When I first started running Debtrunner, we used the original Traveller character creation, and then PbtA mechanics to actually play the game. It was mostly World of Dungeons style with the occasional use of an Apocalypse World basic or special move when it was needed. Worked fine, fun game.
I had to write some new moves for trading and driving a spaceship around but that was fine. Then, when I decided to actually write up an actual set of codified rules, of course I wrote PbtA playbooks for characters and ship generation, and a set of basic moves. This worked great for the part of the game where you drive your spaceship around and do speculative trading. Thereâs only so many options for how to move your spaceship, and the process of looking for goods and trying to buy and sell them was mostly linear.
But the other part of the game is doing missions to supplement your income so you can pay your shipâs mortgage. And this is where the PbtA moves didnât do me any favours.
Because I donât care what those missions are. Security ops, spy shit, courier jobs, survey a newly-discovered planet, collecting scrap from a ruined city, negotiate a peace treaty, design an ad campaign, collect presentation-ready rock formations, con the locals into buying shoddy goods at inflated prices. Whatever they want to do, itâs fine by me. And itâs hard to write a set of basic moves that supports that.
A set of basic moves like those in Apocalypse World and related games pushes character behaviours into a specific genre. AW characters donât Defend each other, they donât Spout Lore or Mislead people. Characters in other genres do those things. AW emulates genre by way of making genre-specific behaviours important in the rules.
Whereas the action ratings in Blades in the Dark only care about the aesthetic of your characterâs actions. If you shoot someone, you could hunt them down like an animal, or you could be skirmishing with them on a battlefield. Maybe itâs finesse, because youâre surreptitiously assassinating them when the train goes by to cover the sound. Or maybe you will wreck them with your Big Fuck Off Gun. So you can do whatever you want and even roll for whatever you want, and the game only makes you fall in line flavour-wise.
This is also different from having stats describing your characteristics (Strength, Prowess, Science, Reflexes, Empathy, Guts, etc), because in most games you always use a specific stat for a specific action. It also describes characters by quality instead of by their actions.
This is why I switched from a PbtA bedrock to a FitD bedrock. It allows me to set up how characters get things done in the game in terms of flavour and aesthetics, and leaves the actual actions and situations to the players. Itâs easy to convert the PbtA moves for travelling and trading into FitD procedures, because the odds are at least roughly similar. Just add 1 to your AW rating to find your Blades dice. And then the parts that donât lend well to basic moves are easily covered by action ratings. Plus, Blades already has a bunch of other rules specifically for doing missions, so thatâs good too.