Thanks for the thorough response. What hack do you use for Dungeon World? I’ve heard of things like World of Dungeons or Stonetop, but I didn’t know enough about the core system to have looked into it. I’ll read through the resources you listed. I think understanding the flow of any PbtA will just help me wrap my brain around the game before I run what will probably be Avatar to start.
It’s interesting to hear you talk about some of the principles of PbtA being things like treating the game as a conversation and making rolls contribute to the narrative by not making them binary pass/fail states. I’ve heard a lot of advice to do things like that for DnD, especially in OSR circles. I feel like I’ve heard some strong reactions against stuff PbtA from similar circles though. Wonder what the disconnect there is.
That’s the first time I’ve heard someone call Forged in the Dark mechanically heavy. Though whenever I’ve talked about it its’ been in comparison to DnD. So maybe it’s less complex in that context. I haven’t read any Forged games yet so I’d trust your opinion over mine.
Monster of the Week is definitely on my list of games to try. I’ll have to see about running it around Halloween. If it brought you back to the hobby, it has to be something special.
This is great, thank you. I especially like the thought of a GM’s commentary on the game as it runs. That reminds me of the session summaries Matt Colville used to do for his games. Those were very helpful to me when I first started running a game and I’d imagine seeing it alongside the actual session would be more-so.