Powered by the Apocalypse

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As I have said before Moldvay D&D was my gateway to roleplaying. Traveller, GURPS and Call of Cthulhu came shortly thereafter. Those 4 games heavily shaped the way I felt about roleplaying, from the settings to the mechanics. They were so different from one to the next. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, historical and horror roleplaying, what more could you ask for. D20’s, 2D6’s, 3D6’s, and percentile dice rounded out the mechanics. Seriously everything had been tried, everything had been discovered.

Or so I thought.

By 2010 I had hit that lull in roleplaying that I think everyone does in their lifetime. Family, work, and life had taken up what little free time I had so the extent of my gaming was glancing at the bookshelves filled with rule systems as I passed by for other things.

What that meant was that I missed it. A sea change in the roleplaying community. Something truly new and exciting had shaken up the RPG world.

It was a little game called Apocalypse World.

The post-apocalyptic setting wasn’t anything new, but what was new was the dice mechanics, and more specifically the dice results. In every game prior to Apocalypse World when you rolled the dice you either succeeded or failed. There were only 2 options, but Apocalypse World added a third possibility. 

Success with consequences.

So now when you rolled the dice you could fail, succeed, or have a success at some cost to the character. What cost you might ask? Well, that was up to the GM and the Player to decide.

This idea created an explosion in the roleplaying world. A big bang of creativity. Hundreds of new independent roleplaying games were launched by this single idea. Today it is known as Powered by the Apocalypse and Christina and I are going to take a deep dive into the concepts, mechanics, and settings of the PbtA craze.