Narrative fallout is often offered as a way to escape failure in narrative TTRPGs. This post analyses three systems implementing “costly success” and concludes with an observation, a hypothesis, and a gameplay option.
Category: Apocalypse World
Cortex/Apocalypse–Cortex Got Moves
TL;DR: This post turns Apocalypse World’s moves into a Cortex Prime gameplay trick to make dice-rolling even more narrative, and if you don’t care for the reasons, you can jump right to it. Apocalypse World (AW) and Cortex Prime (CP) share more similarities than meet the naked eye. It’s a leitmotiv of this blog. I…
Peter’s Principle*–Overcome Anything
Overcome actions are one of four in Fate RPG, but they’re more subtle than they look and pop up in other TTRPGs in ways that are subtly different, and this post goes through a few.
Bronze Rulz!–Create Advantages, Everywhere (Almost)
This post looks at Fate’s Create an Advantage through the lens of other rulesets, then loops back to Fate and the sad condition outnumbered Big-Bads.
Theory Thursday–Success or Failure? Yes
Cortex Prime changes the very concepts of success and failure, there’s a cognitive science theory that can prove it, and a few visuals are all that’s needed to show how.
Monkeying Monday–Emergent Gameplay (NPC Edition)
A go-to game design move leverages PC-to-PC backstory for “emergent gameplay,” but there’s a possible alternative based on PC-to-NPC relations that may complement it or suit some players better.
Apocalypse/Cortex–A Conversation
This post explores how Apocalypse World and Cortex disrupt the old “let’s just role-play this!” attitude slightly differently, and how to use these differences to enrich roleplay.
Apocalypse/Cortex–On Threats, Dice Rolls, and Not Being a Dick
This post explores the subtle art of not being a dick GM from a slightly different “fiction first” standpoint than Fate’s, with as much geeky stuff, but more dice-rolling, than usual.
Hardwired/Apocalypse–Listen Up, You Proactive Screwheads!!!
GM-ing a cyberpunk game has always meant going for the PCs’ throats. Mining Apocalypse World for advice lets you do it the collaborative way. (<5 min. read)
Fate/Apocalypse–Moves & Stunts
Apocalypse World’s mechanics are close enough to Fate’s to mine them for gameplay, assuming a translation between the two systems; this post provides one.
The Polverine 