this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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What Should I Play?
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Homebrew World, a Dungeon World hack by Jeremy Strandberg. It has less D&D legacy in terms of moves, which are more PbtA-style and less of “add this points of damage” or “add +1 to roll”. It’s made for oneshots or brief campaigns, playbooks are interesting and fun to actual use. I’ve run a game recently, took 8 hours and was really a blast!
Of you like Jeremy's work I bet Stonetop is on your radar. It was kickstarted a while ago and work is ongoing. Think the rules section is pretty much done and it's only the setting book left. Stonetop is a Dungeon World hack centered around the settlement of Stonetop. The material for that I've looked at really makes it centered around the village, playbooks are based on roles in the village and there are rules for developing the settlement. Looks good and they even have a so far short edited and annotated let's play to highligt the system.
As an adult with particular life circumstances, I don’t have a luxury to play with a same group of people with decent regularity. That’s why HbW is my way to go as a GM. Stonetop needs investment I couldn’t afford… but its well-written and explains core game loops much better than DW rulebook… that’s the result of 10(?) years evolution
It is said that Dungeon World have aged worse than many other 1st gen PbtA, can somewhat agree. Could be that the hacks that have come from it does very much the same but better. And that there never was a 2nd edition that have made us forget 1st edition.
Yes, it's kinda sad. I'd totally love to have my rulebook with all the enhancements from best hacks but alas. As far as I know, creators of DW don't plan to update it
Sage may still be in the buisness but I haven't heard him being involved in anything. On the other hand with DW being "dead" the hack scene can flourish. No new edition can come and reset it.
But I do would need a heroicly epic high fantasy PbtA in my life. Will check out HbW when I have the time.
Have you tried Fabula Ultima? It's based on JRPGs, and it's built on having multiple classes. In fact, you start with levels in 2-3 classes! The combat is also quite easy. It all feels very video game-y but it's quite easy to understand, and the inventory system is also lovely. (Instead of having items, you have inventory points, and when you need a potion or something, you just detract the needed amount of inventory points. Really good for the part of me that always hoards consumables because "I might need it more later.")
There's a quickstart available that runs you through it very well! It even has numbers on the pregens' character sheets that are like. Don't look at this part yet; that'll become relevant in part 3. I suppose that's also based on good tutorial design in video games; things are explained in gameplay instead of rule-dumped at the start.