalypse World (i.e. Monsterhearts use of Sex Moves is more interesting than AW, MotW uses the playbooks to make Xander from Buffy style characters work mechanically better than I've seen in any other system for that sort of setting.)
>>93936554>elipsisfag is also too stupid to understand resurrection instead of death removes stakes. There were more changes, got into an argument with a similar retard years ago here. There are screenshot breakdowns of 1st vs 2nd's hand holding. You're a fanboy, not the type to be convinced with it directly in front of you so not really worth talking with.
>>93936591>elipsisfagNew addition to bumpfag lore just dropped?
>>93936998...that's just what the early stages of schizophrenia look like...
Requesting Eldritch Care Unit
>>93936591>Thinks that stakes are only had through the threat of death>Call other people retardsHilarious. It's weird to see how many people who participate in a hobby all about imagination don't actually have any.
