There’s a (potentially apocryphal) story about the design of Apocalypse World that says that the first thing Vincent Baker designed for the game was the Angel playbook. (Or possibly Brainer? I’ve heard both.) Before what dice you were rolling, before the basic moves, before any kind of MC-facing mechanics, Vincent started with some evocative stats and abilities. Before he knew what “open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom” meant, those words existed on a page. From there, he and Meguey built the game around what that playbook would need to function instead of starting big picture and gradually filling in.

Now, I’m sure that first playbook was iterated on later. Maybe it was completely revised. I’m sure a lot of that game existed before the fifth playbook was written. Maybe all of this is a lie! But I think there’s something very useful about the idea of starting a game’s design with its character sheet and/or playbooks and building out…