Tag Archives: PbtA Design

My normal prep uses the Lazy Dungeon Master Adventure Prep, though sometimes I turn to the 7-3-1 technique or what I call Monty Hall Prep. When my players in a Dungeon World campaign told me (in Stars & Wishes) that they planned for their PCs to return for a third time to a tunnel to search for the McGuffin, I decided to mix it up. I needed to think differently about this setting, which they’d already visited multiple times. And I’d been wanting to get better at thinking through and […]

So I discovered Dungeon World originally through Sly Flourish’s blog, and he is open about adapting techniques from other systems in his 5e games. He recently blogged about zones in combat, lifted from Fate Condensed: Zone-based Combat in D&D. Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, I had a lot of miniatures and terrain maps that would come out for battle.  In switching to online play for 5e, I found maps (and icons for opponents) to become a huge time sink. Because battles can look phenomenal in Roll 20, there’s an expectation that […]

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 […]

The goal of this survey is to provide feedback to the OSR and RPG community on what Level 1-3 spells are considered most useful. The results can then be used to create shorter spell lists and player aids – or to inspire custom spell lists for other designs. Spell descriptions take the form of “Name [120′, 2] Effect” showing “[range in feet, duration in turns]” before the magical effect. Spell descriptions © Zenopus Archives, http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com. Used by permission. The survey was fielded from November 10, 2019, through June 1, 2020. […]

One comment I got about Tunnels & Traps was surprise that I used Wisdom instead of Intelligence. That was definitely atypical of 1970s RPGs (which were my influences in 1980). Inspired by D&D, the typical attribute-based RPG had Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. A majority had Constitution and Charisma. And they all had 6 to 8 stats: D&D EotPT T&T B&B C&S Traveller RuneQuest 1974 1974 1975 1976 1977 1977 1978 Attributes 6 6 6 8 7 6 7 Strength 100% X X X X X X X Dexterity 100% X […]