E. wrote:

My Lost Mine of Phandelver group has decided to go cross-country to find the goblin castle (Castle Cragmaw). They have vague directions from a goblin they spoke to, but I think it’s highly unlikely they could find the base just from the goblin pointing. How should I run this? Or should I just let them find it after a bit of travel? I have some wandering monsters, but I’m concerned that if they go looking and find nothing that it will be frustrating and not-fun.

When dealing with this sort of thing, I find it useful to review the possible outcomes. In this case:

1. They find it.
2. They don’t find it and nothing interesting happens while they look.
3. They don’t find it (at least, not yet), but something interesting happens while they’re looking.

Getting a good, solid grip on the situation like this makes it a lot easier to clearly understand the choices that you’re going to make. (And, by extension, the choices the players are going to make.)

Next, consider — at least in broad terms — what each of these would look like at the table. In each of these, for example, you’d briefly describe the journey and then…

1. … describe Cragmaw Castle.
2. … tell them they found nothing and ask them what they want to do next.
3. … describe the other interesting thing (location, creatures, etc.) that they encounter.

The next thing is figuring out how you’re going to determine which of these things is going to happen. This will depend a lot on the situation, the action being proposed by the players, and the existing structures of play. For example, if you were running a player-facing hexcrawl, you might have the players point to the hex they want to explore and then use all of your existing hexcrawl procedures to resolve the attempt (which would likely result in #1 or a series of #3s).

Things get more complicated, of course, if you don’t have any established structure to use (or if it’s unclear which structure you should be using and how you should use it). Figuring out how to handle that will always start with asking, “How are you doing that?” and, essentially, repeating variations of that question until you feel like you have enough information about their method to make a ruling and resolve the outcome.

In this case, the method is “explore the direction the goblin pointed us in.” Is this a sufficiently detailed method to make a ruling? That can be debated, but it’s ultimately up to you. Personally, if I can clearly see the potential outcomes of what the PCs are trying to do, I generally take that to mean the method has been clearly established. (Although I might ask some follow-up questions and clarify the details to make sure the stakes — i.e., the potential costs and rewards of the attempt — of the attempt are clear.)

In this case, I think the method is sufficiently detailed for your group, because you’ve already made the essential assessment:

I think it’s highly unlikely they could find the base just from the goblin pointing

They have enough information that there’s a chance they could find it, but it’s unlikely. All you need to do is quantify that unlikeliness. You might do that directly: “there’s a 1 in 20 chance per day of searching the area” (or 1 in 10 or 1 in 6 of whatever). Or you might do it via a daily (or hourly or weekly) skill check.

Now if the check is successful and the PCs find Cragmaw Castle, that’s inherently interesting and you can obviously just move forward with the material you have prepped.

But what if they don’t find it?

The fail state here is:

GM: You don’t find anything.

Players: We search some more.

GM: You don’t find anything.

Players: We search some more.

GM: You don’t find anything.

Players: We search some more.

GM: You don’t find anything.

Players: We search some more.

This is, obviously, the frustrating “not-fun” that you’re concerned about.

The Art of Rulings states that failure should always be interesting, meaningful, or both. (If not, you should default to success.) To achieve this, you have a few options.

First, reassess and eliminate the failure. In this case, maybe finding Castle Cragmaw with the information they have is inevitable and the only meaningful question is, “How long does it take?” Determine that as quickly as possible, describe it, and get to the next interesting choice (i.e., what do the PCs do when they find the castle?).

Second, shut down the loop: The failure is meaningful because it indicates finding Castle Cragmaw using this method is actually impossible, but it’s not interesting beyond that, so clearly communicate that failure to the players (e.g., “you search for days, but realize you’re searching for a needle in a haystack”) and then ask them what they do next. They’ll either need to try a different method of searching or choose something else to do.

Third, make sure each of those resolution loops ends in something interesting happening instead of nothing happening. You mention having wandering monster tables, for example. I’d also consider looking at other interesting locations in your prep notes, if any, along the vector they’ve chosen. That should give you a lot of fodder for describing interesting stuff while their search continues.

Note that the consistent theme here is describing failure efficiently and getting to the next meaningful choice as quickly as possible.

SUBTLETIES

Beyond these big, broad approaches, there are a lot of different subtleties an advanced game master can deploy here. For example, by blending these various tools together.

• After the players say they’re going to search the wilderness in the direction the goblin pointed them in, you can ask them how long they would continue their search before giving up. (You might ask this directly or via a proxy question like, “How many days worth of supplies are you bringing?”) With that information in hand, you could then determine how long it would take them to find Castle Cragmaw (by any number of possible methods) — if that time is less than the length of their expedition, then they find it; if not, the resolution gets shunted into a simple, “You don’t find it… now what?”
• Or each time you roll a failure in their search, you also make a random encounter check. Resolve these checks rapidly — possibly rolling them behind your screen to speed things up — so that you can summarize the entire sequence efficiently instead of dwelling in tedium.

Of course, player frustration can arise from many different sources. If your resolve their search attempt completely behind the screen, for example, they might feel that you’re railroading them by arbitrarily blocking their actions (even if this isn’t the case). For such players, in addition to working on building meaningful trust with them in the long-term, you may want to bias your rulings towards methods — e.g., skill checks that they roll themselves — where they’ll feel ownership for their failures (instead of laying the blame on you).

In short, there’s not One True Way™ of resolving a search for Castle Cragmaw. Running a roleplaying game, after all, is much more an art than a science. But I do find these general principles help guide me to useful and effective answers. Hopefully they’ll guide you to the same.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #1

FURTHER READING

The Art of Rulings

B. asks:

I just finished the first session of a new campaign. One of my players pitched a character who was “very strange, but in a charming way.” In the first scene she told the chief of police that his eyes reminded her of her dead mother, then she ran in circles around another NPC, sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of him, and asked what his favorite color was.

Both NPCs reacted poorly. Not hostile. But definitely “I don’t want to talk to this nutjob.” My player then reminded me that, while her character is strange, other people are supposed to find the strangeness charming.

I’m not sure what to do. This PC is a stranger in town and she basically just accosted these people. I had the NPCs react the way that I thought they would naturally react to someone behaving like this.

What should I do? Should I just have NPCs find her antics charming, even if I don’t?

I suspect your player is aiming for what I think of as the “feral weirdo” or “hyper-kooky” archetype, often seen in anime. Examples off the top of my head include:

• Edward from Cowboy Bebop
• Mako from Kill la Kill
• Naruto from Naruto (particularly in the first couple arcs, then he socializes a bit)
• Anya from Spy x Family

Non-anime examples include Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter.

There’s a wide range to these characters and the types of stories they can exist in, but the less comical the tone, the more delicate the balance is.

Assuming that this is what your player is aiming for:

If you don’t think this is an archetype you can support at the table, then you need to have a frank discussion with the player. Try to avoid being judgmental. I don’t think this player did anything wrong by aiming for this archetype, but the tonal mismatch between what you’re running and the character they want to play is going to make for a frustrating experience.

If, understanding the archetype, you want to support the player, I think you’ll still need to have a frank discussion with them: Yes, there are people who will find the feral hyper-weirdo charming. But there will also be people (often lots of people) who don’t. Often even people who end up being the hyper-weirdo’s best friends will initially be, “WTF?”

This is a two-way contract: The player needs to make sure that their antics do, in fact, have a charming, whimsical quality to them. The player also needs to accept that not everyone will like them — Luna Lovegood has to interact with Draco Malfoy; Mako with Nanon and Nui; etc. On the other hand, you’ll be promising that there will be characters who DO accept them and find them charming. If you can’t do that, then circle back to, “I can’t support this archetype in this game.”

The more general tip here is, if you don’t understand a character concept or the actions that a player is taking in your game, it can be very useful to cut straight to the point and ask them what their goal is. Using analogies to characters from other mediums isn’t the only way to figure things out, but it can be a very effective way of quickly understanding what the player is aiming for and the types of responses and outcomes they expect their actions to have.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #26

Kandahar asks:

Can you run hexcrawls in a very small location? For example, I have a a single valley I want my players to explore. I made a map in Worldographer, but I used 2-mile hexes. I don’t think it’s reasonable to impose very slow travel. Even if this is densely populated, is there any way I can run this properly?

The Alexandrian hexcrawl uses a player-unknown 12-mile hexes because I’ve found huge advantages to using this as a default structure. But there are lots of reasons for why you might want to make different choices. For example, in my remix of Desccent Into Avernus, I used a 60-mile hex for the Avernian hexcrawl, partly because I wanted vast, empty spaces and partly because the PCs are expected to be using fast-moving war machines.

So you can absolutely use a hexcrawl for a smaller location. But there will be specific challenges you’ll want to think about.

First, as you note, travel speed will not constrain the PCs’ exploration range to a reasonable number of hexes. Therefore, you need some other constraint. This might be:

• geographic – e.g., mountain ranges restrict and slow down movement
• magical – e.g., this all takes place inside a tiny pocket dimension; there’s a magical dome over the valley; the PCs are trapped in the valley by a magical curse and cannot leave
• non-diegetic – e.g., “This campaign is about the Valley of the Moon, so we don’t leave the Valley of the Moon.”

Second, hex visibility. I use 12-mile hexes because it lets me plausibly only think about the hex the PCs are currently in and specific, highly visible-from-a-distance landmarks. When you’re using smaller 2-mile hexes, spot distances suddenly start creating problems.

One problem is needing to communicate lots of different terrain types to the players: A human should know not only their hex, but all the hexes around them, too. And they’ll probably have at least a general idea of the terrain two hexes away, too! Even a little bit of elevation could easily let them see three hexes away. Pick any hex on the map above and think about how you could describe all of that in a rolling, detailed, meaningful fashion as the PCs move across the valley.

To help counteract this, you may want to use player-known hexes. This will have the advantage of creating a clear communication channel for the terrain. (The disadvantage is that it becomes much more difficult to handle getting lost and, aesthetically, I’ve found this significantly reduces immersion.)

The other problem, though, is juggling keyed locations: If the PCs can see seven hexes, it’s not just about communicating terrain. You’re also juggling seven different hex keys to know what you need to describe to them. That’s a lot of page-flipping to load that information and a lot of mental juggling to keep it all straight. Then they’ll immediately move to another hex and you’ll need to pull 3+ more hexes all at once to describe what they see.

You can counteract this a bit by labeling visible locations directly on the GM’s hex map. You might even want to prep a one-page cheat sheet with 1-2 sentence descriptions of each visible location. That way you can identify what to describe directly from the map and use the cheat sheet to describe it without needing to flip through all the detailed hex descriptions. (This is, of course, extra prep, but trust me, you’ll want it. Even with larger 12-mile hexes, I’ll still do this prep for any locations large enough to be visible from distant hexes.)

Your third challenge is that the combination of all these factors means that wilderness exploration will likely not be a significant part of the campaign: The PCs are going to rapidly move through the entire area and know where everything is.

On the one hand, you can lean into this with not only player-known hexes, but also by just giving them the entire terrain map at the beginning of the campaign. (You’ll often discover this also makes sense diegetically, since the relatively smaller scope of the campaign makes it harder to believe that, for example, the local villagers don’t know that there’s a forest 10 miles to the east.)

This, of course, calls into question why you’re using a hexcrawl structure in the first place. (There are better, cleaner structures for having lots of targeted movement.) To counteract this, I recommend keying lots of hidden locations – sites where the PCs will need to go to a specific hex and deliberately explore it in order to find out what’s hiding there. (Although they’d still have a chance of stumbling across it randomly while simply moving through the hex.)

And by lots, I mean lots and lots and lots. My gut says you probably want a majority of the hexes in a smaller hexcrawl like this to be hidden.

MECHANICAL TWEAKS

At this point, of course, we’ve moved away from the core gameplay loop of the Alexandrian hexcrawl: Players are now largely looking at a known hex map and pointing at a specific hex they want to go to and explore so that they can fill in its secrets on their map. To make this a smoother experience, you’re going to want to throw out some other stuff and redesign it.

For example, I would throw out D&D’s traditional movement system and recalculate movement rate as a per-watch or per-day hex budget. The exact budget, of course, would depend on the hex scale you’re using, but you likely want a base rate of 1 movement point = 1 hex. Then rate terrain types by the number of movement points required to move into them. (You will not be able to make these values match by-the-book movement rates. I would suggest getting your base movement rate “close enough” and then creating a tier of 2-point terrain and a tier of 3-point terrain.)

You may also want to jettison navigation checks entirely. Or, alternatively, simplify these mechanics so that getting lost just means getting turned around inside your current hex (e.g., pay the movement cost of the hex, but don’t actually move out). The thing to think about, as you’re fine-tuning this for your needs, is what makes Being Lost an interesting experience. (With the player-unknown 12-mile hexes of the Alexandrian hexcrawl, players are making and/or navigating with their own map and if they become disoriented those activities become challenging in their own right and can also lead the players to make unexpected discoveries. This tends not to happen with player-known hexes, where it’s almost always obvious when they’ve gone astray.)

You may, of course, discover other pain points once you start actually running your modified hexcrawl. That’s to be expected! But with a little forethought, hopefully you won’t have to do much more than tweak things in response to your playtesting to have a great campaign!

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #25

FD writes:

I really enjoy prepping the “macro” parts of my campaign, but I hate creating the “micro.”

I use your node-based scenario design. I understand the factions and the major characters. I like creating all the connections between these elements and I understand the conflicts and motivations that drive the campaign. But when I have to start creating specific scenarios, that’s where I get bogged down.

For example, in my prep there’s a Cultist Dungeon. I know what’s important there. I know the connections it makes and the conflicts and the characters and all that “macro” stuff. But when I need to actually write the dungeon — room by room, challenges, puzzles, battles — that’s where it hurts.

What am I doing wrong?

Writer’s block — which, ultimately, is what you’re experiencing — is a complex beast. There are a lot things that could be triggering it. A lot of reasons why you might be locking up or bogging down.

But here’s something you could try.

We’ll use dungeons as an example. You like creating the “macro-scale” stuff: Connections, factions, central conflicts, themes, etc. So instead of just leaving that stuff behind and flipping to a “micro” room-by-room approach, instead design your dungeons from the macro perspective.

For example, you know that this Cultist Dungeon connects to other stuff. I don’t know what that stuff is for your campaign, but let’s pretend that it’s:

• Goblin arms dealers are selling the cult arcane weapons.
• The cultists are seeking the Black Temple of L’rignak, lost for generations.
• The cult is blackmailing Lord Bluemoon.

For each of these connections, brainstorm one to three leads pointing to those connections. (Following the Three Clue Rule and Node-Based Scenario Design.) For example:

Goblin arms dealers are selling the cult arcane weapons.

• Goblin arms dealer is currently staying in a guest room.
• Crates of goblin weapons.
• A contract, invoice, or some other document, placed in an iron coffer with payment in gold.

Seeking the Black Temple of L’rignak.

• Region maps detailing the search.
• L’rignak lore books.
• A small shrine dedicated to L’rignak.

Blackmailing Lord Bluemoon.

• Correspondence with Bluemoon.
• The blackmail material implicating Bluemoon.
• Bluemoon or a messenger from Bluemoon visits the cultists.

In my experience, leads to connections are easy, so they’re a good place to start. But you want to do the same thing with the other macro-level stuff you’ve already designed.

Conflict: L’rignak cultists are being targeted by Holygold paladins.

• Holygold paladin being held prisoner, awaiting sacrifice.
• Several injured cultists being treated for injuries after being ambushed by Holygold paladins in the streets.

Theme: Redemption and temptation.

• One of the cultists is thinking about leaving the cult.
• The cult leader will suggest that the PCs should join the cult.

Once you’ve finished brainstorming this list, go through each element and think about where it would be located and how it would be protected. (The latter might be literal security measures, but could also be more abstract.)

• The paladin is being held prisoner, so the cult must have cells where she’s locked up. Protection: Guards for the prisoners.
• Documents would be kept in the cult leader’s office. Protection: Locked and warded door. Documents are kept in a safe. Cult leader is often here.
• Lorebooks might be in the library or maybe the cult’s sanctuary. Protection: The librarian, who’s actually a L’rignak daemon.
• The small shrine to L’rignak is… a small shrine to L’rignak. Protection: Hidden behind a secret door.

And so forth. As you can see, some of this stuff will be obvious and some elements will naturally pair up and group together. There’s no need to complicate it.

If you organize these notes, you’ll find that you now have a list of rooms stocked with cool discoveries and interesting challenges, all of which great out of your macro elements. Review the list to see if there are any glaring functional gaps — e.g. do the cultists live here? if so, where do they sleep and eat and hang out? — and fill them.

Now that you’ve got a good list of rooms, all you need to do is draw a good map featuring those rooms and you’ll have a playable dungeon.

Of course, this advice applies to other scenario structures, too. Your macro prep has indicated a social event?

• What factions and NPCs are present at the event?
• What are their agendas?
• What connections does this event have to other elements in your campaign?
• What theme or themes can you emphasize at this event?
• What campaign-wide conflicts could be manifested during the event?

And so forth.

I don’t know if this, specifically, will be the right approach for you. But I think it’s more likely to keep your focused on the stuff you’re passionate about, and let the details of the scenario flow from that passion.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #24

G. asks:

I’ve run a couple Powered by the Apocalypse games and I don’t get the hype. What are the strengths of PBTA games supposed to be compared to games like Call of Cthulhu, Vampire the Masquerade, or Savage Worlds?

Let’s start with a quick orientation for people not familiar with Powered by the Apocalypse:

• Vincent and Meguey Baker released Apocalypse World in 2010.
• The Bakers put the game under a free license.
• As a result, the novel system has been adapted and used in hundreds of RPGs. These games are referred to as Powered by the Apocalypse (PBTA).
• The system also notably influenced John Harper’s Blades in the Dark, which has also inspired countless RPGs published as Forged in the Dark.

In actual practice, Powered by the Apocalypse is barely a dice mechanic loosely paired to the concept of Moves. And on of Baker’s own PBTA games doesn’t include the dice or the moves. So there’s a huge range in what “PBTA games” do and how they do it.

But let’s break down each feature that seems to be closely identified with Powered by the Apocalypse.

CORE MECHANIC

PBTA uses a generally three-tier outcome for all action resolution: Success, Partial Success/Success with Consequences, Failure.

It’s pretty typical for RPG mechanics, particularly pre-PBTA, to default to binary outcomes. Even conventional RPGs featuring something like margins of success or critical hits will still usually define success as “the PC achieves exactly what they want” and then maybe they get something extra if they roll or a critical or their margin of success is high enough. PBTA, on the other hand, tends to define typical success as “the PC gets SOME of what they or they pay a price for it” with “achieve exactly what you want without cost” being treated as the exceptional result.

Similarly, conventional RPGs tend to have the Failure state default to “you didn’t do it.” PBTA instead defaults to having consequences for your failure: You didn’t just “miss” the ogre; you rushed the ogre and the ogre punched you in the face. This approach also means that PBTA games tend to embrace failing forward, while leaning towards not just player-facing mechanics, but a specific flavor of player-facing mechanics featuring fortune-in-the-middle decisions.

PC MOVES

Beyond three-tier resolution, PBTA almost always package their resolution mechanics into Moves. The distinction here can get pretty fuzzy (due to the breadth of both conventional RPG and PBTA design), but the result in what I consider better PBTA games is a throwback mechanic that evokes true old school design: In the ‘80s, RPG design shifted almost entirely to the “generic universal mechanic” as their core design. (Usually, but not necessarily, some variation of ability score + skill + dice vs. difficulty.)

The distinction here can be confusing to some, because quite a few OSR retro-clones have retrofitted the games they’re emulating to be built around a generic universal mechanic. But the older of old school games were built around, “You want to do something? Let’s build a custom mechanic for it!”

PBTA isn’t strictly old school, though, because it’s less, “Here’s a collection of stuff we made ad hoc at the table to address situations that came up” and instead “here’s a carefully curated selection of tools which will deliberately shape the focus and direction of play.”

Let’s think of this as neo-old school design.

(And, again, this applies to the, in my opinion, better PBTA games. There are quite a few PBTA games that turn their Moves into generic, unfocused mush because their designers are defaulted back to “generic universal mechanic” as their design model.)

PLAYBOOKS

A character creation and advancement system featuring distinct Playbooks for different types of characters is also a common feature of PBTA games.

In practice, though, this is just class-based or archetype-based character creation, which is quite common in conventional RPGs. (I’ve seen any number of efforts to explain how, “No, no! It’s totally different!” But it really isn’t, although the class abilities can have a unique feel to them because of how they tie into the Moves methodology.)

GM MOVES

This is another neo-old school design element.

To explain what I mean by that, consider the original 1974 edition of D&D: It included a hyper-specific procedure for running a dungeon. If you strictly follow that procedure, you get a very specific style of play and type of adventure.

GM Moves in Apocalypse World are designed to do that the same thing, providing a very specific structure of prep coupled to a very specific procedure of play that creates a very specific outcome at the table.

This is, it should be noted, another place where a lot of PBTA games turn into generic mush by designing their GM Moves as “the generic stuff that GMs do.” (Often accompanied by weakening or removing the provision that GM Moves are the ONLY thing a GM is allowed to do.) In some cases, these chapters degrade entirely into generic GM advice.

An interesting lens that can help understand this distinction is Blades in the Dark, which, as noted above, is heavily influenced by PBTA, but distinct from it. John Harper, the designer, notably replaced GM Moves with a chapter called GM Actions, which is the “generic GM advice” approach to GM Moves. But, notably, this is because Harper has moved all the hyper-specific procedure stuff into The Score and Downtime chapters. (And, in fact, made it even more hyper-specific, in a style very similar to the 1974 D&D dungeon procedures.)

FRONTS/THREATS

The last thing that I, personally, consider a core identity for Apocalypse World was the concept of Fronts: A collection of threats and agendas, motivated by a Fundamental Scarcity, defined with specialty Moves, and tracked with Countdown Clocks. Fronts were a specific structure for prepping situations, and the GM was instructed to create their campaign by simply setting up Fronts and then playing to find out  what happened as those situations evolved dynamically in concert with the PCs’ actions and agendas.

But then Apocalypse World 2^nd Edition eliminated the entire concept of Fronts and replaced it with a heavily revised system for managing Threats. I haven’t run a game using the revised system, so I can’t comment too much on the details, but although the methodology was significantly altered, the core intention and approach remained the same: Stock the world with dynamic situations. Use them to pressure the PCs and, when the PCs respond, play to find out by following your procedures (Moves, Clocks, etc.).

The basic concepts of Fronts and Threats have been adapted in myriad ways by other PBTA games.

WHITHER THE APOCALYPSE?

Circling back to the original question, if PBTA games really are “special” or different from other RPGs, why might someone playing them not understand what the big deal is?

Well, depending on what non-PBTA games you’ve been playing and also how you’ve been playing them, PBTA games may not, in fact, be a radically different experience for you. Situation- and procedure-based play have, as I noted above, go all the way back to Arneson and Gygax. It’s really, fundamentally, what the RPG medium was designed to do. I’ve personally been preaching about how you can do situation-based play in any RPG for a couple of decades now, and a wide variety of old-school and OSR games are designed around these principles, too. (And even more now than when Apocalypse World first came out.)

On the other hand, as I mentioned, there are a number of PBTA games that turn these core features of Apocalypse World into mush: Moves just become generic “you do stuff.” Fronts become disconnected from procedure. Sometimes whole chapters of How to Prep Plots are attached. Even the core mechanic often gets defaulted back towards something much closer to traditional binary outcomes. So it’s quite possible to play a PBTA game that pretty thoroughly disguises or eliminates the most distinctive features of PBTA games.

Similarly, there are a lot of GMs running PBTA games — including Apocalypse World — that aren’t actually running those games. This is actually a surprisingly frequent phenomenon with RPGs: No matter what the rulebooks actually say, for these GMs every game just defaults to a core resolution mechanic that they arbitrarily invoke. (In many cases, you’ll see this degrade even further, with resolution mechanics that amount to little more than “high roll on the dice = good, low roll = bad” regardless of skill modifiers, difficulty classes, or anything else.)

Some GMs have also been so thoroughly conditioned in prepping and running adventures in one specific way (often, but not always, a linear railroad), that they similarly default to habit no matter what structures a game may be designed for. Sadly, some of these GMs, when running Apocalypse World, will even go so far as to prep a bunch of Fronts and/or Threats as the rulebook instructs… only to do nothing with them. At best, the Fronts serve as a kind of idea board for them. Often they’re just laid aside entirely, and the GM will be left scratching their head and wondering why they wasted all that “pointless” effort.

Combine both of these — railroad adventure prep and “all systems are a die roll and a vibe” — in a single GM (which is far from uncommon), and you pretty much eradicate everything that makes Apocalypse World and PBTA games special and unique.

With all that being said, even if you’ve been running or playing the full-fledged PBTA experience, it’s quite possible that it’s just not your jam. Not every game is made for every person.

But if you’ve played a PBTA game and it didn’t feel different from, say, a D&D dungeoncrawler… well, that probably means something got mushy somewhere. Might’ve been the game design. Might’ve been the GM. Either way, it’s probably worth giving PBTA another chance and finding out what happens when you really embrace the structure of the game.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #23