How To Play Fantasy World

Firebreathing Kittens

How to Play Fantasy World

Fantasy World is a powered by the apocalypse fantasy RPG with magic and heroic fighting. It's billed as "dramatic fantasy," which means it's about becoming heroes in a fantasy setting, and making ourselves care about their story.

Like all good PBTA games, Fantasy World has some core principles that guide how we play. First, there is a One Golden Rule, which is that if anyone at the table thinks "this seems wrong, I don't like it," they can and should say so, and only one unhappy voice is a veto. It's like an X-card built into the rules of the game.

The world itself has some core things that are true: Magic is Real. The Gods are Silent. Cities are Rare. Travel is Perilous.

Finally, the game master, called The World, has three items in their an agenda: Play to Find Out, Make Sense, and Rock the Boat. Play to Find Out means there is never a railroad in the game. Instead, we have a setting full of interesting people and ideas and things happening, but those may be discarded at any point when the players go in a different direction.

Make Sense means that all of those interesting people and ideas need to make sense in order to feel like a reasonable world in which the adventurers live.

Finally, the adventurers' lives are interesting and exciting, and we accomplish that by Rocking the Boat. NPCs will act in their own self interests, and how that interacts with the adventurers is what creates an interesting story.

Basic Dice Mechanics:
The basic dice mechanics of a PBTA game are that you and your friends describe yourselves doing stuff, and the GM representing the World reacts to your actions appropriated. When you get to the point where you trigger a move, you roll two 6-sided dice and usually add a stat modifier.

If you roll a 10 or higher, you succeed at what you were doing, and the move may tell you what happens.

If you roll a 7 to 9, you succeed at a cost. Usually, the move tells you what the cost is-- it might be implied in the move, or it might be something really specific. For example, the Sway move says that when used on an NPC, on a 10, you get a YES, and on a 7-9, you learn what would get a yes.

If you roll a 6 or less, the World has what's called a "World Reaction." A World Reaction is like a move that the World does-- in other games it's called a GM Move, or a reaction. The World never rolls dice. When the World makes a Reaction, it's certain and automatically succeeds. A typical reaction might be to reveal an unwelcome truth, or put the characters at a disadvantage. It's important to know that a 6 or less isn't *failure*. Whatever you were trying to do might happen-- the World is free to describe it happening, in a way that you didn't expect and probably don't want.

In addition, when you roll a 6, you gain an expedience point. So, during the play session itself, every time you roll a 6 or less, you gain one of those epedience points.

Character Creation and the Fellowship

Characters are drawn from the playbooks, which are downloadable from fantasyworldrpg.com. There are ten playbooks, which are basic archetypes. For purposes of the Firebreathing Kittens' session, the characters are assumed to have a couple of sessions, but have not yet earned a full advancement. As a result, they start with a basic playbook and 10 expedience points. Expedience Points can be used to buy growth points, or can be spent during the session to gain advantage or use more than one utility move during a long rest.

When you create a character in fantasy world, you download their playbook and then make a few choices about the character. For example, the Knight needs to state what chivalric order they belong to, who they are sworn to serve, and what their core value is that gives them some power.

The second page of each playbook has their growth moves, which add special moves to the character as they advance.

The Fellowship is a special way to frame the story in Fantasy World. There are four Fellowship types: Shields, who protect a local area, Knives who pursue personal wealth, Hearts who are on a single quest, and Coins, who go where the job takes them. For the Firebreathing Kittens episode, the Fellowship is the Coins, as they are a group of troubleshooters and problem-solvers for hire.

Further Reading:
If you'd like to play Fantasy World, and you have someone who will be running the game, read the Fundamental Knowledge and Essential Mechanics section of the rules, and then read the playbooks and Game Moves to pick your character and understand what will trigger a move in the game. Remember, anything that isn't a move can still happen, it just doesn't trigger a dice roll.