It seems like in most PbtA games you are still responding to the situation the DM has placed in front of you. If there is a zombie coming for you, and fighting seems like a bad call, maybe you climb up into an air duct or make a barricade or do this or that. In some games it seems like there is more opportunity / interest in player input, but I don’t think to change these sorts of situations. Right? (In Nightwitches you couldn’t say, “oh this officer sexually harassing me is actually my brother so that wouldn’t happen.”)
Running a PbtA game versus a more traditional game?
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I think disclaiming responsibility as per what @lumpley and Meguey suggest in Apocalypse World (pg 86 in 2e) is key here:
• Sometimes, disclaim decision-making. In order to play to and out what happens, you’ll need to pass decision-making off sometimes. Whenever something comes up that you’d prefer not to decide by personal whim and will, don’t. The game gives you four key tools you can use to disclaim responsibility: you can put it in your NPCs’ hands, you can put it in the players’ hands, you can create a countdown, or you can make it a stakes question.
Assuming there are interesting and meaningful things that could come out of what happens you as the GM can sometimes decide that what you want to have happen in the game might influence things in an unfair way, so you want to take yourself out of the picture… One of the ways you can do this is to let the dice decide. John Harper appears to be a big fan of this since it’s basically the whole idea behind both The Die of Fate in World of Dungeons and the Fortune Roll in Blades in the Dark.
But I think it can be even more generalized than that, going back to the Roll dice or say yes dictum: if there is a real chance for a specific action to lead to multiple different interesting outcomes/situations, then engage the system’s mechanics, if not, then the action just happens. And this lines up just fine with OSR views of fictional positioning removing the need for rolls. You as the GM listen to what they say they are doing and you decide that based on all their setup it’s unlikely to fail, so no roll is needed.
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The single example that probably helped me get into this the most was a short one in Monster of the Week, where they talk about how if you’re shooting a zombie with a gun, you’re not triggering the “Kick Some Ass” move (which requires both sides to be able to get in a fight), you’re just dealing damage, and the proper response for the GM in that situation is probably “deal Harm as established” (in this case, dealing Harm to the zombie). (This would be a great example of a clever idea to avoid the risk of the dice!)
Add that to “make a GM Move when the table looks to you to see what happens”, and there’s a pretty clear second option for when you feel like you should be rolling dice: just make a GM Move. Have something happen. There’s going to be a lot of situations where it feels like there should be a die roll, and a lot of times the proper answer to that is going to be “something happens”. I think that answering that itch with “I make a GM Move” is probably the single-biggest change I’ve made to my GMing/MCing, for the better. (This includes making GM Moves that benefit players!)
And a lot of times, the clear answer is to engage one of the player-facing moves, so you do that. But GM Moves are a good, compact way to handle unclear situations.
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Ah, yes! I do think that an OSR-GM has a different set of priorities than a PbtA-GM, namely that the OSR-GM can prioritize player agency by presenting an interesting world full of opportunities instead of needing to push the players into situations that require the pre-designed moves.
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While it may be true that you can’t squeeze a player in “quite the same way” there is more than ample opportunity to squeeze just as hard.
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That’s exactly right, in my opinion!
In a PbtA game, The players have more power and authority, based on the moves and the rules and the principles of the game. As a result, however, the GM isn’t limited by having to fight fair: you are allowed and expected to hit them precisely where it hurts, because they have the tools to deal with it.
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My jam is somewhere in the intersection between OSR and story-gaming, and PbtA is my preferred ruleset at the moment. I like a lot of the trappings of OSR-style play, but I prefer the “play to find out what happens” mindset of PbtA and other story-games.
I think the big difference between OSR and story-gaming is the handling of narrative control.
In OSR and other traditional games (D&D, Pathfinder, GURPS, Champions, etc), the GM pretty much holds narrative control exclusively. In these games, the GM tends to take a more god-like role, where they mostly dictate what’s going on with everything, other than the PCs’ direct actions. The narrative is what the GM says it is, whether by fiat, by following a printed adventure (more-or-less), or by interpreting the results of dice rolls.
In PbtA, the fiction is a conversation between the GM and the players, and the storyline is built more-or-less by consensus between the players and the GM. For many moves, the GM will provide the players fictional options to choose between, or will throw the narration itself to the players.
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Kind of a tangent, but i think “play to find out what happens” is a pretty core tenant of OSR play. People obsess over not railroading players, quantum ogres, and all that nonsense. The approach is different, is all. I think building the story by consensus isn’t a core tenant of PbtA games as well, just something that seems to be common to many. A lot of the examples of play in the AW book feel pretty “trad” in how they play out. Calling the GM “god-like” also seems out of place in a game you’re playing with your friends. The GM is another player.
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I agree; There’ve been a number of discussions here over the past few months about PbtA and OSR play/style, and having followed several, and participated in a few, I have arrived at the conclusion that the only meaningful difference between the two is the focus of play. OSR play is challenge based, and “overcoming stuff” and “not dying” are serious parts of the playstyle (This is why I personally have zero interest in the OSR – if I wanted a challenge I wouldn’t be playing an RPG) while PbtA has its focus shifted towards the “dramatically interesting.”
Otherwise? Things are largely the same – yes, PbtA games have some components like “ask questions and use the answers” which are not standard in OSR play, but which are generally not incompatible with it either. Yes, the OSR places greater emphasis on “prep” than PbtA games, but again, not actually incompatible with most PbtA games (in spite of what you might read in some parts of the internet).
This is why I’m always a little bit confused by how people seem to regard PbtA games as weird and difficult.
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Ultimately, the biggest differences might be mechanical, with PBTA using 2d6 resolution dice, and utilizing an array of better-defined “moves”, while games descended from D&D use d20 resolution dice and allowing for mostly freeform “actions” (with “attack” and “use skill” being almost the only two that are defined well enough to be named).
I mean, there are other differences, but they seem more stylistic to me, and mostly a matter of convention rather than anything that’s required by the rules.
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I could very easily create an OSR game that uses 2d6 resolution, or a PbtA game that uses a d20.
This thread from July does a really good job of outlining the differences: PBTA <3 OSR? Can the design philosophies be combined?
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I agree, I’d see rolling in a Pbta closer to a reward (oh my god something exciting is about to happen, weither I succeed or fail), whereas in OSR-like style it’s more like a necessary risk or even a punishment.
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This feels like a really succinct summary as well. Rolling introduces complications, which in a lot of PbtA games is what the players in the game (GM included) wants. With OSR games that complication is a chance for failure you are usually trying to avoid.
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Indeed. In OSR play, the players want to avoid complications at all costs, and strategize hard to achieve that. If the dicing mechanics then throw complications your way anyway, no matter how good your plan, that’s very frustrating. In PbtA play, though, the complications are the reward, and what we’re looking forward to seeing.
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I think part of the reason I view these games as so similar is that I don’t get the feeling that the players at my table are “there for the complications” in PbtA games. Maybe I am running them wrong, I don’t know. In theory, it sounds like how these games should work, in practice, there’s often some…unease when someone rolls low.
Interesting! My experience is that missing a roll is generally bad news (and I find PbtA games usually call for the MC to be quite brutal on misses, or the game loses some of its teeth), but there is a reason the 7-9 tends to be the most common outcome: “that’s where the game lives,” as some others have said.
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It’s certainly “where the game lives” from the GM’s perspective, but I don’t see the players being super excited about them, overall? Maybe it’s different in games like Monster Hearts that are ALL about the drama, but I don’t have much experience with those.
If there’s no doubt/risk involved, a roll is not required in PbtA: you just do it. So, the NPC that was killed without a roll must have not really been a threat and there was no doubt as to the outcome, so the move never triggered: it just happened.
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While I like this interpretation, some people don’t play this way. Vincent has occasionally said that you trigger the move no matter what, for instance, especially in the context of 2nd Ed. It’s a bit a variable to play with.
I suppose I’ve only played PbtA games that are “drama games”! So, yes, 7-9 outcomes are mostly fun (although, sure, you generally would prefer a 10+, you’re still grinning the game and enjoying what comes next, because by playing these games you’re signing up to enjoy some misery coming at your character - otherwise you wouldn’t play in the first place).
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