Well hello, @Christo!
Don’t want to go too off topic here. I’m glad to see you, and am somewhat surprised (and very glad!) of the high level of communication and UI on these forums!
The Future Of PbtA Games
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I would add Josh’s Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars - which is a Dream Askew hack, goes even deeper into dividing up the creative control of the world.
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Undying is another diceless game with PBTA bones
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Games designed for online play. Having mechanics and text which not only acknowledges online play, but specifically leverages affordances of being online.
I wish this was an industry standard practice. All of my games are online, and I’d wish I had more tools provided to me to facilitate them that way.
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I’m designing a PbtA game right now, and one of my plans is to include a free Gauntlet-style character keeper along with the playbook downloads on my website.
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Not sure if you’re aware, but One Shot World is a hack of Dungeon World meant for one shots. I’m curious if there are other games out there made specifically for one shots, though.
Full disclosure: I made it. But it is free, so whatever.
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I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a lot of back-flow from Forged in the Dark stuff towards it’s PbtA progenitor. Probably more focus on flexible Move mechanics, and a more highly developed meta-game.
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GM-full. Hehehe. Oh,by the way, hi everyone! 
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Not everyone wants the future of PbtA to shift deeper into micro-genre storygames, so while those excite me, there’s room for another direction they can go down simultaneously. People like the chess game part of RPGs - player skill, discovering system nooks that you can use to improve your character, and tactics. Maybe not Pathfinder level tactical crunch, but some depth.
It’s exciting seeing player tactics in the Forged in the Dark games. There’s a lot of “players discussing the most optimal new crew advance” play in Blades, for instance. There’s resources management, crafting rules, and other juicy trad mechanics there. And it’s skill-based, without moves.
Another trad-ish direction I’ve seen PbtA sensibilities invade is in Cipher system games. They have a GM role similar to Apocalypse World, but power trees, magic items, and a very “dungeon crawl” feel (even Invisible Sun to some degree).
I’d love to see PbtA gamerunning philosophy invade the granddaddy of all RPGs and get Incorporated into something like D&D, whenever they roll out 6th edition (probably not for at least another 3+ years). We have the McElroys playing MotW and Adam Koebel running D&D for Roll20. There’s a growing awareness of the value of reactive GMing among D&D bloggers, too.
To me, the GM instructions are what make PbtA special. I want to see the PbtA style spread everywhere.
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Is there a PbtA game embracing modern communication channels like e. g. chat, Text, WhatsApp?
I could imagine this would open up a new kind of experience having ongoing sub- or side conversations without other players /GM noticing.
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The Sundered Land is great for forums and text threads. I’ve played by text a few times and really enjoyed it. I also participated in a Twitter thread game that Meg Baker started, and that was pretty cool.
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“Games with no basic moves, all the moves for each playbook are in that playbook.”
I asked Vincent about this in 2010 at GenCon when the game was still in the preapocalypse, and he told me that Luke Crane told him that games needed fiddly bits.
I think he was messing with me.
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I can’t seem to Google this up. Has it been taken down or maybe was a backer-only thing?
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Thank you <3 This post must be greater than 20 characters.
I don’t know if there is one that emphasizes texting, chatting, etc., but it has shown up extensively in Urban Shadows games I’ve played, and in Sig I played a journalist who live-tweeted events at the table. In character chats in online games can be fun.
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@shane - Night Witches is without a doubt the most intense oneshot I’ve ever played and the book describes explicitly how to do it.
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I’m wondering how a game with no basic moves would work, less from a mechanical perspective and more from a fictional perspective. It strikes me that it would take more effort on the part of players to keep their characters from spinning out into they’re own little subworlds only loosely connected to each other. Taking an example from Apocalypse World, every playbook but maybe one can open their mind to the psychic maelstrom. The move establishes a fact about the setting that unites what can be a disparate bunch of protagonists as clearly existing in a shared world. How do you enforce the idea that characters share a world when there’s no shared move set that determines how the world outside of the playbooks work?
The question isn’t a critique disguised as a rhetorical question, to clarify. I’m genuinely interested to hear thoughts on that.
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Maybe I misunderstand the question, but RPGs were doing this for decades before there was Apocalypse World, no? Even if we stick just to PbtA games with no basic moves, though, I think the answer can be seen in World of Dungeons 1979, and World of Dungeons Turbo: Breakers, both by the same designer. In the former, everybody is expected to have a general idea of how the world works because it invokes a commonly known fictional touchstone (in that case, D&D). In the latter, which has a more unique setting/premise, players are expected to read the game text (or have it summarized by another player) to get a sense of what the world expects of them. The rules don’t enforce it in play; “social contract” does, as it’s understood that everybody should be on the same page to have a good time together.
Edit to add: Sorry, it feels like I may be “mansplaining” this, though I don’t mean to. I’m interested in the question, though, and wonder if I just missed something.
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