What do you think?
Rate this book
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
2 people are currently reading
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 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.
February 6, 2026
Reading the Masks: A New Generation RPG and reading about it, I’m continually reading ‘No, no, no. Masks doesn’t do that. It only does one thing well. If you want a real superhero RPG you should use
Worlds in Peril.
So I figured I’d read it.
Worlds in Peril at least has much more actual comic book art than Masks (which has none). It’s got a neat 12 page comic book in the the beginning that sort of explains how to play. A very nice effort.
The glossary explains that the Stats in this game are Smash, Influence, Maneuver, Protect and Investigate. This seems like a different-just-to-be-different terminology when they ultimate act like Strength, Charisma, Dexterity, Endurance and Intelligence. I’m not saying they should use those terms but the ones they use don’t seem very intuitive (personally I like Brawn, Cool, Moves, Guts and Smarts).
I do like the admonishment that unlike most “Powered by the Apocalypse” games this one expects some preparation to be done by the EIC. Most PbtA games assume you will just make it up as you go along. As someone who has suffered through those games too often, I’m glad common sense has prevailed. Improvisation is a necessary skill. But if it is the only skill you use, you’ll have some terrible games.
”Powers Summdary & Profile” is a bad sign. An error that the simplest spell-checker could find got through to the published product? Thnks jrk. I paid over $50 bucks for this!
Page 13 shows that the art-work has cut off some printed text. This is not encouraging. I really hope this wasn’t another “I’m a game designer-because-I-convinced-enough-people-to-give-me-money-before-I-had-to-produce-ANYTHING!” product. I’ve bought enough of those.
The next 12 pages are genuine comic book pages that definitely add a credibility to this game that some of the previous have damaged.
The comic book assumes the players and GM (EIC) start playing without the player even having defined their powers. Ok. That could happen. I don’t recommend it, but it could.
”Overview of the Game” talks about being a superhero and there is no much new here if you’re a comic book fan. It explicitly says that you are considered to be starting in a big city like New York, but while that trope is traditional I don’t honestly think it is vital.
Then you get a rough overview of Player Moves and moves in general. This is a PBTA game which means that it defines action - the need to roll dice in terms of ‘moves’. This is a terrible name, but it’s used throughout the book. It really means what other games mean by ‘checks’, ‘tests’, ‘saves’ or ‘rolls’. It’s a chart that tells you what happens when you try to do “X”.
It also explains ‘triggering’ a move - another really English-deprived word that means “When you try something that requires a dice roll.” The same words that other games use for moves are usually used in other games for ‘trigger’.
So the terminology does its best to confuse you and act like it’s a whole new RPG invention, but it isn’t really. There are other things about PBTA games that are different from most RPGs, but Moves and triggers in and of themselves aren’t one of them.
Bonds however is a new idea and one I like a lot. Essentially these are the relationships you have with your fellow players and the other supporting cast in the comic book, including your relationship to the City and the Law Enforcement. Bonds are set at a number of points starting at 0 (they don’t know you or care about you) and increases from there. During the game you can “Burn” a bond to guarantee success in a roll. Meaning you make a relationship worse in order to succeed at a roll. The example given being hurting your relationship with the City by causing massive property damage.
Damage is done by giving Conditions. This can be physical or psychological. They come in Minor, Moderate or Critical severity.
There are also Advantages that can be taken away. So far they only describe external gadgets that you can take away as Advantages.
Page 37 starts the Basic Moves. It’s interesting and seems to cover a lot of basics of things that happen in a super-hero comic book. Unfortunately the examples are people speaking in ‘cult-speak’ about what they do. So it doesn’t sound so much like a role-playing game as it does a quiz show.
You don’t punch the villain, you ‘put a Condition’ on them.
”Alright, it sounds like you’re trying to Take it Down, and you’re using direct force. ”
That alone doesn’t sound like a game I want to play or a GM I want to be.
I’ll try to keep an open mind.
The Basic Moves do seem to cover all the basic super-hero stuff. Where I get weirded out is where the player makes a move and then the GM tells them how it played out. Normally, the player decides what they will do and the GM tells the player how successful it was. But here the mechanic just happens and then the GM tells the story of what the player did and how it did or did not achieve what the player wanted. F
For example a player Gathers Intel. The player uses Bonds as a bonus. The GM tells him what happens when he gets to the Bond (NPC) that knows what he wants to know. They don’t roleplay it, the GM just says what happens after the player already knows how successful he was. The GM even says “…you pretend to leave and then listen in for a little bit.” The player doesn’t decide that - the GM decides that from the dice roll the player made!!? I’m not sure I can call this role-playing.
”Powers” is where the rubber meets the road. For any superhero RPG the Powers are make or break. If the players aren’t excited about getting these powers, then the game won’t get played and isn’t much worth reading.
But Worlds in Peril turns this on it’s head. It starts with saying powers are much like any other superhero RPG, animal mimicry, phasing through objects, super strength, invulnerability, telepathy, shapeshifting, absorption of energy, super speed, fight, teleportation, etc.
It makes the rather odd distinction that powers that are innate are ‘powers’ and powers that can be taken away are ‘advantages’. But the only examples they give of this are basically equipment.
Reading on-line comments, this is the part that confuses most players and causes the most questions and I can understand why. Write down “I have Flying” brings up loads of questions for the GM. Then what does it mean if you say it is Simple, Difficult or Borderline? I’m not sure how this would work in play. I think for some players this would work fine, but for others I could see some struggles.
It’d be a lot quicker to just pick Gliding, Wings, Floating or Flight from a list and give it an ‘amount’ to determine how powerful it is.
”Choose an Origin Book” is an odd way to phrase it but you pick an Origin for the character. This is a half page description of roughly how you got your powers and what motivates you. It also has Move built into each origin. Each origin also suggests what enemies or antagonists might occur because of these origins. The thirteen different origins are fairly recognizable (though not by their names). I can definitely see these as interesting pieces of superhero characters.
”Choose a Drive Book” has 19 different ‘drives’ that are supposed to answer the question “It is my goals and drive to…”.
By taking a drive you only ‘get’ it by a certain action and some are noticeably harder to achieve than others. ”When things look dire, tell the group about a time when things were really bad and how you made it through” seems much easier to do than You build or re-purpose a space to work in and acquire the three types of components your workspace needs to get started.
And since there’s no money in the game there is very little guidance on how to ‘build’ stuff at all.
Drive books are interesting and I can see how they can inspire characters to have motivations in how they role-play. I can’t really see why they would be an advancement. You certainly do get new Moves, but honestly they don’t seem all that great and very situational.
So, here’s your advancement. You have to do something unusual to trigger it, there’s an 88% chance it’ll backfire (succeed at cost) and it doesn’t do much great anyway.
As an ‘at-the-table’ problem is every hero who wants to advance going to neat to read every Drive (and ask the corresponding questions about it). Sure, it’ll sell a lot of books, but what happens when the Delinquent wants Push the Boundaries of Science after having never been a sciency character?
What does "Move available to open when" mean? Basically, it is the trigger to gain access to the move. In WiP, instead of spending XP or similar to gain moves, they are gained by triggering the opening phrase in the fiction. -Nereoss
Okay, fair enough. But it seems a weird motivation. Rather than collecting Experience Points (or Advances as they are usually called) you’re just collecting Drives which give you moves. Note sure that will give you the results you want in play.
”Bonds & Backstory” makes much more sense and is a great way to encourage comic book soap opera!
This was definitely one of the major selling points to me of this game. I’m not entirely sure why Bond Thresholds exist. The maximum total number of Bonds you can half. I mean, Superman can probably pull a ton of people that he’s saved. Batman’s family is bigger than mine!
”EIC Moves” is the best explanation I’ve ever read for Soft and Hard Moves the GM is supposed to make. It still seems adversarial to the players to me — and it is. If the players fail, make it WORSE! But reading it here seems more like what GM’s already do - keep the world moving behind the scenes in ways that will interact with them.
As a superhero RPG GM, I’ve always done this, the world keeps turning and the villains plot keeps advancing. This just makes it more explicit. Food for thought that most PbtA books simply describe as effing the PCs whenever it seems a good time to do so.
”The First Issue” describes what should happen in your first game.
A very common thread in this (and other ‘modern’ games) is that you don’t need to prep because anything you didn’t prep, you can just ask the players to prep in the middle of a game. Ye
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 - 6 of 6 reviews