Survey of Players of PbtA Games

In my recent survey, I funneled respondents into one of four areas, based on the role-playing games (RPGs) they played:

• Dungeon World – These respondents got detailed questions about a revised edition of DW.
• Other PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) games – They were asked two open-ended questions about their likes and dislikes (the subject of this post).
• Other TTRPGs (drawn from the Top 10 list at Obsidian Portal) – Likes and dislikes about RPGs in general.
• No TTRPGs – They were skipped to the demographic questions.

Key attractions of PbtA games are the mechanics (especially the moves), the ease and simplicity of the rules, the emphasis on character-driven story and narrative, and the narrow focus of each game. “The simplicity of mechanics allows for more player agency and control of the narrative, and it tends to focus on unique and intriguing characters,” said one respondent, who had played Ironsworn, Monsterhearts, and Monster of the Week. “Short learning curve, easy to grasp, the focus is always on the narrative, good XP mechanics,” said a player of City of Mist.

Dislikes were much more idiosyncratic than likes: for instance, while 11% mentioned moves, some complained there were too many moves, others not enough, and still others that the moves were vague. It’s an overstatement, but: Happy PbtA players are all alike; every unhappy PbtA player is unhappy in their own way.

You can view the other answers and the full verbatims in this dashboard. The following verbatim responses have been grouped by common words, curated, and lightly edited.

What, if anything, do you like about PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) games?

The larger the word or phrase, the more respondents who used it in their response.

A group of responses focused on “Mechanics” (15% of respondents to this question):

• “They use simple mechanics to create focused and thematic stories in a specific genre. They put fiction before mechanics.”
• “There isn’t really anything like a failure in games like DnD, everything pushes forward the narrative rather than just being ‘no you don’t do it, try something else.’ The three levels of success as opposed to the binary pass/fail of DnD and similar systems helps push forward that. I enjoy how simple everything is and how elegantly all the mechanics work together.”
• “Easily modifiable based on core mechanics. Expandable range of successes implied by changing the dice value of the pool. Easy for freeform RPers to pick up.”
• “Short learning curve, easy to grasp, the focus is always on the narrative, good XP mechanics.”
• “Player empowerment, Play to find out what happens, collaborative storytelling, GM-Player hierarchy not as extreme as in other games, simple and straight forward mechanics.”
• “They fit perfectly with my GMing and play style. It is easy to strike the right balance for me between narrative and gameplay mechanics. Overall, they have been by far the most successful games that I have run or played.”
• “The simplicity of mechanics allows for more player agency and control of the narrative, and it tends to focus on unique and intriguing characters.”

Respondents found “Play” worth mentioning (14% of respondents):

• “Fiction-first and failing-forward mentalities, as well as player collaboration and simplicity of play.”
• “I like fiction-first narratives, and the play-style lends itself best for improv-like storytelling.”
• “I like how fun it is to play.”
• “There games are full of action and fun to play.”
• “They’re fun to play with friends.”

14% of respondents discussed “Story”:

• “I enjoy PbtA games a lot. It is my favorite system. I like that rolls happen only when there are stakes and make sense fictionally. I like that rolls move the story forward and can create interesting outcomes. I like that you don’t need to prep any sort of story and that it just unfolds as you play.”
• “Freedom how to the character. Easy binding characters together in session 0. Fluff with some crunch to back it up, GM and player working hand in hand to create the story.”
• “The story focus, the ability to give players multiple outcomes to choose from, the simplicity for new players while still being powerful enough to allow for compelling stories.”
• “PbtA games give a good structure to the story, using tropes and encouraging drama and complications.”
• “Character creation is generally easy, and the mechanics are simple enough that you get to spend the vast majority of the time you invest actually telling a story, rather than resolving mechanics and searching for rules.”

Another 14% of respondents referenced “Focus”:

• “Easy to start, players participate in narrative and world creation, focus on one theme.”
• “The narrow focus of PbtA games tends to allow players to create more vibrant and real characters according to the prompts of the playbooks.”
• “The players find it simpler than D&D, the stories are a bigger focus, as well as RPing or intercharacter relationships (both npc/PC and pc/pc) have more emohasis.”
• “I like the narrative focus, the simplicity of the moves, and the fact the game enables players to use their imagination in a way different than other games.”
• “Simplicity and focus on roleplaying.”
• “Simplicity and strong focus on a theme, lends very well to improv, once you know how to play one pbta game you can pick up any other extremely quickly.”

“Easy” caught people’s attention (12% of respondents):

• “I like that it only uses D6, I think it’s easy to explain to brand new players, can be very creative.”
• “How easy it was to learn to play.”
• “Freedom how to the character. easy binding characters together in session 0. fluff with some crunch to back it up, gm and player working hand in hand to create the story.”

“Narrative” was sometimes mentioned (11% of respondents):

• “There isn’t really anything like a failure in games like DnD, everything pushes forward the narrative rather than just being ‘no you don’t do it, try something else.’ The three levels of success as opposed to the binary pass/fail of DnD and similar systems helps push forward that. I enjoy how simple everything is and how elegantly all the mechanics work together.”
• “Every roll pushes the narrative forward.”
• “The loose character/narrative focused feel.”
• “I like the narrative focus, fail-forward mechanics, and no-prep GMing.”

A common theme was “Character”, mentioned by 11% of respondents.

• “Good setting and character creation tools.”

Another common theme was “Moves”, mentioned by 8% of respondents.

• “That Moves provide options for where the game’s action can go, especially in the event of failure, instead of simply stopping the action or having something simply fall flat.”
• “The strong hit/weak hit/miss structure + GM moves lets the mechanics help form the theme (how deadly the games is, what is rewarded or risky in the world, etc.)”
• “I really like how each of the different games have different types of moves based on the specific setting of the game, like the combat moves of Dungeon World and the collecting moves of Apocalypse World.”

What, if anything, do you dislike about PbtA games?

The larger the word or phrase, the more respondents who used it in their response.

What do PbtA players dislike?

One of the more common themes (12%) was “Characters”:

• “Characters can feel really incompetent as chances to just succeed can be very low.”
• “There isn’t much I dislike about PbtA games. I do find that it is hard to transport existing characters into a game, so you can’t really revitalize old campaigns from a different system into a PbtA game easily.”
• “Sometimes the moves are vague enough that you have to debate with yourself or players what move it is they trigger. I don’t like to worldbuild, but often find myself GMing. I wish there were more straight forward modules, instead of just various jumping off points. I wouldn’t mind ideas for a campaign and characters within, rather than a smattering of NPC ideas and no direction.”
• “Not enough moves for the characters.”

Some responses (12% of respondents) discussed “Players”:

• “It has enough similarities with D&D that it can be hard sometimes to get new players to not play it like D&D.”
• “It’s harder to put your players in danger.”
• “The unspoken expectation that despite the ease with which games can be modified, it is improper for players and DMs to do so because it undermines the designer’s intended themes. The contradiction between valuing unpredictability in play while being highly predictable in outcomes and restrictive in themes. Tendency to avoid GM rolls through use of Agenda and Principles.”
• “Since I don’t live in an English-speaking country, it’s a lot more work to translate player-facing materials in PbtA game (compared to RPG games in which all players share identical character sheets and they don’t contain their moves).”

One out of ten respondents (11%) brought up “System”:

• “I don’t dislike anything about the system in general, but there are individual PbtA games that I dislike: Dungeon World (for trying too hard to marry D&D mechanics with PbtA), games that are bloated with moves, etc.”
• “Improvisation is a skill that I need to work on, sometimes I feel out of my element in PbtA-style games. But that’s a criticism on my skills, not the system.”
• “If people don’t learn the system, the whole group has a bad time. it requires everyone to be on the same page and understand the same things.”
• “The system of success to failure can be unforgiving, it’s less ‘game’ and more ‘story’.”

“Moves” came up as both a like and dislike (11% of respondents disliking):

• “So far they seem to lend themselves to shorter term games, and while one-shots are fun, my group tends to prefer longer campaigns. Usually there are a limited number of moves or improvements to unlock, and a character ends up earning all the abilities the player is interested in very quickly.”

In contrast to those who said “Easy” was a like, 9% of respondents said such games were “Hard”:

• “It’s sometimes hard for the GM to determine what you should roll for versus not.”
• “Sometimes hard to play.”

Another theme that was both a like and dislike was “Mechanics”, mentioned by 7% of respondents.

• “Some of the shorter or one-page PbtA games like Dream Askew aren’t as interesting for me because they don’t quite feel like a full game. They work fine as one-shots but trying to cram in all of the great playbook and move mechanics into such a small game doesn’t make sense to me when you could just as easily go with a more mechanic-lite game like Honey Heist or Roll for Shoes.”
• “Sometimes very (too) specific in regards to setting and mechanics.”

You can view the full verbatims in this dashboard. Want to see just the results filtered by those who came from the PbtA subreddit? Check out that dashboard.