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Worlds In Peril
Worlds in Peril is a collaborative roleplaying game designed to bring a comic book world to life. Learn the rules to the game by reading the comic inside and follow along to create your own hero with the exact powers and abilities you want them to have by mixing and matching Origin stories and motivations. Test their limits and watch their powers expand and change as you push them to learn and grow. Go up against two-bit villains, world-dominating masterminds, and unknowable beings from different planes of existence. Find out what happens when superheroes are powered by the apocaypse!
212 pages, ebook
First published May 26, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 18, 2016
Rating is just based on reading the rules. I have not played yet. Lots of redundancy in the text. It felt like he was just trying to fill up pages.
Having played two sessions, one for character creation and one of playing, I'm lowering my rating from 3 stars to 2 stars. Character creation does not flow. The layout of the character sheets does not guide the process. Terms in the sheets don't match those in the book. The actual play is not as satisfying as most PbtA games. Combat becomes a battle of attrition as the heroes try to pile conditions on the villains. It feels more like grinding out hit points than PbtA combat. Also, all conditions inflicted on the heroes have levels set by the EIC. This can become very arbitrary. Some might feel this a feature, but it was not to my taste.
I probably will not play this again.
Having played two sessions, one for character creation and one of playing, I'm lowering my rating from 3 stars to 2 stars. Character creation does not flow. The layout of the character sheets does not guide the process. Terms in the sheets don't match those in the book. The actual play is not as satisfying as most PbtA games. Combat becomes a battle of attrition as the heroes try to pile conditions on the villains. It feels more like grinding out hit points than PbtA combat. Also, all conditions inflicted on the heroes have levels set by the EIC. This can become very arbitrary. Some might feel this a feature, but it was not to my taste.
I probably will not play this again.
August 18, 2019
TLDR: very high potential, interesting basic design, mediocre polish, poor execution, salvageable system design, some fatal flaws
This is obviously a Powered By The Apocalypse game, but I think the author lacks some deeper understanding of what makes PBTA games work so well. I really like that depth of obvious theoretical understanding of what makes PBTA games great from titles such as Monsterhearts, Masks, and of course Apocalypse World (the game that started it all). As a result, parts of the system seem like poor fits for the PBTA style of play, some of the rules seem to push things in a less flexible and more micromanaged direction, and some of the author's other explanations (in online discussions) of how the rules are meant to be interpreted seem wildly out of sync with what makes PBTA game design so effective for encouraging fantastic gaming experiences. Worse, there are rules that I could interpret by how they're written in the book as fairly consistent with the general PBTA philosophy, but are written in such a way that it seems superficially like they're more like D&D or Gurps, and the author then offers an explanation in an online discussion somewhere that seems to blatantly disagree with with what he wrote in either of those interpretations and is easily the worst of the three options for how to apply the rule.
The writing in the book gets to be a bit rambling at times, with important rules notes just dropped in the midst of an undifferentiated half-page paragraph, often with no significant explanation of that specific rule, so you might never even notice them (especially if flipping through the book for reference instead of attentively reading every word). If you're not already familiar with standard features of PBTA game design you might not recognize the importance or meaning of such mentions at all, even if someone helpfully dragged a highlighter over them, because there's no elaboration of the specific principle of the rule.
The structure is a bit difficult to follow at times, even apart from that. Examples of how to apply the rules in the game only rarely contradict the text, but even "rarely" seems a bit much. More examples just fail to illuminate the reader about how the rules should be used because they end up illustrating use cases that are obvious, leaving the less obvious cases unaddressed. The system for selecting powers is plagued by thin and inconsistent (incontinent?) presentation, leaving it extremely difficult to use well at first, though with practice and some liberal interpretation to produce a consistent theory of power specification one could probably bend it into something very effective.
Despite all these flaws, the shape of a great system kind of lurks within it, struggling to get out. That could be mined for excellent ideas. As a result, if you ignore the online commentary from the author when players ask questions, it comes off like a book that could be a solid first draft of a great first edition that desperately still needs rigorous playtesting, beta readers, and very heavy copy and content editing before publication. The production value of the material object is really nice, too.
. . . then there's the problem of the downloadable supplementary materials. Mostly, they're not bad, but the "example hero sheets" are awful demonstrations that often seem nonsensical, poorly specified, contrary to the guidance given in the book, and just generally more of a hindrance than a help. Parts of them are whimsically absurd, probably by accident, so in places I found them entertaining.
I recommend playing Masks: A New Generation before this (I reviewed that, rating it four stars but with at least 4.7 stars in my heart). Among other things, once you get into the groove of using Masks (both directly as intended and with significant thematic modifications to suit other styles of play) you should be better able to adapt Worlds In Peril into a fun experience from its published rules more easily.
This is obviously a Powered By The Apocalypse game, but I think the author lacks some deeper understanding of what makes PBTA games work so well. I really like that depth of obvious theoretical understanding of what makes PBTA games great from titles such as Monsterhearts, Masks, and of course Apocalypse World (the game that started it all). As a result, parts of the system seem like poor fits for the PBTA style of play, some of the rules seem to push things in a less flexible and more micromanaged direction, and some of the author's other explanations (in online discussions) of how the rules are meant to be interpreted seem wildly out of sync with what makes PBTA game design so effective for encouraging fantastic gaming experiences. Worse, there are rules that I could interpret by how they're written in the book as fairly consistent with the general PBTA philosophy, but are written in such a way that it seems superficially like they're more like D&D or Gurps, and the author then offers an explanation in an online discussion somewhere that seems to blatantly disagree with with what he wrote in either of those interpretations and is easily the worst of the three options for how to apply the rule.
The writing in the book gets to be a bit rambling at times, with important rules notes just dropped in the midst of an undifferentiated half-page paragraph, often with no significant explanation of that specific rule, so you might never even notice them (especially if flipping through the book for reference instead of attentively reading every word). If you're not already familiar with standard features of PBTA game design you might not recognize the importance or meaning of such mentions at all, even if someone helpfully dragged a highlighter over them, because there's no elaboration of the specific principle of the rule.
The structure is a bit difficult to follow at times, even apart from that. Examples of how to apply the rules in the game only rarely contradict the text, but even "rarely" seems a bit much. More examples just fail to illuminate the reader about how the rules should be used because they end up illustrating use cases that are obvious, leaving the less obvious cases unaddressed. The system for selecting powers is plagued by thin and inconsistent (incontinent?) presentation, leaving it extremely difficult to use well at first, though with practice and some liberal interpretation to produce a consistent theory of power specification one could probably bend it into something very effective.
Despite all these flaws, the shape of a great system kind of lurks within it, struggling to get out. That could be mined for excellent ideas. As a result, if you ignore the online commentary from the author when players ask questions, it comes off like a book that could be a solid first draft of a great first edition that desperately still needs rigorous playtesting, beta readers, and very heavy copy and content editing before publication. The production value of the material object is really nice, too.
. . . then there's the problem of the downloadable supplementary materials. Mostly, they're not bad, but the "example hero sheets" are awful demonstrations that often seem nonsensical, poorly specified, contrary to the guidance given in the book, and just generally more of a hindrance than a help. Parts of them are whimsically absurd, probably by accident, so in places I found them entertaining.
I recommend playing Masks: A New Generation before this (I reviewed that, rating it four stars but with at least 4.7 stars in my heart). Among other things, once you get into the groove of using Masks (both directly as intended and with significant thematic modifications to suit other styles of play) you should be better able to adapt Worlds In Peril into a fun experience from its published rules more easily.
April 16, 2025
I read a lot of Superhero RPG manuals, searching for one that hits just right. Unfortunately, while this checks a lot of great boxes, it doesn't hit where I want it to. Specifically, the way it handles powers is unique and interesting, but a bit nonsensical in the cost of upgrades. It's a bit difficult to explain, but it doesn't scratch that itch for me.
That said, the chapter on running antagonists is one of the best I've ever read, including advice like "Make sure your antagonist is actually evil, even if he's sympathetic," "make sure the villain's plot directly opposes the heroes' interests and goals," (preventing the "help, my PCs joined the BBEG instead of fighting the final battle"), and "make your villains relatable by giving them traits from people in the real world who annoy or frighten you."
On the whole, I consider this game middle of the pack as a superhero RPG. I'd play it if someone else was running it, but I wouldn't want to put in the time or energy to run it myself.
That said, the chapter on running antagonists is one of the best I've ever read, including advice like "Make sure your antagonist is actually evil, even if he's sympathetic," "make sure the villain's plot directly opposes the heroes' interests and goals," (preventing the "help, my PCs joined the BBEG instead of fighting the final battle"), and "make your villains relatable by giving them traits from people in the real world who annoy or frighten you."
On the whole, I consider this game middle of the pack as a superhero RPG. I'd play it if someone else was running it, but I wouldn't want to put in the time or energy to run it myself.
November 24, 2020
Otro juego de superhéroes, otra adición más a un género que sigue teniendo un éxito limitado en el mercado español, pero que cuenta con una larga lista ya de lineas en el mercado anglosajón. Este ha sido editado en españa recientemente por Con Barba, siguiendo con la publicación de los distintos básicos de juegos "powered by the Apocalypse", que presentan distintas adaptaciones del sistema del primer Apocalypse World para otros mundos y ambientaciones.
http://aventurasextraordinarias.blogs...
http://aventurasextraordinarias.blogs...
July 2, 2015
Este es el tercer juego con el sistema de Apocalypse World que leo en poco tiempo y es una de las mejores versiones de éste. AW se está revelando como un sistema que permite hacer de todo a nivel narrativo (con pocos números, pero con sus ciertos elementos tácticos) si se ajusta a la ambientación a tratar. De lo mejorcito de superhéroes junto a Supers!, ICONS, CC&VF y Trimphant!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews