Rich and Rach discuss Apocalypse Engine Games and defined settings. Most PbtA games don’t have them. Why is that? Is that a feature or a bug?
Timecodes:
05:52 – Do Apocalypse Engine games need settings?
13:35 – Discussing some PbtA games with strong settings baked in
30:14 – Challenges with MCing defined settings and how to deal with them
CC: Brendan Conway, Mark Diaz Truman, Jason Morningstar, and Gregor Vuga.
Looking forward to this episode.. I’m not caught up yet, but I’m getting there. I just passed Ironsworn!
Looking forward to this episode.. I’m not caught up yet, but I’m getting there. I just passed Ironsworn!
Michael Prescott I don’t understand the joke?
Michael Prescott I don’t understand the joke?
Richard Rogers I was thread-jacking, I’ll explain elsewhere!
Richard Rogers I was thread-jacking, I’ll explain elsewhere!
Hi! I was just enjoying the episode… when suddenly at 39:54, the credits start up while Rach is still talking! I don’t know if that’s just a glitch in my download, but I thought I’d let you know just in case. Great episode, regardless!
Hi! I was just enjoying the episode… when suddenly at 39:54, the credits start up while Rach is still talking! I don’t know if that’s just a glitch in my download, but I thought I’d let you know just in case. Great episode, regardless!
Larry S yup, that’s a gaffe on my part. Will work on a fix. Thanks for the heads up
Larry S yup, that’s a gaffe on my part. Will work on a fix. Thanks for the heads up
Monster of the Week – I ran several games of MOTW in the Dresdenverse. The PC’s did not meet anyone from the dresden stories, and were unaffected by the white council vs red court war since they were in new york and there was little white council presence there.
What was part of the game : 3 Vampire Courts and 4 types of Lycans.
Magic disrupting technology (narrative via 7-9 and 6- rolls)
Thresholds = -2 to All rolls if not allowed. True Names = +2 to Use Magic/Big Magic rolls.
Underworld and Nevernever were straight out of Dresden, and they went to both.
They did have to deal with wolfborn and loup garou at certain points, and that worked fine. One of the foes was an emotion draining ooze from outer space. Not typical dresden style, but not breaking it either. One of the PC’s worked for the Golden Dawn (Crowley was a lich) against the Black Court vampires, again not typical Dresden, but there was enough room to move while still giving pcs and Keeper familiar tropes to work with.
You could argue that those games were light-dresden non full canon-dresden but meh, we had a lot of fun and I tied in a universe that the players loved.
Dungeon World & Conjure Hagalaz games – Whenever i’ve asked for setting preferences, or asked questions based on characters to flesh out the world, I get event responses. Eg I want a Helms Deep (LOTR) battle!. I say okay you have an Immolator, do you have rivals, a guild? are you hunted or have status? the response I get is ‘yeah not fussed’.
So what I do is run them on my homebrew world, so they can not decide on major species, what gods or how many moons, but they can decide things like ‘what makes X unusual/mystical/valuable’ several times per session. Yes they tend to focus on X more than my setting elements, but that’s okay, we are still generating our story.
An example is Oakunuts. One of players had a druid and he decided his homeland had many oakunuts, which are like coconut trees but the wood is hard as oak. He went around planting oakunut seeds everywhere. Now they had a quest that took them back into the past… so now a third of my world has oakunut groves.
The maps for my homebrew world are 60 mile hexes. So you can easily run a game series based in 3 hex area, without breaking the setting. If the pcs want a creature or feature that is non standard, its fine since its fantasy, the standard IS unusual.
One of the players made a Spout Lore roll, decided the mysterious statue in the woods was Rogar the Drinker, a dwarf on a pile of kegs, and the statue was stolen by the elves during an elf-dwarf war several hundred years ago. Since it was not ludicrous I let him go with it and that’s now canon for my homebrew world.
Monster of the Week – I ran several games of MOTW in the Dresdenverse. The PC’s did not meet anyone from the dresden stories, and were unaffected by the white council vs red court war since they were in new york and there was little white council presence there.
What was part of the game : 3 Vampire Courts and 4 types of Lycans.
Magic disrupting technology (narrative via 7-9 and 6- rolls)
Thresholds = -2 to All rolls if not allowed. True Names = +2 to Use Magic/Big Magic rolls.
Underworld and Nevernever were straight out of Dresden, and they went to both.
They did have to deal with wolfborn and loup garou at certain points, and that worked fine. One of the foes was an emotion draining ooze from outer space. Not typical dresden style, but not breaking it either. One of the PC’s worked for the Golden Dawn (Crowley was a lich) against the Black Court vampires, again not typical Dresden, but there was enough room to move while still giving pcs and Keeper familiar tropes to work with.
You could argue that those games were light-dresden non full canon-dresden but meh, we had a lot of fun and I tied in a universe that the players loved.
Dungeon World & Conjure Hagalaz games – Whenever i’ve asked for setting preferences, or asked questions based on characters to flesh out the world, I get event responses. Eg I want a Helms Deep (LOTR) battle!. I say okay you have an Immolator, do you have rivals, a guild? are you hunted or have status? the response I get is ‘yeah not fussed’.
So what I do is run them on my homebrew world, so they can not decide on major species, what gods or how many moons, but they can decide things like ‘what makes X unusual/mystical/valuable’ several times per session. Yes they tend to focus on X more than my setting elements, but that’s okay, we are still generating our story.
An example is Oakunuts. One of players had a druid and he decided his homeland had many oakunuts, which are like coconut trees but the wood is hard as oak. He went around planting oakunut seeds everywhere. Now they had a quest that took them back into the past… so now a third of my world has oakunut groves.
The maps for my homebrew world are 60 mile hexes. So you can easily run a game series based in 3 hex area, without breaking the setting. If the pcs want a creature or feature that is non standard, its fine since its fantasy, the standard IS unusual.
One of the players made a Spout Lore roll, decided the mysterious statue in the woods was Rogar the Drinker, a dwarf on a pile of kegs, and the statue was stolen by the elves during an elf-dwarf war several hundred years ago. Since it was not ludicrous I let him go with it and that’s now canon for my homebrew world.
Blake Ryan That MotW in Dresden idea sounds keen! Some great ideas in your post about using settings and setting inspirations.
Blake Ryan That MotW in Dresden idea sounds keen! Some great ideas in your post about using settings and setting inspirations.