D. Vincent Baker

It can be very difficult to figure out how to make a given genre work, long-term, for RPGs. The traditional swords-and-sorcery fantasy and superhero genres are rare in that they lend themselves to this sort of thing. Apocalypse World managed to make post-apocalyptic genre campaigns work this way by making worldbuilding the first part of play, an interactive process. It is not unique, or first, in the use of this innovation. It is, however, among the best.

It also makes the game more show more explicitly and frictionlessly about collaborative storytelling than any other RPG I've encountered, and I have more game books for more different games than most game stores these days. I was skeptical, at first, of any system that basically restricts dice rolls in the game mechanics to the players, apparently relegating NPCs necessarily to the roles of third-class citizens of the game (while one of the most rewarding parts of a good campaign can be an excellent second-class citizen NPC or two), but I find that the particular quirks of this game system actually help highlight the significance of NPCs that step into the limelight, especially when one starts applying the rules for PC-to-PC interaction to (only the most important) NPCs with a light touch from time to time.

The thing that most blew me away about the design of this game, though, was the way the system handles character actions, and provides guidance (not strict instructions) for how to deal with the in-game effects of success and failure. It makes the resolution of conflict and uncertainty feel dynamic, lends good tension to a scene, and keeps things moving at a brisk pace. Everything basically takes only as long as everyone wants to spend describing the consensus reality of the game world. The rules are light, flexible, and easy to remember and apply. The book includes explicit reminders that destroying what makes a PC cool is bad, and it provides plenty of guidance for how to make failures significant while keeping the action fun.

One of the key innovations of Apocalypse World is the way it defines character capabilities. It's not so much about the specific strengths and skills the person has as innate abilities. Instead, it's about the kinds of outcomes a person is good at achieving, and the flavor for how the character achieves those outcomes is left up to character concept and collaborative description. Your rolls determine the general scope and magnitude of what one achieves, or of how badly awry things might go, but leaves the determination of what actually happens to reach those results up to the conversation between participants in gameplay.

It's brilliant, and I have found it difficult to let myself get drawn into any game other than Apocalypse World, games based on its system (Powered By The Apocalypse in the parlance of that community, but in my case particularly those that stick to the above-described use of the system, or can be easily ported to the basic Apocalypse World rules themselves), and one other game I first encountered this year called Dread.

I have, in fact, started porting ongoing Pathfinder RPG games to adjusted Apocalypse World rules, rather than continue with the much more burdensome systems under which those long-running campaigns were first launched.

The Bakers have changed my gaming life (via the agency of the missus, who got in on the ground floor with the 2nd Edition crowdfunding campaign). show less

This is not a playtest review. Apocalypse World is a brutally elegant post-apocalyptic RPG, with a basic system of 5 stats, and 2d6+Stat vs a static DC of 7 or 10. What makes it great are the characters, and the concreteness of the Moves that each character makes to define the world and what they do. These Moves are partially descriptive, partially emotional, always awesome and tension-ratcheting. This basic system, combined with some hard-headed GM advice about putting things that you love show more in the crosshairs and making every blow count, make Apocalypse World more than the sum of its parts. My only worries are the tone, which might be too edgy for some readers, and the Wounds system, which seems both a little limiting for a game where Bad Things happen all the time, and too Simulationist for the rest of the game. Damn stylish, and lots of mine for ideas. Hope to run it soon! show less

Another entry in the "I don't play RPGs" category. This one has a fantastic-looking setting and mechanics designed for intense storytelling -- unlike Nobilis, there's not much 'colour storytelling' in the rulebook, but this one actually tempts me more to try playing.

The setting is religious: you're one of God's Watchdogs, travelling from town to town dispensing judgement in a Western Frontier-ish society. The religious aspects are important, because the mechanics are aimed at forcing the show more players to make moral judgements.

This is where it gets cool-sounding. The resolution mechanism (what would be dice-rolling against a stat in D&D) is a bidding system, and you can get extra chips by 'escalating the conflict'. So if you start out trying to win someone over by reason, but you're losing the bidding, you can escalate to fighting, hand-to-hand or with weapons or even guns (it's a Western setting, remember?). Each escalation gets you some more bargaining power, but it also raises the stakes in terms of possible outcomes. The idea is that you should be asking yourself, "is achieving this goal really worth the damage that escalating is going to do?"

It gets even cooler though. Each bid must be narrated ("I raise: I'll quote some Scripture about casting out the eye that offends thee") and if the narration touches on things that are important for the character you can claim extra chips. "Important for the character" is less vague in the rules -- PCs have explicitly stated relationships with other characters and potentially with institutions and even particular sins.

What this adds up to is a very attractive conflict resolution system: it's explicitly designed to use conflict to create meaningful stories. The bidding system gives credit for escalation (increasing the emotional importance of what's going on) and for relating the action to potential story-elements that we already know about. Compare that to the D&D model, where the dice-rolling and table lookup are the least meaningful parts of the gameplay, and you'll see why I'm tempted to actually give this one a try. show less

I'm so excited to try playing this game sometime. It's very different from Dungeons & Dragons and really from any other RPG I've come across. It's set in something roughly approximating the American West in the 1800s, but with a twist to it -- your character is a member of God's Watchdogs, and it's your job to travel from town to town and make sure that people are keeping the Faith. You're basically a religious zealot with a gun, although how you want to play it (are you the good guys, show more saving the townspeople from demons? Or the bad guys, fanatics who'll shoot anyone who disagrees?) is up to you. If I were to run this, I think I'd do it Gunslinger style -- Knights of the Cross with cowboy hats and six-shooters in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Hot. show less