Powered by the Apocalypse

Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) is a narrativist, open source game system developed by Vincent Baker and his wife. Initially rising to prominence in Apocalypse World, it was made open source by the Bakers in an open letter to players, leading to an explosion of RPGs in its wake.

How it works

PbtA's greatest strength is it's sheer flexibility as one of the most popular Narrativist game systems on the market, and as such many games will use the idea to tell all sorts of different interactive stories, but always at the heart of it is the Master of Ceremonies (MC), and the players. The players typically help the MC build the meat and potatoes of the world around their characters based on the game's themes. After that, it tends to diverge considerably, but there is usually:

• Minimum of Five stats, usually following something along the lines of Strength, Smarts, Charisma, Keeping cool under pressure, and one stat specifically governing a game-specific power or magical ability. These stats can be modified to a minimum of -3, to a maximum of +3 either by the natural flow of a campaign or by the player's starting playbook.
• Player's character "class" is an outline of a specific type of character for that particular game called a Playbook, that gives initial stat distributions, special moves only they can do, actual NPCs working for them, special places to shack up, and all sorts of narrative hooks to get them invested.
• All actions in-game done by characters being governed by Moves, which are determined on a success/fail system by rolling Two 6-sided die. 10+ is a complete success, 9-7 is a partial success, and 6 and below is a failure. It should be noted that Moves are generally extremely specific to stuff that isn't normal, every-day actions like crossing the street, making a sandwich, talking to regular people about the weather, that kind of shit. Moves are specifically the kind of thing that only your character can do that are specifically out of the ordinary, like combat, reading a strange situation that defies explanation, doing magic, doing psychic magic, and other such things. All Failures are determined by the MC and the general tone of the game; a wackier, breezier game will have you walk onto a rake like Sideshow Bob even when there's no reason a Rake should be there, a more grimdark game will probably find you searching for your arm that got torn off.

After that however, it's usually dependent on the game.

PbtA and Quality Control

There isn't any, and that's usually the big worry while playing a PbtA game.

While PbtA is a flexible, useful system, it kind of has the same reputation in some circles as the Unity game engine does on /v/. The reason for this is while it's endlessly mutatable and generally very easy to adapt to whatever it is you want to do with your particular setting or conceit, it is also very, very, very easy to fart out a game in ten minutes and call it a day. As a result, a vast majority of PbtA games are either fine, mediocre, untested babby's first TTRPG, or just plain trash, with very few notable exceptions. If you're planning on playing a PbtA game, it's important to either cop out and just pick up the most popular ones (such as Apocalypse World, Masks, Monster of the Week, etc. etc.), or if you dare to venture outside of it, make sure to read it front to back to make sure you're not accidentally dropping your players into a Magical Realm.

Notable PbtA Games

Thanks to the very confusing way the Bakers worded their letter, technically Apocalypse World counts, but there are plenty of good ones, mercifully already covered here on this very wiki. But to give a non-exhaustive list:

• City of Mist - Loose adaptation of PbtA into a film noir superheroic urban fantasy setting.
• Dungeon World - Old-school D&D-style dungeon romps.
• Epyllion: A Dragon Epic - My Little Pony wearing the skin of Spyro.
• Fellowship - A group of heroes consisting of the best and brightest of their respective backgrounds are on a journey to defeat a GM-controlled BBEG.
• Legacy: Life Among The Ruins - Generational saga in a post-apocalyptic world.
• Masks: A New Generation - Teenage superheroes.
• Monsterhearts - World of Darkness with unstable relationships and sexual tension.
• Monster of the Week - Episodic monster hunting.
• Spirit of '77 - Pulp, grindhouse 1970s action.
• The Sprawl - Cyberpunk.
• Thirsty Sword Lesbians - Queer relationship tensions with bladed weapons.
• Uncharted Worlds - Space opera.
• Urban Shadows - Urban fantasy.
• The Veil - Navel-gazing post-cyberpunk.
• Threadbare - Stitchpunk. Think Toy Story and 9.
• World Wide Wrestling - Professional wrestling.

Powered By the Apocalypse games
Apocalypse World - Dungeon World - Masks: A New Generation - Monsterhearts - Monster of the Week - Spirit of '77 - Urban Shadows