Man, I tried with Perdido Street Station. I had it recommended to me, so I picked it up and got maybe halfway through it, but it just didn’t hold me. I’ve tried once more since then but it just felt like a slog. It’s super creative but I think I just don’t like the writing style. No judgment, you just reminded me of the minor shame of not liking something someone recommended, lol.

If you’re interested in hearing it played, I would highly recommend the podcast “Spout Lore”. They, in my opinion, are the platonic ideal of how to play a PbtA game, which is to mostly ignore the rules and bang them into a shape that fits the fiction, rather than the other way around. PbtA games are meant to be unbalanced, I think, because fiction tends to favor the protagonists.

I think that’s by design, honestly. DW (and all Powered by the Apocalypse games) are effectively just creative storytelling rules with the occasional die roll. You can (and often do) go whole sessions and roll only a couple of times. Its combat rules are virtually non-existent, and it doesn’t even have turns, so balance is not only not a concern, but probably impossible. That’s because the players will win or lose not by dice rolls, but by where the fiction takes them. If you like a lot of crunchy stats and rules, PbtA is probably not the path you want to go down.

I’m legitimately quite impressed with it. It’s very well written, and the system is simple enough to be rapidly applied effectively. It feels a lot like having someone to bounce ideas off of and occasionally surprise you. I’m also getting ready to run a game of Beam Saber with a couple of friends, using Mythic. Very excited to see how a “writer’s room” approach to roleplaying will go.