Gamers Plane public PbtA or Brindlewood game recs?

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Jul 12, 2023 8:50 pm
I'm toying with the idea of running a game of Public Access, a Powered by the Apocalypse and Carved from Brindlewood game. I'm a bit wary, though, since the game relies on so much dialogue between the Keeper/GM and the players. That got me thinking -- People run PbtA stuff here all the time, right?

So, can anyone recommend some PbtA or Brindlewood games that have been run here (public ones, so I can read them) that worked particularly well? How did the GM handle the back-and-forth these games demand? How did they keep things moving despite needing to wait for frequent player feedback and improvisational riffing?
Last edited July 12, 2023 8:51 pm
Jul 13, 2023 3:00 am
My only successful PbtA game was Kult. It's retired but I think you can still read retired games. Link is here: https://gamersplane.com/forums/thread/26301/

I think PbtA runs better than most games because it doesn't get bogged down in combat. Games flow much easier when you aren't waiting for someone to take their turn and have to adjudicate so many rolls. PbtA generally has less rolling but more impactful results so I found people would post more often. It's also much less back-and-forth than systems like Forged in the Dark which require bargains and positioning discussions for every roll. I just joined a Brindlewood Bay game that should be starting this week or next. Not sure if its public but if it is you can read along in real time!
Last edited July 13, 2023 2:37 pm
Jul 13, 2023 6:33 am
The only successful PbtA game here was Kult? I think that's a stretch. :)

I ran a fair-to-middling Masks game for a little while, and played in Orklord's first Apocalypse World game on GP. (I think he's running another one now.) Suspect there are a fair few more out there, but it *does* take the right touch from the MC, and the right players, to really make it sing for PbP play.
Jul 13, 2023 6:37 am
Quote:
I ran a fair-to-middling Masks game for a little while
If there's anyone on this site who doesn't have to be modest about their GMing, it's you 😄 That was (is...?) a great game
Jul 13, 2023 2:36 pm
Harrigan says:
The only successful PbtA game here was Kult? I think that's a stretch. :)
Lol I meant to say "My" only successful PbtA game.
Jul 13, 2023 5:09 pm
nezzeraj says:
It's also much less back-and-forth than systems like Forged in the Dark which require bargains and positioning discussions for every roll.
That's the part I'm wondering about. I'm reading through Brindlewood Bay and Public Access, and they both bake this sort of positioning into the game. In a liveplay with Jason Cordova, the writer of both games, there's a lot of this:

GM: "You enter the shuttered house. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling, and a thick layer of dust tells you the place isn't being lived in. But, Janie ... something tells you that someone has been here recently. What is it?"

The idea is to share narrative control with the players, but I worry it will fall into the "waiting for one specific person to respond" trap you mention. I suppose you could make it more open ended and let anyone respond, but then you risk letting one player who's logged in all the time take over. Then you could also just remove these bits and narrate things in the traditional GM model, but I worry that that robs these games of a lot of what makes them distinct.
nezzeraj says:
I just joined a Brindlewood Bay game that should be starting this week or next. Not sure if its public but if it is you can read along in real time!
Oh, cool! I didn't know anyone had run it here. Has your GM talked about doing the co-narrative control stuff? Or how Conditions might work? Jason Cordova does this a lot:

GM: "OK, you rolled a 6. [Narrates some negative outcome.] How does this make you feel?"

PC: "Um, confused, I think."

GM: "OK, take the Confused Condition."

Again, I can see this working if the players are pretty active on the site, but it also introduces another spot where things slow down just waiting for that back and forth. Maybe it's enough for the GM to tell the affected player to choose a Condition that seems appropriate and move on?

Thanks for the ideas, all. I'm excited about these games and want to try them out, so it's useful to hear how others have handled them and to think "out loud" about how I might try to reduce the waiting-on-that-one-player problem.
Last edited July 13, 2023 5:11 pm
Jul 13, 2023 6:59 pm
SavageBob says:
Again, I can see this working if the players are pretty active on the site, but it also introduces another spot where things slow down just waiting for that back and forth.
What I do for this is have a discord server for ooc chat and other quick back and forth requirements, and leave the GP site for storytelling.

So when players/GM need to have a discussion about conditions or clarifications or whatever, they can quickly communicate on discord and then post on more details what happened in the story on GP.
Jul 14, 2023 12:33 am
The Brindlewood game is only in character creation now so I don't have any answers yet about how everything will work out. It's an experiment for sure! But I've played other FitD games and generally the GM picks the condition based on what the player was trying to do. If it's more feelings-based condition that might be harder because the player has more agency in that case. I guess my advice is to just borrow from Burning Wheel and lay out the consequences for both mixed success and failure before the roll is made, that way it doesn't slow anything down. Or have the player say in advance when they make their roll what they'd like the various outcomes to be.

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