Aug 31, 2023·edited Aug 31, 2023Liked by Sam Dunnewold
Insightful post, thank you Sam. To complicate things further, you should check out the top rpg rankings on rpggeek ( https://rpggeek.com/browse/rpg ). It gives high insight as to what the people (who make rpggeek accounts and use them to review games) think are the "best" games out there. Rankings fascinate me. I follow the page frequently to see what is popular and what is not to RPGGeek users.
For an arbitrary Top Twelve, read off RPGgeek on 31Aug2023:
1. Call of Cthulhu (7th edition)
2. Call of Cthulhu (2nd - 6th edition)
3. Fiasco (classic)
4. Apocalypse World
5. Blades in the Dark
6. Pendragon (1st - 6th editions)
7. Legend of the Five Rings (4th edition)
8. Trail of Cthulhu
9. Dungeon World
10. The One Ring (1st edition)
11. Forbidden Lands
12. Dungeons and Dragons (5th edition)
There's lots of problems with the data collected here. Some games like Call of Cthulhu (2nd - 6th edition) have 730 reviews, while recent popular upstart Forbidden Lands only has 85 reviews. I don't think any of these games are itch.io exclusive (though I don't know where Apocalypse World got it's start). There's definite big hitters, and prominent indie darlings in there. Also, the quantity of ratings is so much lower than boardgamegeek, which has a top twelve with from 20,000 to 90,000 ratings each. More data doesn't guarantee better averages, but it does make rankings less probe to fluctuations.
Anyways, wanted to highlight that page. Thanks for this blog and Dice Exploder. I find interesting insights in both 😊.
Thanks for the link! I do find large public rankings like this to be interesting - the best TV episodes of all time according to IMDB, or the least-rotten movies on Rotten Tomatoes or whatever. I think of it as a great snapshot of the middle of the bellcurve of the hobby. But of course, you also get stuff like racists and sexists review-bombing The Last Jedi and Ghostbusters (2016). I imagine there's less of that on rpggeek, but probably more than none! Every community has its biases.
Anyway, that's all to say that this is an interesting list, and you're absolutely right that it's fun to keep tabs on. Thanks for listening and commenting!
I could write a whole essay in response to this tbh.
I do really love actually playing Apocalypse World! Setting aside its influence entirely for this whole comment, I find AW2e (the version I've read) to be one of the single greatest RPG books ever written. Reading it makes me excited to play more than any other game I've ever read. I just fucking love it. It's inspiring. It gets my brain thinking about so many ideas - for worlds, for stories, for people I want to share those fictions with! It'd be on my list of favorite games for that reason alone. The only thing else I've ever seen come close is Wanderhome or modules that are somewhat like reading a story book unto themselves. But even still - love reading AW just as a book.
Actually at the table, I have found AW to be somewhat hard to get going. This is not just true of AW - I think many, many, many games suffer from not providing in-fiction ideas, procedures, or otherwise for giving campaigns a push to get started. AW has a lot of tools for this that I know friends have found effective but that I have largely found to be a lot of work for medium payoff.
There's other bits I don't like about it. Highlighting stats is just a mess. Rolling start of session moves every session feels weird sometimes when like 45 minutes of in-game time passed last session. If you start using some of the expanded moves, it gets real complicated real quick to track all the moves. I'm probly forgetting some stuff.
That said, once a campaign of AW does get rolling, I fucking love that shit. I think Read A Sitch and Read A Person are brilliant, brilliant moves. I think the moves snowball at large is great. I think the way the game is written inspires unbelievably cool sandbox worlds to play in.
So yeah, I mean it's not perfect, but I do actually love playing Apocalypse World.
Insightful post, thank you Sam. To complicate things further, you should check out the top rpg rankings on rpggeek ( https://rpggeek.com/browse/rpg ). It gives high insight as to what the people (who make rpggeek accounts and use them to review games) think are the "best" games out there. Rankings fascinate me. I follow the page frequently to see what is popular and what is not to RPGGeek users.
For an arbitrary Top Twelve, read off RPGgeek on 31Aug2023:
1. Call of Cthulhu (7th edition)
2. Call of Cthulhu (2nd - 6th edition)
3. Fiasco (classic)
4. Apocalypse World
5. Blades in the Dark
6. Pendragon (1st - 6th editions)
7. Legend of the Five Rings (4th edition)
8. Trail of Cthulhu
9. Dungeon World
10. The One Ring (1st edition)
11. Forbidden Lands
12. Dungeons and Dragons (5th edition)
There's lots of problems with the data collected here. Some games like Call of Cthulhu (2nd - 6th edition) have 730 reviews, while recent popular upstart Forbidden Lands only has 85 reviews. I don't think any of these games are itch.io exclusive (though I don't know where Apocalypse World got it's start). There's definite big hitters, and prominent indie darlings in there. Also, the quantity of ratings is so much lower than boardgamegeek, which has a top twelve with from 20,000 to 90,000 ratings each. More data doesn't guarantee better averages, but it does make rankings less probe to fluctuations.
Anyways, wanted to highlight that page. Thanks for this blog and Dice Exploder. I find interesting insights in both 😊.
Thanks for the link! I do find large public rankings like this to be interesting - the best TV episodes of all time according to IMDB, or the least-rotten movies on Rotten Tomatoes or whatever. I think of it as a great snapshot of the middle of the bellcurve of the hobby. But of course, you also get stuff like racists and sexists review-bombing The Last Jedi and Ghostbusters (2016). I imagine there's less of that on rpggeek, but probably more than none! Every community has its biases.
Anyway, that's all to say that this is an interesting list, and you're absolutely right that it's fun to keep tabs on. Thanks for listening and commenting!
Do you actually love *playing* Apocalypse World, or do you just think it's great because of its impact/influence?
I could write a whole essay in response to this tbh.
I do really love actually playing Apocalypse World! Setting aside its influence entirely for this whole comment, I find AW2e (the version I've read) to be one of the single greatest RPG books ever written. Reading it makes me excited to play more than any other game I've ever read. I just fucking love it. It's inspiring. It gets my brain thinking about so many ideas - for worlds, for stories, for people I want to share those fictions with! It'd be on my list of favorite games for that reason alone. The only thing else I've ever seen come close is Wanderhome or modules that are somewhat like reading a story book unto themselves. But even still - love reading AW just as a book.
Actually at the table, I have found AW to be somewhat hard to get going. This is not just true of AW - I think many, many, many games suffer from not providing in-fiction ideas, procedures, or otherwise for giving campaigns a push to get started. AW has a lot of tools for this that I know friends have found effective but that I have largely found to be a lot of work for medium payoff.
There's other bits I don't like about it. Highlighting stats is just a mess. Rolling start of session moves every session feels weird sometimes when like 45 minutes of in-game time passed last session. If you start using some of the expanded moves, it gets real complicated real quick to track all the moves. I'm probly forgetting some stuff.
That said, once a campaign of AW does get rolling, I fucking love that shit. I think Read A Sitch and Read A Person are brilliant, brilliant moves. I think the moves snowball at large is great. I think the way the game is written inspires unbelievably cool sandbox worlds to play in.
So yeah, I mean it's not perfect, but I do actually love playing Apocalypse World.