Listen to this episode here.
What's the deal with Playbooks? That's a question that's way too big for one episode. But Moe Poplar, of the RPG Academy podcast Show & Tell, had a very particular effect of playbooks that he wanted to talk about on the show today: how playbook choice can be a line of communication between players, GM, and designer.
This is one of those episodes that's as much play advice as it is about design. I should do more of those.
Further Reading:
Monster of the Week
Blades in the Dark
Socials
Moe’s website, including his games.
Moe’s podcast via The RPG Academy, Show & Tell
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey. Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript
Sam: hello, and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week, we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and liberally butter it on both sides. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and my co-host this week is Moe Poplar.
Moe designs and publishes games under the brand ashy feet games. He's also the host of the Show and Tell podcast over at The RPG Academy, an interview show that brings on a tabletop RPG designer each week to talk about something cool they're working on, and he was the first ever person recommended to me by a previous cohost all the way back in episode one when Rachel told me to look them up. Perhaps most importantly of all, Moe was my ride up to big, bad con this past fall from LA. I love talking games with him. And today we got to do that for all of you.
Moe brought in playbooks, like the idea of playbooks at large: character arc types within a game each with bespoke rules and mechanics that make that arc type a distinct play experience in flavor. Uh, that'd be a lot for one podcast, but Moe had a very particular symptom of playbooks that he wanted to talk about: how playbook choice and really character customization at large is an avenue of communication between everyone at the table that he thinks is really overlooked by many designers in players.
This is one of those rare episodes of this show that is almost more about player advice than design. It's a kind of episode I wish we did more of. Anyway, talking to your table about what you want is good. And we should probably all be doing more of it, whether that's through playbooks or otherwise.
Okay. Here is Moe Poplar with playbooks and communication.
Moe thanks for being here on Dice Exploder.
Moe: Thanks for having me, Sam. I love this show. Just talking about the crunchy bits and mechanics of games, and just how even the bits that don't look crunchy are crunchy. And uh, I get to come play today. So thanks for inviting me.
Sam: Yeah, of course.
So you brought on essentially playbooks as a concept at large. Let's start with, when you think about playbooks, what are you referring to?
Moe: So for me, a playbook is it's a character sheet, but it's a character sheet with a lot of prompts and choices that kind of limit the player's imagination, but they constrain the player choices to what actually fits in the game world. And I think, you know, some people might say, Well, I want to do what I want to do. But if you choose what's going on in the playbook, you can communicate to the GM what kind of game you want to be in, and the GM can communicate to you what kind of is in store for the players, if that makes sense.
Sam: Yeah, totally.
Moe: So back when I was a wee lad playing Dungeons Dragons and Champions. And just the concept of somebody handing you a blank character sheet and how you could read all the books, you could build your character, and come back, and that would not necessarily be appropriate for the gaming session of the day. And, there was definitely a sense of that teacher game that I hated, where it was like, guess what's in my hand? You know, guess the thing that I'm thinking about, and if nobody guessed it, you're all wrong.
Sam: Sorry, what do you mean there exactly?
Moe: well I've been in the classroom on both sides of the line as teacher and as student, and there are definitely teachers who would They'd be fishing for an answer and, you know, they keep it going a little too long while the students clearly weren't thinking about the thing they were thinking about.
And I feel like that sometimes is what it is when you go home and make a character in a trad game. You show up and your character may or may not be appropriate for the game scenario and a D& D session, but you got a character. So let's get started.
Playbook just take a lot of that questioning out and they kind of almost structuralize a session zero. And so you're playing a game. And lot of these, I'm going to say new games, I mean these games have been out for more than a decade, but in comparison to the trad games, a lot of these newer games, could just hand out a couple playbooks, and so much information gets communicated just by the players looking at the playbooks. Even if they've never heard of or played the game before and you know, it just creates a conversation starter for everyone to be on the same page for what's going to happen in the gaming session.
For example you look in Blades in the Dark, there's a cutter. And the cutter is your brawler. He's your muscle guy. And you might look on the cutter sheet and see a couple of options. could take the game in very different directions if the GM is paying attention.
So for example, if the cutter decides that they want to be a ghost fighter, that is to say they want to have potency against ghosts. I don't have to know what potency means in this game as a mechanic to understand, oh, so with my bare hands, I can handle and maybe you know, mishandle the supernatural. And I think that's cool. And I think that's the way that my character wants to solve problems.
And, GM can then from that take, oh, they want to handle supernatural problems, we should add some supernatural elements to this particular session, scenario, or campaign arc. You know, playbooks just really become a level of discourse between the player and the GM before the game even gets started.
Sam: Yeah, I think that's sort of the main topic today is how playbooks are this avenue of communication, I think not just between players and GM, but between players and other players, and between like, game designer and GM and table. It's this whole avenue of communication that people are, I think, subconsciously aware of, but not typically consciously paying a lot of attention to.
Moe: And so heard a lot of people talk about zero prep games and you know, I think there's a vast and growing space of that, but I see these games that use playbooks as a mechanic kind of leaning toward that direction, because at the point where somebody gives you a sheet and says, you know, circle three things, and we can get started, the player who looks at those three things and says, Ooh, I want vanilla and strawberry, they have an opportunity to you know, add to the menu that's gonna be uh, for dessert tonight.
Sam: Yeah,
assuming that the other people at the table are listening to their choices. It's really easy, I've played in Blades in the Dark games where a cutter comes in and picks ghost hands, I can't even remember what it's called. Uh, But the ability you were talking about earlier, it's like, I can punch ghosts, and then the, I as the GM just like, Don't put any ghosts in the game, unless they go looking for them.
And then, you have this person whose whole thing was, I want to play a game where I can punch ghosts, and no ghosts show up. Like, that's a, that's a missed opportunity. It's a communication breakdown.
Moe: Well, for me, this is a topic worth talking about because I think a lot of people look at the playbook and they don't see some of the opportunity available.
In Blades in the Dark the playbook also requires you ask who on this short list of NPCs are you friends or rivals with, you know, and a GM might really pick up on that, but I don't know that a lot of GMs are aware that yeah, like this is kind of the first volley of the game, as it were.
Sam: Yeah. Totally. Alright, why don't we start a little bit with talking about the part of this communication that is between designer and table? Like we have in the notes here, you wanna talk about Candela Obscura?
Moe: Sure. So I've seen designers start giving the playbooks names that really become evocative and suggestive of what's going on in the game. And so you got games like Candela Obscura where you have what appears to me a lot of playbooks, but they all kind of fall into a certain kind of category. So you have doctors and professors and journalists, but you also have occultists and magicians. I don't mean like mages from D& D, but magicians. People who can do magical tricks. And optical illusions, you know, with practical effects.
And, just this, this list of playbooks along with the soldier and the explorer, you look at the choices and for me, at least it really sets the tone, okay, we're playing something that is in a thematic tone that's maybe between the 1920s and maybe the 1950s or 60s, you know?
Like, could be pulpy, could be Cthulhu y, but these people are described as their jobs.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: And that is how we're going to approach keeping the eldritch horrors at bay, at least in the case of Candela Obscura. And, when you pair that up with the fact that one of these people is a professor, it's like, oh, okay, we may be in over our heads in this, but how do I want to feel like as a character, I can move through the world and maybe hope to have an effect on the things in the dark, you know?
Sam: Yeah. The other interesting thing I see in this, like, list of playbooks is, I read Magician first, and I think, Oh, okay, maybe this is just sort of the general wizard playbook, and then we're just putting a sort of like, 20s y kind of name on it, and cool, we've got that flavor. But then the next one is Occultist, and I'm like, wait, that's what I thought a Magician was, now suddenly the way I'm thinking about Magician is much more of the like, onstage doing tricks thing that you were describing, because it's specifically in opposition to Occultist.
And that, that's really useful too, in sort of taking the collective of playbooks as a, as a unit.
Moe: Exactly. So I like Root. Root's an interesting game as an RPG because you play the board game and you get to play these woodland creatures who have cute and fuzzy art, but they're not doing cute and fuzzy things, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: And so, like, you look at the Root playbooks and you have the ajuder who is kind of like a paladin. You got the thief, you got the scoundrel, and you got the vagrant. And
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: Okay, so what you're saying is, in order to keep peace in the woodland, we're going to be playing characters who either are very law oriented or very law skirting. And if we all play together, we all have to figure out how that works.
You know, which, starts to place doubt on how lawful is the law, or is the law also part of this, gray morality play? And this is just putting playbooks out on the table. Just giving the playbooks as an option, everybody suddenly gets like a taste, a flavor, it's kind of like when you smell, rosemary and garlic. All right, I have an idea of what I'm about to get myself into.
Sam: Yeah. Alright, let's go a little bit more to the conversation at the table itself. I really loved the examples you brought in from Monster of the Week here, and how some of those playbooks in particular really set the tone for the entire group. And I'm curious to hear you talk about what those playbooks kind of look like and how those fit into this for you.
Moe: So Monster of the Week is, in my opinion, a brilliant game because it just really gives you this evocative air of Skulder and Mully. Mulder and Scully, sorry maybe Men in Black, maybe Scooby Doo.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: Those are three totally different genres of approaching dealing with monsters, right? But players start choosing their playbooks, the playbooks are built to bring certain elements to bear in the game.
So, for example, you have The Chosen, and uh, the playbook straight up says, this is kind of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is kind of like Michael Landon's character from Highway to Heaven. This is the person who was sent here to do a job. And playbook comes with a thing called fate, which is it is signposting to the GM this is the overarching theme of the whole game. And that feels like a very bold thing to do, say, but the playbooks are kind of balanced in such a way fate of the chosen doesn't really step on the toes
Sam: hmm. Mm hmm.
Moe: and to me that's a level of brilliance.
Sam: A thing that's kind of going on here with The Chosen and I know also The Professional which sort of is attached to a Men In Black style organization, they all are playbooks that have a built in relationship to some sort of part of the setting that is outside the core player adventuring party. And it's really easy to Imagine someone choosing the Professional as their playbook, and then everyone else in the party being like, oh that's cool, we'll just all be members of this organization, but you're like the point person, and in that world, it's nice that someone sort of created a direction for the campaign to go in, and everyone got on board with that.
But if other people aren't into that, you might have a chosen and a professional in the same party. And at that point, you know that those two things are probably going to like come into conflict with each other, and that can be what the game's about, and the GM can know that, the other players can know that, and it's, I don't know, I just think that there's so much strength in establishing relationships early in the game so that you know what parts of the world are going to be interesting that you are going to be pushing off of and that are going to be important to you.
Moe: Yeah.
in between players, like, there's absolutely plenty of room for that. Maybe as the Crooked, that is actually the group of people I'm from, but you as a professional, you and they have a much better relationship than I do.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, like in the same way that me picking ghost hands in Blades in the Dark is a signal to my GM to put some fucking ghosts in here, me picking the professional is in a way a signal to all of the players, hey, I want you to get your shit to come mess up my relationship with this professional organization.
Moe: Right. And what happens in the introducing each other in the preparing for the question amongst characters the playbook requires, everybody gets a opportunity now that they have made some of their decisions to maybe change or adjust their decisions. To yes and something that like sounded way funner than what they saw on their sheet.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: or, or first imagined. As being evocative from their sheet, you know, or it gives players an opportunity to kind of stand in conflict with that.
Sam: Yeah. Totally.
Moe: and listen, I love it this kind of all came up for me when I decided to run a particular type of Monster of the Week game and the first thing that occurred to me was my NPC is going to be the professional. I don't want any of the players to be a professional, you know, like this game is going to be what happens when it happens to you and when you as a GM, are approaching this with something in mind, suddenly you kind of need to Steer the conversation around these playbooks and maybe take some out of contention.
Or you almost with some of these games you can't come to the game with like a campaign arc or a session in mind and just hand out playbooks because that can be unfun.
But yeah, if the players get really excited about something they see, especially if they know that their friend who's running this is doing it for the first time, you may want to just flag it.
Sam: Well, I feel like a really recurring theme of advice, sort of across all parts of life, but also on the like, RPG advice subreddits and stuff like that is just talk to your players, just talk to your table. Talk to people. And I mean like if you're having troubles in your relationship Just talk to each other is the thing that gets said. And I feel like the thing we're saying here is that there's a conversation here about what is the target of your game, of your story. What is our intentions for this?
And it's worth having the explicit conversation to get on the same page as that, not just sort of making implicit decisions based on move choices and stuff. And the move choices and playbook choices are a great way to start that conversation and find the primary topics that we're going to discuss. But knowing, hey, we should be talking about this at all is a really important thing.
And in that way, I also, you know, we kicked around the idea of calling this episode Playbooks and Safety Tools because this conversation kind of feels like a safety tool. You don't want to get four sessions into a Monster of the Week campaign and then realize, oh, this is Men in Black and I thought it was Scooby Doo.
Moe: Right, right, right, right, right.
Sam: But, I feel like this is also a reflection on safety tools that all of the best safety tools are just talk about it. Like, like this is a safety tool not because like, oh, it just so happens that this is a safety tool, but because all the best safety tools are "have this exact conversation."
Moe: Listen, this is so much it. And, you know, I guess I respond to playbooks is such a great thing because, I have made my second story thief in D& D and then in session one, we go into a dungeon and I'm just like, all right, well
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: like by the time I'm level three, I'll be useful.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
So on that note, actually, of Dungeons Dragons, and thinking about your second story, Thief, what in your mind distinguishes Dungeons Dragons classes from playbooks in this way? Why don't they work like
Moe: oh, so you're, you're asking for a whole nother podcast, Sam. In order
Sam: See if you can give me the five minute
Moe: I, I think the five minute version is this Today, there is enough eyes and critique of Dungeons Dragons that people will tell you about S tier and F tier classes and subclasses. And so, in D& D, you could really like the theme of a thing, because maybe you read a fantasy novel, and you wanna do that thing. And it could be mechanically sucky, it could be mechanically not as advantageous as other things in the game world.
And one of the things that is inherent in the playbook and special moves approach is that you're not mechanizing things, you're evoking things. You're creating this really colorful language that isn't, doesn't always tell you how it mechanically affects the game, but how it narratively affects the game.
And so like to compare what's going on in D and D, which tries to, within an inch of itself mechanize everything that it's talking about? Playbooks are almost like a suggestion. They're, let's do this mood thing, you know?
In Blades in the Dark if we go back to the cutter, there's a, a special move called Savage. And this is, when you do a act of wanton destruction and then make a command, you get plus one die. And, you know, I read that, and the first thing that comes to my mind is Wolverine, you know, from the X Men.
Sam: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Moe: The character that's gonna jump in, like, do a bunch of destruction, and then, like, make a command, you know, and, and, and
Sam: cut one guy's head off and tell everyone else to go
Moe: exactly, or shred, you know, a mannequin with claws coming out of his hands and people get the hint.
And, that to me, it's about the one die and command, but it kind of steers your character in an attitude and a direction. And I think that is a thing that D& D isn't necessarily doing,
Sam: Yeah. I do think, on the subject of D& D classes versus playbooks, your point is really good. I also think that there's just a different culture of play between the two communities that really
Moe: drastically,
Sam: too, because, you're talking a little bit in D& D about how the problem with some of the playbook choices is power gaming, essentially. Like, people are going to be out here telling you don't choose X, choose Y, because Y is more powerful.
And in Apocalypse World, people just aren't going to do that, even though there are absolutely moves in Apocalypse World that are more powerful than other moves. That like, give you more agency in the game, that make your character more of a badass, and more able to do ridiculous things.
And I think that D& D has a much broader culture of play than Apocalypse World does. I'm playing in a D& D group right now on a semi regular basis that is much closer to a story game kind of community. I chose the nature path for my paladin because I wanted to do cool nature shit. And everyone at the table was like, good, that's great. And in that way It sort of does act more like a playbook.
But it's also true that in that in the culture of D& D and with that particular DM, She just kind of like wrote the campaign story that we're going through. And that's fine, but it's not really taking into account any of our characters because I think that the D& D culture of play is very much not about that you're all choosing what a quote unquote fantasy archetype to do some kind of fantasy story. It's assumed that you're gonna be doing one particular thing, even though in practice, that's really not true.
Moe: Right. And so if you want to play a bard who goes into Ravenloft like
Sam: Yeah
Better be a goth fucking bard
Moe: you better be a goth fucking bard you better
Sam: or or you better know what you're getting into. Like maybe the thing you want to do is watch your happy go lucky fucko like slowly descend into
Moe: exactly, you know likewise, you mentioned Apocalypse World, I looked at some of the playbooks over there and I kinda, I steered away from talking about anything in particular because, I mean, Apocalypse World is the, the first PBTA game, and, like, they just do such a great job of the thing that some of these games are absolutely not doing because they're much more tight specific a game, which is, it allows for some of these special moves to be social because we're going to play a game where the problems that need to be resolved are social. It allows for some of these to be emotional because we're going to play a game that has to do with emotion, which has to do with morale, which has to do with like when comparing Blades in the Dark to D& D is a tough thing to do, right?
Because D& D is saying you could do anything in this magical world, but clearly everything is about fighting. And Blades is saying how are you going to steal, kill, and larceny your way into retirement? And I think, in my opinion, Blades is a more successful game just because it's just not trying to eat the whole horse.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: like, we're not going to have a real conflict that revolves around you trying to govern in Blades in the Dark.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: And in D& D, that can happen, it just doesn't have sophisticated tools for negotiating it.
Sam: Yeah. Totally.
Moe: Instead of trying to do everything, be all things to all people, Blades in the Dark is like, nah, you're either gonna steal it, you're gonna kill it, you're gonna drug deal it and so I think there are other games, and that's why I kind of threw Monster of the Week in there, that are definitely going to try to approach the problem in a way that may or may not resolve in combat.
You know, there's, Monster of the Week is talking all day long about having extra armor here and doing extra damage there, but there are a handful of tools in there that are about Solving problems in ways that don't involve combat. And Apocalypse World is got entire RP tracks that have nothing to do with getting into a fight.
Sam: Yeah, I mean Apocalypse World is a game that's interesting in that it is sort of all about violence, but so much of it is about avoiding violence, or recovering from violence, or like threatening violence, negotiating around violence, that it becomes exactly the kind of thing that you're talking about, even though violence is sort of always present.
Moe: Because a lot of it is emotional and systematic violence that you actually cannot win.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: So another thing I like about playbooks is, and this is for better or for worse as a game designer, they don't require that every player show up knowing the game inside and out. You can get a taste, you can get a flavor, you can want to do a thing for a session and jump right into a game in 20 or 30 minutes, because the playbook does a good enough job onboarding you into the themes of the world and to the ethos of the world and to the morality of the world. And then you figure out how you are going to solve problems in the world. And as you introduce yourselves to other characters, you know, you get a chance to refine that. You know, on the fly, and then you jump in.
And so, to me, playbooks just do a really cool job of something that is an inherent problem in the RPG space, that is to say, people not reading and knowing the rules. But it does undermine the entire ethos of the game designer who spends all his time figuring out the system and how to make it work. And all these edge cases.
Sam: Yeah. Well, I think coming at this conversation from the perspective of a game designer is something that we haven't done a lot of yet, and I really like the thing you were just talking about of, hey, FYI, playbooks should be everything a player needs to know to get to the table. Like on on two sides or, you know, four sides of a piece of paper, like that's a great goal to have. I don't know that it's always accomplishable, but you can do most of it, and that's that's something to think about as a designer.
Moe: Well, let me jump in there and kind of assert as somebody who's personally tried to achieve that goal of getting, You know, everything you need to play the game on two sides of a of a letter size piece of paper. No PBTA game does that.
Sam: Yes.
Moe: They all have a second page of moves
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: That are also evocative of the world and the problem that the players and characters are likely to face that kind of go hand in hand with the playbook.
And so the idea that it happens on four sides of a letter sized piece of paper, I think is a good bar.
Sam: I have a counterexample which is The Warren.
So The Warren is a game where you're all rabbits. It's Watership Down, right? You're running away from foxes and stuff in the forest and trying to do your thing. But The Warren also doesn't have playbooks. It has a single character sheet that everyone uses, and everyone gets one special ability to sort of distinguish themselves from everyone else. And you get to pick your own stat array as normal, but everyone is working from the same basic playbook.
And I wanted to talk about how I think there are games out there, like The Warren, that do a good job of establishing the conversation we are talking about here. Like the sort of group goals, the story goals, the archetype goals, without playbooks and other ways to do that. Because I think The Warren is a really good example.
It's a game that is so hyper specific in what it is about. You are rabbits, it's a horror movie. You don't necessarily need to know that, like, I'm the wizard rabbit, like, that's a cool game, go play Mausritter or go some other game that does that, but the fact that we are simply a group of rabbits out there in trouble, in danger, scared for our warren, scared for our lives, you just don't need more direction than that because the premise is so specific.
Moe: So I'm gonna say something silly,
Sam: Uh Huh.
Moe: I think you can absolutely get away from the playbook.
Sam: Yeah
Moe: You don't need the playbook. The playbook is not THAC0. It doesn't go back to the beginning days. I think the playbook does a very good job at the thing it does. I'm gonna also say that in talking about the playbook, I had to draw the line at talking about character sheet design,
Sam: yeah, well we did just do another whole episode about that
Moe: that people can go which is a totally different thing, and how, just looking at your character should encourage people to play more in the world. But what I will say is that, playbooks do the thing they do very well. Can the same thing be done with moves? It absolutely can. I think you either need very evocative moves like honey heist. You know, I'm either gonna honey or I'm gonna heist. Lasers and Feelings. I'm either going to laser or I'm going to feeling. I think, the playbook does a great job of, so let me ask you a question, is The Warren a campaignable game?
Sam: It is. I have never played it as a campaign game, notably. I think it is not intended for really long term campaign. And the way it is structured as a campaign is that you play a session and then advance in time significantly, and do another session, and age up all the old characters.
And so they start to die, and they also start to have kids, and you start playing as the kids. So it becomes a generational thing, and that becomes an interesting story that comes in and brings more variety to the game in the way that maybe character archetype progression would do so in a more playbook based game.
Moe: And I was wondering, where was the rub? And I think that's it.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: I think where a playbook really shines is by limiting your choices. You have this economy of choices.
Sam: Mhm.
Moe: and this economy of moves and stats and giving the promise that you can have it all one day.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: And I think that is something that I haven't talked about but I also don't think it's limited to playbooks
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: Like D& D has its level progression. All of these games have their carrot for continuing to play with this character. And with playbooks, it's right there in the special moves. It's right there being able to be more competent at your skills, et cetera.
Sam: I mean, there's also like whole genres of games that just don't have playbooks at all and aren't story games, are nowhere near the thing. Like the whole post OSR kind of scene like everything in there It's just you there's no playbook It's just your gear like the premise of the game is like you're out there doing the dungeon delving thing like it did get into this a lot, but I wanted to at least bring up the fantasy DIY elf game kind of thing.
Moe: Yeah honestly, I love the narrative stuff. And I am less interested in what you do with your magic sword than your relationship to your magic sword if that makes sense,
Sam: Yeah. Absolutely.
Moe: i'm much less interested in vorpal sword number 57 and much more interested in Mjolnir, And the fact that everybody doesn't have a Mjolnir
Sam: yeah. Imagine, well, in the game Hunt, everyone does, and that's what the game's about. Like, there's, the playbook of You Have a Cool Talking Magic Sword is well, I want to play that playbook. Like, sign me up. And it has that relationship built into it. So, yeah. It's
Moe: No, I agree but I I guess just as a matter of taste, you know what I mean?
Sam: Yeah, absolutely.
Moe: I think that should be one playbook
Sam: Yeah, So, two other kind of small things I just wanted to point out here.
The first is, we talked about this a little bit, but I really want to emphasize this is a thing that can happen between GMs and players, but also between players. Like, there are plenty of games out there that don't have GMs but still have playbooks and benefit from all of this. The Dream Askew, Dream Apart, No Dice No Masters, Belonging Outside Belonging Things the sort of classic example. But in any of these kinds of games, like if you're in Monster of the Week and someone else picks the professional, you can run in there and say, you know, your men in black organization killed my dad, and that's just a that's what that person wants. That's the thing that they are pumped for, is for a complicated relationship with their organization, right?
Moe: I love how Monster of the Week does it. I feel like they do it in a much more elegant way than Apocalypse World, but I think that's also because Monster of the Week is really trying to only do one thing, that is to say chase monsters. It doesn't even say what you're doing with the monsters. If somebody plays a monstrous type, I think you're really opening the door for like, now we don't have a black and white relationship to monsters.
Sam: Yeah. Apocalypse Keys, there's a whole game for that.
Moe: Yeah,
Sam: I also wanted to say that think I disagree that Monster of the Week is doing this better than Apocalypse World. I think they're just sort of different things for different genres, but I don't really want to, I don't really want to belabor the point there.
Um,
Moe: I, I think, I think, I, I hope I didn't say better. I hope I said that Monster of the Week is doing it in a much more simple and elegant way. Like, I think uh, Apocalypse World, if you have more than a couple of archetypes for characters to choose from, I have always felt like I need to go and think about this.
Oh! Okay.
Sam: The last thing I wanted to say is that I've been playing uh, more two player RPGs recently, and a couple of interesting games that I've noted are like Star Crossed and Tension and Godkiller are all two player RPGs that have exactly two playbooks, one for one person and one for the other. And in Godkiller, it's a traditional GM player powered by the apocalypse game, and it's meant to just be a traditional sort of PBTA structure, but you've only got one person in the party.
And in Tension and Starcrossed, it's comparable in terms of, like, everyone has about the same amount of narrative control over the game, but the playbooks themselves work differently. They have different rules, you're allowed to do different things, they come with different mechanics. And I find that really interesting.
In all of those games, I think there's much less conversation of the kind we've been having. There's much less of the conversation we've been talking about going on with the playbooks, because there's only two. It's so much more of the conversation between designer and table, rather than at the table.
But even in those games, you can still have the conversation, what do we want out of this, what are our expectations. It just might be less playbook specific.
Moe: It's interesting. It's kind of a space I don't know much about. I've heard a lot about star crossed. I haven't played it, but I think you have a real clear opportunity in two player games to create a level of competency and inadequacy and to then make that thematic and tell a hell of a story.
Sam: Yeah.
Moe: It's right there.
Sam: Yeah, so how does this stuff come out in your work?
Moe: my game, Shibuya Nights, which is it started off as a thin riff on Blades in the Dark, and then went in a very different direction, because I wanted to be a lot more hopeful.
And a lot more fun. Like, I was intentional in creating playbooks that also had options to go against type, and so, you know, if you choose the warrior playbook, they're going to be kind of special moves that are more thematic to the warrior than to the combat if that makes sense. Like you are going to be able to kind of rouse the people, you know. The people know that you're a good person and that you have a good reputation, and so on a reputation roll, they come to your aid. Or , they make sure the bad guy doesn't get away. And it was really important for me to make a game that was family friendly where everything didn't have to be about combat.
Likewise there's a whole class called the Brewers, which I feel successful because I noticed during play tests, people were attracted to, because, you know, when you say Brewer, it doesn't really establish, well, I Is this guy a mage or a cleric or a fighter? Like, what do they do? And, you just, you have an opportunity with some of these playbooks to create these ideas and notions that ground people in the world again.
And so people read the Brewer, Brewer's Guild, and the first thing they do is say, Oh, I have to tell the truth. I don't want to play this. Right. But. You know, it then establishes like, oh, those are the people with the moral authority, as opposed to the person named the hustler, which, well, that is not the person with the moral authority.
Sam: yeah, yeah,
Moe: And so Yeah, when somebody says they want to take the special feat of look good doing it and they want to swing from a chandelier, I think that kind of becomes the heart of the game. And you can create playbooks that specifically say, do something awesome. This isn't a game about physics or reality. It's really about having fun.
Sam: Moe, thanks so much for coming on Dice Exploder.
Moe: Thanks for having me, Sam. I'm a big fan of the show. It's a show I wish I started. And I'm glad that I don't have to do it every week.
Sam: Thanks again to Moe for being here. You can find Moe's work and links and everything ashyfeet.com or in the show notes, and the podcast you hosts show and tell over at RPG Academy.
As always, you can find me on socials at S Dunnewold or on the dice Exploder discord. Our logo was designed by sporgory and our theme song is sunset bridge by purely gray.
And thanks to you for listening. See you next time.