The Chris Casey Experience

Review the Last of pocket games from the same publisher. See Part 1 for notes on gameplay, or Part 2 for a review of a better game than Part 1. Now let’s finish this up and get out of here.

Big Eyes, Small Brains (BESB)

Writers: L.B. and Samatha Ferreira
Year: 2019
Dimensions: 6¼” x 4” x ⅝”
プレーヤー: 2+
Term for GM: Kami
Term for PC: Avatar
Page count: 310 (yes, you read that right)
Oblique references to real-world anime count: ∞
Comparable media: The entire media output of Japan since 1982

Unlike the other two books, there’s no monolithic setting here. Big Eyes, Small Brains (BESB) is a sandbox full of tropes where you can run around doing anime-inspired buffoonery. That said, there’s still more of an established world in this game than in its namesake and obvious inspiration, Big Eyes, Small Mouth. The rules are neither as comprehensive nor as complex as BESM, yet maybe because of this, they’re better balanced in many ways.

The book is written from the point of view of an isekai’d person from Earth who became the god of the anime world of Abika. This conceit only exists to justify the writing’s meandering, casual-weeb tone. The enormous-eyed, unnaturally-colored-haired people of Abika live their lives as best they can: running late to school with toast in their mouths, dealing with all-powerful student councils, fighting ninjas while wearing maid outfits, fighting alien catgirls at regional festivals, choosing which of six supermodels to date while being a gormless milquetoast, piloting giant space robots right out of grade school, engaging in interminable tournament arcs when the author runs out of ideas, and about anything else you’ve ever seen happen in Japanese teen/YA media.

… Or so I thought at first. It turns out that there’s something like a plot built into the game setting, but you have to wait until page 200 to learn about it. In true BESB style, I’ll leave you in suspense until we get to that part.

The first thing I noticed during my readthrough was how sanitized BESB is compared to the others. There’s not a single “fuck” and only one “shit.” The humor is less transgressive and more genre-focused. There’s still some edge, but it’s greatly diminished. I’d go so far as to say this is less a parody work than a lighthearted spoof of anime fandom.

BESB adds six new Classes to the mix: Senshi (Sailor Power Moon Ranger transforming warriors), Androids (all-rounder characters with an impressive list of interchangeable parts), Combat Butlers/Maids (agile fighters with a cleaning fetish), Heroes (tank-ish swordsmen doing what Himmel would do), Ayakashi (nature yokai filling the cleric role), and Idols (dancing bards with Cyberpunk 2020 Rockerboy vibes). Again, you could port Classes from the other two games in or out if you really wanted to.

Something new here is Traits, which are optional attributes you can apply to your character. This list includes things like Chuunibyo, Crybaby, Family Business, Loli Body (grimace), Nosebleeds, Otaku, Tragic Past, etc. The list reads like anime’s greatest trope hits. These are entirely roleplaying prompts. There’s no bonus for taking them and no penalty for leaving them alone. If they amuse you, go for it.

Otherwise there’s the requisite list of wacky items (Magic Manga Pencil, Harem Whistle, Talking Cat Panties, Phone Charm, Demonic Contract, etc.) and weapons (surprisingly mundane, though there are things like the Bladed Serving Platter and Spiked Stilettos to spice things up).

You can buy cars, trucks, and mecha too. The vehicle and mecha rules are EXTREMELY rudimentary. Mechs are essentially big suits of armor equipped with giant versions of regular weapons. I mean, you don’t really need more than that for goofy Mobile Suit Gundam parodies, but Lancer this is very much not.

There follows a fairly comprehensive list of Foods, like takoyaki and omurice. These can be crafted with Cooking rolls and give minor bonuses upon consumption. It may be the most “anime” thing in this here anime game, and represents a missed opportunity in other games. No rules for cooking monsters, though, which feels like an oversight.

Now we get to the setting, which occupies almost the entire back half of the book. The world of Abika is divided into a number of realms embodying one or more sub-genres of anime. These realms are:

Mitakihara: Rural and/or coastal Japan-alike. Suburbs, safe streets, little shrines, woods, a magic academy, an interdimensional cafe, pretty much everything you’d expect from such a bucolic setting.

Sanzenin: The rich part of town, where most of the Combat Butlers and Maids in the world are employed. Home of the Bouran Academy, an elite school for stuck-up brats with gender confusion issues.

Siak: The wrong side of the tracks. Siak was once the high-tech part of town until the bottom fell out of the market. The BIOME Corporation churns out androids to steal the citizens’ jobs and drive them further into poverty. Gee that doesn’t feel frickin’ prophetic from here in 2026, huh.

Lancastar: The Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo, expanded into a whole region. Idols and Senshi are thick on the ground here. Home to multiple rival rock’n’roll high schools.

Valis: Where the heroic fantasy happens. Castles, colosseums, adventurer’s guilds, barroom brawls, kidnapped princesses, rampaging dragons. A Hero’s paradise.

Vulkanus: All future war, all the time. This place is lousy with mecha, gleaming postmodernism, and overt fascistic vibes. Lots of ghosts in those machines, if you get my drift. Plenty of crises involving bubblegum, if you know’m sayin’.

Washinomiya: Shinto-land. Big shrines, cherry blossoms, shrine maidens, new years’ festivals, gurus muttering mantras along the side of the road, that kind of thing. The Abika version of the UN is housed here. Ayakashi feel right at home.

Yotsuya: The spoooooky yokai-infested zone. Superstition city. It’d be scarier if the descriptions of the stuff there didn’t remind me of the Ghost Stories English dub.

Fukusaku: Here we finally learn the “plot” of BESB. Years ago, a rogue Senshi named Tack planted himself on top of the tallest mountain in remote Fukusaku and declared war on anyone who wouldn’t bow down to him. In the ensuing struggle, thousands perished. When Tack was finally defeated, his death set off a dead man’s switch. A forbidden spell reduced Fukusaku to a radiation-ravaged hellscape. The rest of Abika abandoned Fukusaku and mages lifted the entire region into the sky. The few survivors there dwindle each day and horrible mutant monsters wander the land.

… Welcome to our fun wacky parody game. Geez. Note that the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster had happened eight years before this was published. This is so on the nose, it crushed my septum. Every other joke is cartoony clownhammer stuff, then you run into this big clump of dethbludgore. You got your Dorohedoro in my Konosuba.

Luckily the whole war stuff is only mentioned in passing in the other areas, though Fukusaku is still a place characters can visit if they want something other than sunshine and rainbows.

The book ends with over 70 pages of the enemies found in each area. Standouts include the Sadistic Student Council President, Motorcycle Gang Members, Space Pirates, Tween Witches, Kobolds, Ganguro Girls, Yuki-Onnas, and Insane Cultists. Still no intro adventure. That feels a bit weird considering how much space they had, but whatever.

Portability: Same as the other two, just thicker. Definitely has some heft that you can feel. C.

Legibility: They replaced the sans-serif font with a light serif, but it’s still all good. A.

Completeness: This one oddly doesn’t feel any more complete than Laser Metal despite having three times the pages. Therefore this one gets an A- too.

Final thoughts: At 310 pages, BESB is by far the largest pocket RPG out there. In fact we’re probably approaching the theoretical limit of pocket RPG physics. Therefore, you’d think I’d be raving about how stuffed and huge and sprawling this game is. But somehow it still feels … sparse.

A lot of that comes from the game’s breezy writing style. Just like me, the writers of BESB do like to ramble.

There’s a lot of that sort of “wacky” digression. If you picked up the book and squeezed out all those asides like a sponge, the book would lose about a third of its volume.

That’s not necessarily a good thing, either. Without the extra verbiage, you’d start to notice that everything is underbaked. The whole game has a mish-mash feel. Each area in Abika has only three or four landmarks and about four unique enemy types. I’ve reviewed less wordy games with more variety.

And yes, you need to be a weeb to get much enjoyment. Otherwise nearly all the jokes will fly freely, joyfully even, over your head.

If you are a weeb, well, here’s a game. It’s loose and unfocused and imperfect, but you can play it maybe. You and your friends may get a chuckle out of it. With a little work, you could even make it shine. As is, though, it’s a fine start. Just … fine.

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Finally final thoughts: The Attention Span Games pocket series is a mixed bag, to say the least. Conceptually, DnDizzle is too narrow to fill a whole book, while BESB is too broad even despite its relative enormity. Laser Metal strikes the best balance between scope and vision. It’s juuust right.

Are any of them worth owning? That’s very subjective. I’d say DnDizzle requires you to be both REALLY into its subject matter and be easy to please. Laser Metal has a decent universe to play around in, isn’t full of impenetrable in-jokes, and, as it will constantly remind you, is pretty fuckin’ metal. BESB is cute and “for the fans,” but doesn’t have much of a skeleton, so it just flops around. BESB is BYOPlot.

It’s probably telling that only Laser Metal has a published adventure, Too Broke to Rock, that you can nab for a buck off DTRPG. That’s all the support you’re getting. Now go to that ledge and hang off it.

In total? Half a thumb up on one hand, half a thumb down on the other. Focus wherever you want.

The second of three reviews of pocket games from the same publisher. See Part 1 for info about the gameplay, and maybe stay for the review. If you dare.

Laser Metal

Writer: Ron Leota
Year: 2015
Dimensions: 6¼” x 4″ x ¼”
Metalheads: 2+
Term for GM: Metal Master
Term for PC: PC (how disappointing)
Page count: 116
“Laser” count: 72
“Metal” count: 252
Comparable media: Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Judge Dredd (1995), KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park

Millennia ago, humanity left a dying Earth to colonize other planets, including the small barren planet of Brutalia. Life on Brutalia was, to coin a phrase, brutal. Humans scrabbling out a life there built fortified cities and skirmished with each other to increase their pieces of the pie. One of these city-states built a giant orbital laser and threatened its neighbors with it. The other city-states didn’t care for this and tried to invade. Half the planet was scorched in the aftermath, and the surviving cities made ready to go to war and finish off the rest of it.

However! A metal band called The Saints of Thrash foresaw that the world was about to end, bought a tract of empty land, hired a bunch of science types who were tired of making WMDs, and built a gigantic dome. When the final war did finally happen, this dome, later known as Arena 66, was about the only thing on the planet that survived.

Then they discovered … The Metal (squealing guitar riff). Somehow, living on the planet Brutalia was changing humanity, giving them powers like telekinesis, raising the dead, shooting lightning from their hands, and otherwise twisting reality. Not everyone can use The Metal, but those who can are practically superheroes. Or at least super-metalheads.

Now, 20 years after the apocalypse, people are emerging from Arena 66 and learning what’s going on out there in the wastelands of Brutalia. Nothing good, generally speaking. But people go out there anyway, mostly to train their combat skills for the biennial Laser Metal Tournament, a literal battle of the bands, to win the right to rule Arena 66 and ride eternal, shiny and chr — whoops, wrong franchise. The players are assumed to be members of one such band, building up life experience to take on the Tournament themselves.

The game proper starts with the Laser Metal Classes: Doom Wailer (screaming bard with a connection to The Metal), Fat Bottom (tank, almost literally), Gun Witch (sneaky gun-fu fighter), Order of Metal Monk (Jedi wielding the power of The Metal, complete with laser swords), and Shred Master (master of destruction, and also pilot for some reason). The Classes are compatible with DnDizzle, in case you wanted to muddle your metal sci-fi with hip-hop fantasy.

Several powers from The Metal are then enumerated, allowing characters to put enemies to sleep, turn blood to ink, steal the life force from everyone around them, and tear open a hole in the sky and rain down hellfire. You know, Tuesday.

Next come lists of equipment, including Guitar Scythes, Rocket Propelled Knives, Jet-Powered Flight Suits, and Ruff the Cyberdog, followed by descriptions of all the internal areas of Arena 66, plus outside places like Arena 69 (giggity), the Church of Gas, Death Row, the Irradiated Wastes, and beyond. Then we get a bunch of adversaries (Cannibal Mutants, Company Men, Deth [sic] Bots, Gas Hunters, Posers, Sellouts, Zombie Pop Fans, etc.). Sadly there’s no adventure included.

So right off the bat, this game world is miles better. If you told me this was the plot of a backup feature in 2000 AD, I wouldn’t question it. The writing has a middling dose of punk attitude, but it’s not insanely annoying. Typefaces are readable, the writing isn’t constantly punching you in the face, and the world is silly but in a far less grating way. It’s a relief.

It’s not perfect, though. For one thing, the game tries too hard to convince us how totally hardcore it is. The author often breaks in to say “now THAT’s fucking METAL” like he’s not entirely sure of it himself. It doesn’t happen all the time, so it’s not as salt-in-your-eyes irritating as DnDizzle got, but it’s a stone drag when it shows up.

Portability: Same size and caveats as DnDizzle. B.

Legibility: Yes. 12-point-ish sans serif for body text, a Gothic-wannabe font for chapter headers, and a thin handwriting font for subheads. Every word is legible. That’s metal as fuck. A.

Completeness: This has lots more world-building than DnDizzle, but at the expense of an intro adventure. That tips this one slightly to the negative. Still a full-fledged game though. A-.

Final thoughts: I’m sure you’ve picked up that I like this one more than its older brother, even though it has the same author. I’m guessing he got some feedback on the first game and actually took it to heart. It’s nice seeing people improve.

There’s also more variety in this one. Laser Metal isn’t just about stretching the One Joke until it disintegrates, it has a living, varied, colorful, semi-cohesive setting. It’s certainly very trope-y, but there are flashes of cleverness in how they fit together. It’s not just random metal gags thrown in a bag and shaken. These random metal gags have been meticulously curated, damn it.

Of these three parody games, I think this one works the best. (Oh, spoilers for the next review, I guess.)

Next time: Big ass, small butts

To finish up my series of pocket TTRPG reviews, I was originally going to write one big review of three similar games. As I dug in, it turned into a monster, since apparently I can’t shut my yap for two seconds. So I’m breaking it into three regular reviews instead. Please! … Enjoy.

In this series we’ll highlight three pocket-sized RPGs, all ostensibly parodies, from the same publisher, Attention Span Games. All the books in this review use similar rules, differing mostly in classes, campaign structure, and tone. Such as it is. You’ll see what I mean.

DnDizzle: Dragons in the Hood; Laser Metal; Big Eyes, Small Brains (BESB)

Other pocket games deal with their small form factor by being innovative in their construction, packaging, and organization. These games, meanwhile, are just … books. Small, flimsy, soft-cover, perfect-bound books, printed in black-and-white on thin matte paper. The sort of books that merely opening them cracks the cover. Being actual books, they have far less need to be economical with their content. Their size fits our format, but it still feels like cheating.

Gameplay: All three games use the same basic rules. Characters have four Stats: Might (or “Strength” in BESB), Agility (“Speed” in BESB), Intelligence (“Brains” in DnDizzle), and a fourth metaphysical stat (“Soul” in DnDizzle, “Metal” in Laser Metal, and “Luck” in BESB, all doing roughly equivalent things). Players divvy up 7 points between these, with a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 3. Most Classes have a preferred Stat, so you probably shouldn’t take, say, the Combat Butler Class if your Speed were too low.

Each book has wildly varying names for their Classes, but they all generally fill classic party roles: the healer, the tank, the mage, the marksman, etc. A character’s beginning Skills (or “Skillz” … yes, thank you, DnDizzle, very droll) are determined by their Class. All Skills/z begin at rank 1, and the character has a number of extra points equal to their INT/Brains score to add to that.

Characters then gain one Ability based on their Class, like the Trigger Man’s Accurate Shot (+1 to hit for all ranged weapons), the Shred Master’s This Cut was the Deepest (+2 damage to melee and laser attacks), or the Idol’s Hypersonic Tune (a damaging sonic blast that can potentially push enemies away from you). You get more Abilities as you level up. Your Class also determines your initial equipment, plus a small amount of the coin of the realm (gold, credits, or Ryo) for accessorizing.

When attempting an action with a chance of failure, players roll 2d6 and add the relevant Stat plus Skill. If they don’t have the right Skill, they just add the Stat -1. Snake eyes is an automatic failure and boxcars is an automatic success. For non-contested rolls, the GM sets the difficulty. If it’s a contested roll, ties go to the defender.

This is a very simple, neat, easy dice resolution method, which also happens to be almost exactly the same as the classic Japanese RPG Sword World. Now I’m not saying the designer lifted the system wholesale, but I’m not not saying it either. (In 2013-ish, when this system was in development, /tg/ was already flogging around partial translations of SW 2.0. However, the rest of this system doesn’t resemble SW that much. I’m willing to give it the benefit of a doubt and chalk this up to some sort of 2d6 carcinization theory.)

When combat breaks out, everyone rolls 2d6 + Agility/Speed + Awareness and acts in descending order. Rounds are 5 seconds long, and characters can move up to 25 feet and perform one item from a pretty standard action list: attack, cast a spell, use a skill or ability, draw a weapon, stand up/lie down, grab something, or take a second 25-foot move. There are no “held actions;” if you do nothing on your turn, you miss out.

Each character has a Defense Rating equal to 5 + their Agility/Speed + any armor bonus (up to +5). A character’s DR defends against every type of attack from guns to spells to laser swords. If an enemy rolls an attack above this number, the character takes damage somewhere between 1d6 and 2d6 + some number, depending on the attack type. At 0 HP, they pass out and will die if they don’t get treatment within as many rounds as their Might/Strength score. Even after all that, they can be revived by anyone with a resurrection-type Ability, but only within the next hour.

Then there are items that affect blah blah, nobody cares, get to the actual games already, you cry. These are parody games, how to roll the dice is secondary. Just tell us about the funny stuff.

Well okay. You asked for it.

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DnDizzle: Dragons in the Hood

Writer: Ron Leota
Year: 2014
Dimensions: 6¼” x 4” x ¼”
Playas: 2+
Term for GM: The Big Pimp (BP)
Term for PC: OG
Page count: 112
“Motherfucker” count: 79
Comparable media: Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood, Bright (non-laudatory)

In the ancient hood known as Comptonia —

Okay, yeah. That’s the level we’re on. Soak that in a second. Now let’s continue.

In Comptonia, all was chill under the enlightened rule of King Pimperton, the illest motherfucker in all the land. Everyone loved him and his fly honey of a daughter, Princess Fabula. Then one night, a big-ass snake motherfucker called the Black Dragon pulled up, straight wrecked Comptonia, and flew off with hella dolla dolla bills y’all, and, weaker still, the princess.

The king put out a hit on the Black Dragon, offering his daughter’s hand in marriage to whatever smooth OG could lock her down back home. All the big ballas of the kingdom turned out to punk the Black Dragon’s ass. Just when it looked like they were going to win, the Dragon called up his homies and everyone bailed before a flood of wack-ass monsters.

Meanwhile, the princess, hella mad that her daddy offered her up to the first golddigger to come along, went thug and dipped into the Big Ass Forest.

Now Comptonia’s all kinds of fucked up, and only the hardest OGs will be able to regulate the monsters, take back the hood, and bring the pain to that Black Dragon motherfucker once and for all.

I shall now present a direct quote from the book:

“Now it’s time for you to go forth! Cry, ‘thug life!’ and let slip the gats of war; just don’t be caught trippin’.”

All right. So. How did the previous section make you feel? A little second-hand embarrassment, maybe? Like you’re looking through a twisted portal at the thinnest veneer of 1990s-era hip-hop culture? About as hard as Vanilla Ice?

That’s this book’s one single joke.

The actual rules are presented in a clear straightforward style. But everything, and I mean every pig-friggin’ thing, is accompanied by running commentary by a character called “Fat Warrior” who uses thick wannabe gangsta speak. I’d estimate half the text in this book is Fat Warrior’s incessant, pointless fronting. I mean look at this shit:

I’ll get to that awful font later. But gee Zeus. There are whole entire chapters that are nothing but Fat Warrior rambling on (and on and on) in this tone. It’s not even creatively done; by about the fortieth “motherfucker” the word had lost all meaning. The lack of chill, as they say on the streets, is palpable as all fuck.

This ragged cloak of hip-hop sensibility has been draped over the whole game, from its Classes (Doc [cleric], Freestyler [bard], Jacker [rogue], Street Magician [mage], Thug [fighter], Trigger Man [ranger]) to its equipment (Low-Rider Carriage, Sack of Holding Shit, Pimp Cane of Control) to its monsters (Crazy Ho, Weak-Ass Goblin, Ghetto Leprechaun, Medusafarian … okay that one’s funny). There’s a history of Comptonia which is essentially “we had a great pimp king, then a bad stoner king, and now it’s today,” a list of “interesting” citizen stereotypes, and a sample adventure, “King Smokey’s Secret Stash.” Then the book ends, which is my favorite part.

Portability: It actually fits the pocket quite well, even when you add 2d6, some copies of the character sheet, and a pencil. The book is a bit fragile, so don’t run a marathon with it in your pocket. B.

Legibility: The regular rules are easy to read, in a decently sized sans-serif font, with excellent spacing. Fat Warrior’s narrative text, on the other hand, is beyond awful. It’s some kind of bizarre cursive (?) typeface with enormous ascenders and descenders and horrible kerning that makes letters tend to blend together. Even that wouldn’t be a complete deal-breaker if there weren’t whole chapters of this shit. Honestly. D.

Completeness: It is at least a whole game. With as much space as they have, it would be weird not to be. This is the one thing I can’t complain about. A.

Final thoughts: Who is this game for? Well, I’d expect people who love (and I mean loooove) West Coast urban culture would get a kick out of the slang, repetitive though it may be. Obsessive collectors (raises hand sheepishly) would feel bad not having it. Cultural and linguistic anthropologists might get something out of it. People who really like fucking mothers, maybe? I’m kinda stretching here.

You may be thinking that my objection to this game is that I don’t like hip-hop (extremely untrue) or I’m clutching my pearls at the content (somewhat untrue; there’s some bits that feel like it’s making fun of the culture instead of having fun with it. But shit, man, I’ve been on the internet for 35 years, you think I’m gonna balk at tone?). No, my absolute, overriding objection is that this is a comedy game that stops being funny around page 5. Unforgivable. Off with its head.

Big-ass motherfuckin’ nope from me, homies. Peace out.

Next time: You’re killin’ me, Smalls

One more entry for my review mini-series about RPG adventures that fit in your pocket. See Part One for the money, Part Two for the show, and Part Three to get ready. Now, here we go.

Bookmark No-HP RPG (Compleat Bundle)

Publisher: Lester Smith Games
Year: 2021
Dimensions: 2½” x 3½” (poker card size) or 6″ x 1½” (bookmark size) x ¼”
Players: 2-10

(In the tone of “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha”): Fantasy, fantasy, fantasy! That’s all these pocket games are! If only someone would come save us from all these swords and sorcerers! They’re knee-deep! The neighbors are starting to complain!

Bookmark No-HP RPG comes in two formats, bookmarks or cards, either of which satisfy the size constraint of these reviews. The bookmark format is slightly larger, but they’re functionally identical. You can only get the card version PoD from DriveThruRPG, so that’s what I’m working with. You’ll also need at least one full set of polyhedral dice and (once again) a pencil or equivalent.

Gameplay: The game takes the bolt-on approach. One bookmark/card describes the underlying system for everyone, the players get their own “guidebookmark,” and the Game Host (that is, the GM) gets a third. All of them together explain how everything works. (It wouldn’t hurt for everyone to read all three, but you know how players are.) This basic setup is extended with genre cards, described below. The bundle also comes with a “battle bookmark” describing an “advanced” combat system, plus nine blank character cards.

The rules are a convoluted form of generic. Every character has a Vocation, like Fighter or Detective. Vocations can be literally any job or lifestyle you can imagine, and are assumed to come with everything you need; equipment is Not A Thing. Characters also have four Attributes: Brawn, Grace, Will, and Wits. Players divvy up d4, d6, d8, and d10 between these.

To perform an action, the Game Host assigns a Difficulty from 1 to 10. The player then rolls one of their Attributes’ dice that many times. (A player can use any Attribute for any action if they can come up with a reasonable explanation for it, unless that Attribute is exhausted [see below].) If any of these die rolls are a 1, the action fails. Otherwise it succeeds. The degree of success or failure depends on the highest die in your series of rolls, so you’ll want to roll the full number of times even if you fail early.

If a roll fails, reduce that Attribute’s die by one step (d8 becomes d6, for instance). If you fail on a d4 roll, that Attribute is exhausted and you have to rest to use it again. If the roll succeeds and at least one roll is maximum (e.g. rolling an 8 on d8), the die increases one step, usually to a maximum of d12. If you max-success-roll with a d12, you get a Boon, like a new weapon, an ally, a book of spells, etc. Characters can save six Boons and trade them in for a Trait, essentially a permanent piece of equipment, as a way to level up.

Sometimes you’ll come up against a high Difficulty and don’t want to risk a stat by rolling a zillion times. In this case, you can gamble either your Vocation, a Trait, or one of your Boons, which halves the Difficulty. If you fail this reduced roll, you exhaust whatever you gambled. Exhausting a Vocation or Trait is meant to simulate a loss of face, a power-down, a crisis of faith, or similar. You get exhausted Vocations and Traits back after rest and reflection. Exhausted Boons are gone for good.

The gambling and exhaustion stuff take the place of HP in this, the No-HP RPG. Death is story-driven. Either you or the Game Host can declare you dead if you fail a particularly deadly action with a particularly poor roll, but you’re not beholden to. Mostly your survivability depends on how far you can push your bullshit rationalizations to stay alive.

So let’s unpack the die rolling thing here. Obviously it’s best to roll your highest Attribute, especially for low Difficulty actions, to quickly max out your die and start generating Boons. The chance of failure goes up rapidly at the low end, but levels off for higher Difficulties.

The gambling mechanic is a neat way to mitigate this, though a starting character with no Boons and cold dice could easily shoot their wad early and then stumble along, shedding dice levels until something really bad happens. Note that, RAW, resting during an adventure doesn’t reset your dice levels, though it does restore any d4’s you’ve exhausted. The best you can hope for is a hot streak to build them back up.

The genre cards toss a few spins on top of this formula.

• “Swords and Spellbookmarks” add Heroic and Arcane character types. Heroes can perform Epic Actions which bump up their die type, and Arcanists cast Charms, Spells, and Sorcery, with increasing risk/reward structures for each.
• “Bookmark the Stars!” gives everyone Species and Homeworlds with unique abilities and liabilities, and rules to generate a shared spaceship for the team to travel in.
• “Bookmark Cyberpunk” has an alternate character generation system that gives you up to a d20 as a stat, cybernetic Traits, and hacking rules.
• “No-HP Supers!” replaces your Vocation with a Super Identity and an Alter Ego (which gets exposed if exhausted). It also adds super powers, of which you can take as many as you’d like. However, you have an additional risk of exhausting the one you’re using if you roll less than your current number of powers on a d20.
• “Bookmark Cthulhu” adds the Dread Attribute, which increases as you encounter Things Man was Not Meant to Know until you go buggo and melt your face off or explode or something.
• “Dracula’s Get!” makes all the PCs into vampires, with all their classic powers and a powerful thirst for that veiny good-good. I’m sorry. I’ll never say that again.
• “Paranormal Wordbookmark” gives everyone their choice of a psychic gift based on one of their Attributes, and then … they just go around being psychic, I guess. There’s nothing more to the card than that.

The rules don’t say anything about mixing and matching multiple genre cards, but there’s nothing stopping you either. I’ll allow it, but don’t tell your mom.

Pocket fit: The Compleat Bundle is 20 poker-sized cards and/or bookmarks, which have small but detectable mass in the pocket. You’ll also need your dice bag and something to write with, which adds most of the bulk. Still not much. C+ and I’m being kinda mean about it.

Legibility: The rules cards are quite readable for their size, and the bookmark versions are even better for their larger text. Every genre card has its own typography, which is mostly fine, but the sci-fi and cyberpunk cards are printed as white text on dark backgrounds. The sci-fi card has a sort of mottled space nebula background with red highlights, and the cyberpunk one has a light geometric font which would be hard to read in any case.

Everything else is fine, though. B overall, with a couple C-’s in there dragging the average down.

Completeness: There’s no adventure generator or particular game world, but the rules do cover a wide swath of whatever you might want to do. The Game Host card has a tiny “crafting adventures” section which is insultingly rudimentary. There are published adventure sets if you don’t want to be creative. Otherwise this is mostly a toolkit to build your own world on top of. B-.

Final thoughts: I like this one, though more for its audaciousness than for the actual system. In my experience, the dice mechanic is initially difficult to get through to some players. Once a player gets it, it does seem to stick, luckily. The multi-genre thing is a huge breath of fresh air after all those Tolkiens with the numbers filed off. It is a little undetailed in its base form, which is weird to say about a system this comparatively large.

In the end, though, it’s not hard to have fun with, which is all you can really ask for.

The Bookmark No-HP RPG Compleat Bundle is $20 on DTRPG, which includes PDFs and physical cards. If you don’t want the whole passel, they also have “cut-up solo” bundles which include the base rules, one genre card, and one or more sourcebooks for a more in-depth experience. That takes away my complaint about a lack of campaign structure, but also moves it beyond the realm of “pocket RPG,” so [OUT OF BOUNDS ERROR]

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Next time: Just one last little thing

Another installment of my review mini-series about literally pocket-sized RPGs. See Part One for the explanation, and Part Two for more of … whatever this is.

Storytelling Mints

Publisher: Archmage Arispen
Year: 2025
Dimensions: 3¼” x 2⅛” x ¾”
Players: 1+

Yet another joint from Archmage Arispen, maker of the previously reviewed Tinny Dungeons. Storytelling Mints feels like a GM’s tool that somehow evolved into an actual RPG. This one has zero moving parts; no dice, no player sheets, no pencils, nothing but the cards in the tin and a song in your heart.

Storytelling Mints comes with one Player Guide card, one Game Master Guide card, 24 double-sided PC / plot cards, and a wee little hinged tin to hold everything.

Gameplay: Before play begins, the Game Master draws four plot cards at random. Each card has four sections: a Goal, a Location, an Obstacle, and a Twist. The GM silently reads one line from each card, then uses them as inspiration to create a secret quest seed.

Meanwhile, the players turn the deck over and choose their PCs from the characters described on the other side. Each character card lists a character name (ignorable), a race/class pair (mostly fluff), Strengths, Weaknesses, and Gear.

Notice how the bottom of each character card has an upside-down area containing one of four phrases: “Yes, And,” “Yes, But,” “No, And,” and “No, But.” I think you can see what’s coming.

To begin, the GM describes the world and is urged to start in action. Then play unfolds in a pure narrative style, funneled into the quest seed created earlier. A PC’s Strengths and Weaknesses make it easier or harder to do certain actions, and their Gear exists to do cool things with.

If the players want to try something risky, they draw a card and look at the inverted text on the character side. They succeed on a “yes,” fail on a “no,” and other stuff happens depending on their ands or buts.

Yes. This game runs on amateur improv.

There are no stats or anything; such limitations are only in your mind, maaan. It’s up to the GM to keep everyone engaged and the plot moving, and players are equally encouraged to add details and help shape the story.

By the end, the main quest was either successfully completed or utterly derailed. Nothing really happens either way. As you might expect, there’s no leveling up and no long campaign structure. The most you can do is get the GM to draw four more cards and climb back on that treadmill. The play really is the thing.

The provided PCs are very, very D&D coded in their race and class combos. There’s an Aasimar, a Tiefling, and an Aarakocra in the mix. Also a couple Goblins, so … some Pathfinder sneaking in there too, maybe? This isn’t a deal-breaker (and may be a bonus for some groups) but it feels … I dunno, infringe-y.

Also, and this is a much bigger thing: Removing cards from the main deck (for instance, when the PCs choose their character cards or the GM deals themselves the plot) changes the ratio of Yeses and Noes to be drawn during gameplay. I count 6 Yes Ands, 7 Yes Buts, 7 No Buts, and 4 No Ands in the deck. If you have a bunch of players who all want characters with Yes Ands on the bottom, they’ll end up inadvertently skewing the game negatively for themselves. The characters on the Yes cards aren’t particularly special compared to the No cards, so there’s no reason not to grab up all the No Ands and make the game easier.

This can be mitigated by either dealing PCs randomly, or else just taking a snap of the card(s) on your phones and returning everything to the deck. But there’s that niggling feeling that a different randomizer could have fixed this …

Pocket fit: The tin is about half the size of an Altoids tin by volume. It doesn’t even have extra parts inside to rattle around and disturb your prayer group. A-.

Legibility: Mostly good, with a mix of serif and sans-serif (for headers) typefaces. Text on the plot side gets difficult to see in spots, due to light-colored ink on the bright white background. A line or two on the character side is equally hard to read for being white text on a light-ish background. Not nearly as illegible as Pocket World of Dungeons, though, which has altered my perception for all subsequent reviews. B.

Completeness: Once again, we have a game with no leveling, no monsters, and no campaigns. But it does come with a kinda neat story generator that can generate over 250,000 plots (or so claims their advertising). And the game itself does have a complete gameplay loop, with lots of options for the players to choose from. So. B-.

Final thoughts: If nothing else, Storytelling Mints is a master class in compact game design. I really do think this was originally meant to be a simple RPG story generator, and Arispen had a wild hair to throw in a game to go with it. And it even works, after a fashion! I’d almost pick this up for the plot stuff alone, but a game on top of that is like getting chocolate in your peanut butter.

Two things prevent me from giving this my full recommendation, though: the vibey, improv-driven gameplay which is not every table’s cup of tea, and its current $22 USD price tag. I mean, cripes, man. When I bought this a few months ago it was cheaper, but I think, you know, the world situation today has really stuck this game in the shorts. If it were like $10-15, it’d be a more solid choice. As it is, only consider this if you really vibe with the concept.

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POCKET (Card Edition)

Publisher: Barely Playtested
Year: 2022
Dimensions: 2″ x 3½” (business card size) x ¼”
Players: 2+

POCKET (Card Edition) is a straightforward mini-OSR-like, which mostly stands apart from the competition by its formatting. The entire system fits on five business cards (double-sided), which read as if the cards were chapters in a very small book.

Besides the cards, players need a d20 (preferably one for each player), something to write with, and something to write their character info on. No char sheets provided this time.

Gameplay: To build a character, players simply choose a Race (which nets some sort of bonus, like a Dwarf’s resistance to poison or a Gnome’s ability to speak to small animals) and a Class. Each of the 12 Classes provides characters with their HP, starting skills, weapon/armor proficiencies, and special abilities. The player then chooses one armor set and three weapons from a short list, and they’re off to the slaughter.

Characters don’t have stats per se, instead having four very broad Skills: Athletics, Subterfuge, Lore, and BWAM (“Base Weapon Attack Modifier”). These are added to d20 rolls when they attempt stuff. To perform a task or resist an effect, roll the die and add your skill versus a Difficulty Check (DC) either laid out in the rules or chosen by the GM. To attack, do the same but add your BWAM versus the opponent’s AC (ideally shouting “BWAM!” when you do so). All weapons do fixed damage, so one roll does it all.

One thing to note here is that the weakest provided monster, the Dire Rat, has 6 HP, and the only weapons that inflict more than 6 HP in one blow are 2-Handed (plus a few spells, but there’s no guarantee you’ll have them prepared; see below). Nearly all fights will therefore be battles of attrition. GMs will need to be careful with their encounter balancing. The rules are silent on all this.

One card-side contains a list of 20 magic spells. Magic-using classes randomly roll from this list to find out which spell(s) they’ve prepared each in-game day. For any class except Wizard, their choice is limited to only part of the list. For instance, Druids will roll one spell per day from spells 6-10 on the list, Clerics roll two spells from 1-10, and Wizards roll three spells per day from the whole thing.

Magic-users also get extra powers from and/or beyond this list. Druids can speak to, and turn into, plants and animals. Clerics get an extra Heal spell automatically. Warlocks get an at-will Eldritch Blast spell and can cast Darkness once per day. Wizards gain an at-will Magic Missile. Bards can cast Guidance three times a day and can sing to raise party morale as a standard action.

The non-magic classes get their own quirks too, from a Barbarian’s Rage to a Ranger’s animal companion to a Fighter’s simple mix of high Athletics, impressive BWAM, and a bonus to opportunity attacks. The classes feel kind of 3e-ish, if that makes sense. They aren’t all super exciting but they get the job done.

One final card is occupied with 12 monster listings, from the previously mentioned Dire Rats all the way up to Dragons. It’s a smattering of the greatest FRPG hits. No orcs though.

Pocket fit: Easy peasy. Even the d20s, pencils, and slips of paper for character notes hardly drag it down. A-.

Legibility: It ain’t fancy, but that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s around a 9-point serif font, spaced well, with clear headings and simple tables. It’s pretty readable even for its size. B.

Completeness: System-wise this is the barest of bones, but it still hits all the notes. It has a pleasant and diverse selection of races and classes, a solid handful of monsters, and decently enumerated rules. No leveling up and no campaign structure, though, and also no guidance for a GM at all. That all comes out to around a C.

Final thoughts: The word “workmanlike” popped into my head a lot while looking over this game. It’s well constructed but aggressively vanilla. Nothing about it made me go “wow” or “ugh.” I could definitely see someone using POCKET to run an OSR module with a minimum of tweaking, but out-of-the-box it’s just a toolkit.

It’s also free on itch.io, so I don’t feel like I should crap on it too much. And hey, it does work. So. Have at it, champ.

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Next time: It’s the little things in life, you know?

Continuing my miniseries of mini-RPGs. Check out part one for the skinny.

Mini Myth: Hero’s Handbook

Publisher: Studio Minch
Year: 2025
Dimensions: 105 x 148mm (A6 format, 4.1” x 5.6”) x maybe 3mm
Players: 2-5

Now we’re heading into itch.io territory for some print-and-play RPGs. Mini Myth was originally produced for a one-page RPG jam, but is unusual for its folded-page zine format. The booklet itself is A7 size (74mm x 105mm [2.8” x 4.1”]); the four provided character sheets are the slightly larger A6 components. A single d6 and a writing implement are also required.

(Slight aside: the “number of players” mentioned above is the number of provided character sheets plus the GM. There’s nothing stopping you from playing these reviewed games with more players if you print more sheets. Pocket Odyssey, with its limited supply of meeples, is the one exception.)

Gameplay: Mini Myth uses a very simple roll-under system. Characters have three stats, STR(ong), NIM(ble), and MYS(tic), which range from 2 to 4. To perform an action, roll 1d6; if the roll is equal to or below the relevant stat, they succeed. As is de rigeur these days, the GM, herein called the “Lore Master,” may impose D&D-style advantage (“smooth rolls”) or disadvantage (“rough rolls”). Once per game day, a player can declare that they’re Desperate, allowing one reroll in exchange for a -1 penalty to the relevant stat for the rest of the day.

Characters also get three Skill Points to spend on skills or spells. A character can have up to five Skills/Spells with a maximum of 3 points each. When they use an acquired Skill, which they can do up to (Skill Level) times per game day, they automatically succeed without rolling. Spells, meanwhile, still require a MYS stat test, with a random disaster happening on a missed roll.

This magic test makes spells more dangerous than a lot of systems. A character with the maximum MYS of 4 will still misfire ⅓ of the time, and the disaster table runs the gamut from +1 to stat tests for the rest of the day, all the way up to instant death. Like, dang.

All PCs start with 1d6+6 HP and 1d6+6 coins to buy stuff. Weapons are abstracted as 1H Melee, 2H Melee, Ranged, and Mystic, and armor is Light or Heavy (with or without a Shield). There’s a compact little table of useful items and consumables as well. It’s basic but it works.

Combat is equally basic. Initiative is a straight 50-50 roll, and then you’re just trading blows until one side stops fighting, one way or another. Actions are simply Attack, Use a Skill or Spell, Negotiate with a weakened enemy, or Flee. Characters reduced to 0 HP immediately roll a die; on a 1-3 they cheat death and return with 3 HP. On a 4-6 …

After each adventure, all surviving PCs get 3 more HP and two more Skill Points. Then you just go on ‘round again.

Pocket fit: Ain’t nothin’. This one even beats out Dinky Dungeons on the portability scale. I suppose the die and pencil could be considered a bit of bulk, but ehh. A anyway.

Legibility: Smallish but quite neat and clean. I hardly ever felt like I had to squint. A-.

Completeness: Ay, there’s the rub. It has rules, character generation, equipment … and that’s it. No monsters, no campaigns, not even any guidelines on making enemies. The developer admits they’ve only created the player’s handbook so far, and have intentions to expand in a more campaign-ish direction in the future. I may revisit this game if that comes to pass. As it stands now, though, it gets a big meh. C-.

Final thoughts: Mini Myth has lots of potential, and it is playable as is. However, at the moment the Lore Master really needs to step up to make things work. If the dev keeps up with it, it may well have a bright future. As it stands, it’s more of a tantalizing glimpse. Excited to see where it goes (if anywhere).

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Pocket World of Dungeons

Publisher: el Stiko
Year: 2019
Dimensions: 3½” x 2¼” (bridge card size) x ⅛”
Players: 2-6

This one’s a little unusual, since World of Dungeons is a PbtA RPG in its own right by John Harper, which is itself a stripped-down version of Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel (which is unfortunate, but I don’t hold that against the game itself). El Stiko, which I’m at least 50% certain isn’t their real name, has managed to distill that all the way down to eight playing cards. The gaming group will also need at least three six-sided dice (ideally 2d6 per player and 3d6 for the GM) and something to write with.

Gameplay: Every player chooses a class card among Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief, or Ranger. The card lists four unique Special Abilities, like the Thief’s Backstab or the Cleric’s Cure, which the player chooses two of. Each card has a matrix of nine common Skills, with one or two already circled, and the player circles one more. Everyone rolls 2d6 six times to determine their classic D&D stat bonuses: 6- gets you +0, 7-9 nets +1, 10-11 is +2, and 12 is … not defined, but the assumption is it should be +3. Characters get (1 + Constitution bonus) Hit Dice to roll for their Health score, and 60 silver pieces to buy starting equipment. Then off they go. The little scamps.

From this point forward, the game is a sawed-off version of PbtA. Roll 2d6, add your relevant stat bonus, 6- / 7-9 / 10+ / yadda yadda. There aren’t really any Moves, but if you’re rolling under the purview of one of your circled Skills, even a 6- isn’t a failure, just a more complicated success.

Every time a player rolls 6-, they gain one XP which they check off on a track of 10. When the track fills up, they gain an advancement: another hit die, a new skill or ability, +1 to an attribute (max +3), or just more damage. It’s pretty standard PbtA but it’s also probably the most advanced leveling-up mechanic for any of the minigames I’m reviewing.

The original World of Dungeons is meant to be an OSR-like; any adventures written for such systems supposedly work there too with only a little elbow grease. That’s also sort-of true for Pocket World of Dungeons, though GMs would need to be really flexible when converting games, and things could fly off track very easily. Like most PbtA games really.

But we’re here to look at the game exactly as it arrives out of the box, and whether it comes complete with a world to play in. And friends, I’m happy to say PWoD gets a shiny sticker for effort! The GM has three cards of their own: one with the GM rules on one side and an equipment list on the other, and two very basic oracle cards to facilitate creation of plots, monsters, NPCs, and spirit powers.

The game doesn’t go out of its way to explain PbtA’s collaborative storytelling style, but it comes about naturally. The GM card has a tip section which emphasizes everybody coming together and having fun, and not letting the rules get in your way. Pretty solid all around.

Pocket fit: It’s eight playing cards, man. That’s even smaller than Mini Myth. You do need multiple six-sided dice and a pencil, though. Solid B+.

Legibility: Aaaand there’s the downfall. The text varies from small to very small. If you have an older printer, you may have trouble keeping the letters from greeking. This is made worse by all the cards having a gray background, turning the smallest text into a blur. The text is often laid out right up to the edge of the card, too. I hugely recommend printing this on 4×6 cards or larger so as not to blind your friends. As is, it’s harder to read than the fine print on a bank loan. D.

Completeness: The game is competently put together and covers its gaps well, especially for an improv-heavy gaming group. Maybe less so if your players are dullards. B overall.

Final thoughts: I’m a little surprised there aren’t more PbtA games in small form factors; the basics could fit on a playing card with room to spare. However, while this one is pretty well put together for a pocket game, it pushes the size envelope a little too hard. Either fewer rules or larger cards would have gone a loooong way.

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Next time: Sweating the small things

Let’s get small

In this series, I’m going to indulge a peculiar fixation of mine: pocket TTRPGs, a.k.a. physical RPGs which fit entirely within a pants pocket. These are essentially the RPG equivalent of Micro Machines, Polly Pocket/Mighty Max, Gameboy Micro, Tech Deck, Z scale trains, bonsai, and anything else made unfeasibly tiny.

Here are the ground rules:

• Games have to be more than an interesting dice mechanic and a sentence or two suggesting a setting. This eliminates nearly all business-card RPGs and things like 36-word game jams.
  
• The games have to fit in my pocket. Specifically, the entire game should fit within the front right pocket of my “good pair” of jeans, without folding/crushing the game or straining the fabric. This pocket is approximately 7” wide and 7” deep when empty. Being able to sit down while the game is in there is preferred, but optional.
  
  These arbitrary constraints disqualify most one-pagers, digests, and trifolds. They also eliminate most pocket versions of bigger RPGs, since they’re often dependent on having a full-sized book for reference.
  
• Games must be small by design, and not be just a larger RPG shrunk to fit. They also need to be legible at printed size. Otherwise I’d just be reviewing Pathfinder on microfiche.
  
• It’s gotta be a real physical game. Phone games are cheating.

I’ll rate these games on gameplay, pocket fit, legibility, and completeness. (“Completeness” is a nebulous metric, but generally includes stuff like monster listings, character creation rules, spell lists, adventures, a campaign setting … pretty much any QoL improvement beyond the bare mechanics. The more the better.)

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Dinky Dungeons

Publisher: Doc’s Games/Uncle Morty Productions
Year: 1985
Dimensions: 3½” x 5” x about ⅜”
Players: 2-5

Dinky Dungeons is what got me into tiny RPGs to begin with. I bought my copy, unknown and unreviewed, at a skeevy little table at a sci-fi convention in 1985, and discovered a goofy parody OSR-like that’s still surprisingly playable. (Though can you really call it “OSR” if it came out when “OS” was, you know, S? Let me know in the comments below. And don’t forget to like, subscribe, and smash that notification bell!)

So what did you get for your hard-earned one American dollar back in 1985?

• A 32-page saddle-stitched rulepamphlet that looks like a Xerox copy from the era when Xerox was the only company that made copiers
• Two blank character sheets, double-sided
• A wee little Gamemaster Screen, printed on a 3×5 card folded in half
• A sample adventure: Goblin Cave, complete with cardstock hex map
• A relatively large “errata” sheet which is mostly just a continuation of the main rules
• Two 5mm d6’s (I acquired the third one from a different game; I don’t remember which two are original)
• The Doc’s Games/Uncle Morty catalog, featuring several adventures and comics available for between 50 cents and a dollar, plus SASE

Gameplay: Characters have two stats, PHY(sical) and MEN(tal); players roll 2d6 and apply one die to each. There are three classes, Warrior, Wizard, and Bard, and four races, Human, Elf, Dwarf, and Fuzzy Winker, a cowardly 1’ tall rodent that takes -1 to all stats and can’t wear armor or carry weapons. This is for all those players who want to be annoyingly useless, a much neglected demographic.

For most activity checks, each character has Muscle (equal to their PHY) and Idea (equaling MEN) Points, which is the number of times per day they can attempt a significant action. Each time they try something strenuous, they roll 2d6. On a 7 exactly, they succeed and don’t spend a point. On doubles, they succeed but also spend a point. On any other result, they fail and spend a point. This gives only a 1 out of 3 probability of succeeding at any action, 83% of that time losing one daily try in the process. The only bonus you get for having high stats is being able to try more often.

Saving throws work similarly, shrugging off effects on 7’s and taking half effect on doubles.

Combat, on the other hand, compares the attacker’s and defender’s relevant stats on a combat table. The attacker rolls under the table score on 2d6 to hit, doing damage equal to the difference between the roll and the target, plus a bonus die. Damage is taken directly off the target’s PHY or MEN stats, and you have to roll to heal each day.

By these rules, even strong or smart characters will be mostly ineffective at anything besides combat. With the cartoony parody vibe of the rules, it’s somewhat forgivable, but can still be frustrating unless the players let go and get silly with their failures.

The remaining rules are actually quite extensive, with equipment and spell lists and a bestiary and XP/leveling up rules and all that. You can check them out at the charmingly Web 1.0 page http://dinkydungeons.com/origrules.asp. Despite its size, the system is only “rules-light” in comparison to the popular games of the day.

Pocket fit: A+. Immaculate. It’s like I’m carrying nothing at all!

Legibility: Middling. The text is a small, clean, readable OCR-style font (or maybe IBM Selectric, considering the era). Everything is stark black-and-white. Sadly, perhaps to cram everything in, paragraphs are at an all-time premium. Illustrations are also cramped, but at least not so small as to be smudgy. This won’t win any awards for layout, that’s for sure. That nets it a C- grade and a mandatory grammar refresher.

Completeness: It has full rules, character sheets, a sample adventure, and a usable GM screen. I mean, jeez Louise.

I must dock it a little bit, though, since the players also need pencils. (I know that may seem petty, but wait ‘til the next review.) So I’ll downgrade my original A+++ rating to a simple A. Tough but fair.

Final thoughts: Dinky Dungeons has created a very high bar for me in the pocket RPG space. As far as I‘ve found, there’s never been another TTRPG so cheap, complete, and petite. About the only thing I truly dislike is that its ziploc bag is almost too small, and you kinda have to bend everything to take stuff out. Back when I first got the game, that was no big deal. Now that it’s a precious 40-year-old gaming artifact, it’s a bit white-knuckle.

I want to send a message back to my 1985 self to send Uncle Morty $10 for the supplements. Even with its heavy rules jank, this thing is absolutely the best gaming buck I’ve ever laid out.

Extra note: Just for grins, I tried to find a copy of DD for sale on Google Marketplace. All I could find is a single character sheet, used, which somebody is trying to sell on eBay for thirty fucking dollars. Holy cripes. I’ll just, uh, take my copy and put it in this safe deposit box. Nothing to see here.

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Tinny Dungeons

Publisher: Archmage Arispen
Year: 2022
Dimensions: 4” x 2½” x ⅞”
Players: 2-8

Archmage Arispen is a Polish game designer who’s pushing pretty deep into the tiny RPG market right now. Besides Tinny Dungeons, they have such games as Tinny Apocalypse (same format, but in a Fallout-esque world) and a couple of business-card RPGs. They also have an expansion pack for Tinny Dungeons called Journey Through Sands & Frost, which looks to expand this game’s world.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk basic components. All the cards are mini-playing-card-sized.

• Six illustrated, pre-generated character cards, with stats and abilities on the front and game rules on the back
• One blank character card, with the same game rules on the back
• One GM Guide card
• One card showing a map of the Dawnmoon Woods region, with places of interest on the back
• One card with a map of the town of High Farm, with people/places of interest on the back
• One card with a map of the city of Waycross, with people/places of interest on the back
• Three adventure cards, each with a dungeon map on the front and descriptions of rooms, monsters, traps, etc. on the back
• Two 12mm d6’s
• A pencil! Ha! Take that, Dinky Dungeons!

Everything comes in an Altoids-sized tin with a removable lid, which you can use as a clattery dice tray.

Gameplay: The six pregen characters all have three stats, STR, DEX, and MIND, with two stats set to 1 and one stat of 2. The PCs also have an AC score between 3 and 5 (higher is better), either 3 or 4 HP, a weapon or two, and a special skill, like the elf wizard’s Fireball or the halfling thief’s Sneak Attack.

To attack an enemy, the attacker rolls a number of dice equal to the relevant stat of the weapon they’re using (STR for melee weapons, DEX for ranged attacks, and MIND for spells). If the die, or either of the dice for stats of 2, are equal to or greater than the AC of the target, you do 1 point of damage. The target straight up dies when HP reaches 0.

When a character faces a challenge tough enough to require a roll, the GM sets a difficulty from 4 to 6 and the player rolls (stat) number of dice to meet or beat it.

Though there’s a blank character card, there aren’t any enumerated character generation rules. It should be fairly simple to use the other characters as a template to make something up, but that requires thought. Like, gross.

No leveling up rules are provided either. Normally I’d say that tracks for a package this simple, but the remainder of the game feels semi-campaign-oriented. The adventure cards are mostly standard dungeon crawls, but the setting cards have more setpieces, adventure hooks, and local personalities to interact with. These cards elevate what would normally be a handful of quickie one-shots into something that a bright young GM could use to craft a continuing story.

The adventure cards have nice (but tiny) color maps printed on one side, and descriptions on the other. This makes it awkward to show players the map and read the back at the same time. Maybe just give the players graph paper and make ‘em map it out old school. If it was good enough for their grandfathers, it’s good enough for them.

 As mentioned, there’s an expansion pack (which I haven’t picked up) that promises to add new adventures, territories, and cities. Plenty of room in the box for more cards.

Pocket fit: If you can carry breath mints, you can dodge a ball carry Tinny Dungeons, no problemo. Might be awkward if you wanted to put your phone in the same pocket, though. Solid B.

Legibility: Ssssort of. There’s a lot of text on these cards, printed in seven- or eight-point serif font. If you can squint hard enough to read that, it’s decent. If not, you may need to go get a stronger prescription before you pick this up. C for eagle-eyes, D otherwise.

Completeness: It’s got all the pieces, simple but adequate rules, several mini-adventures, and even something like a campaign structure. No chargen and no way to level up knocks it down a couple pegs though. B minus.

Final thoughts: Tinny Dungeons is a cute diversion, best for pickup games. It’s several steps up from business-card RPGs but I wouldn’t call it “full-featured.” It works okay as a game and it has the potential to have legs if you put the work into it.

It’s also €30 (almost $35) for the physical version. It’s very much not worth that price. The digital print-your-own version is still $10, and even that feels high. Based on that alone, I can’t recommend this game unless your house is littered with Altoids tins and you’re desperate to put something in them.

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Pocket Odyssey (Standard Edition)

Publisher: KaijuKraft
Year: 2014
Dimensions: 5½” x 3½” x 1”
Players: 2-4

I’ve already reviewed this game’s big brother, so I’ll make this quick. The Standard Edition gives up a few things (Flow of Battle, hidden powers, item tokens, monster/power/map variety, and two players) to deliver a limited edition of the same gameplay. More importantly, it lives up to its name and fits in a damn pocket. Finally.

Pocket fit: Tight. Not stretched beyond imagining, but you certainly know it’s there. I wouldn’t recommend walking around with it in your day-to-day life. C-.

Legibility: No issues. The cards are bright and low contrast, and the font is a bold sans-serif at around 14 point. Easy A.

Completeness: The Standard Edition still does the low-prep, three-act thing. A game session is essentially a full campaign, with two level-ups, in the space of an hour and a half. It’s not what you’d call a full, tell-your-own-story type of system. But for what it does, it has everything you need. Slightly reluctant A there.

Note that the Standard Edition only accommodates 3 PC’s; if you have more friends, or just want more maps’n’stuff, the Collector’s Edition is still the way to go.

Final thoughts: Oddly, I may prefer the Standard Edition for its brevity. The bits added to the Collector’s Edition are mostly gravy, and the game stands on its own without them. Otherwise, I feel about the same about both versions: a fun way to roleplay away an hour or two, but don’t hope for more.

The Standard Edition is available from the distributer, Outland Entertainment, for $25. I’d say it’s barely worth that. You can also find it cheaper if you look; at $20 or less, it’s much more interesting.

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Next time: More little things, hitting each other

I’ll never use AI here. This is MY blog. Please hate it accordingly. Thank you.

Ariadne & Bob is a funky, improv-heavy little treat of an RPG published in 2021 by Jim “Jimbozig” Bozig McGarva, along with Paul “Ettin” Matijevic, Vel Mini, Nick Butler, Jasin Pitre, and Austin Ramsay. That’s some big developer guns right there, enn gee ell. Art is by Yuri Kavalerchik and Kyla Austin.

The basic premise of A&B is extremely simple: a super-smart blowhard and their dumb but loyal pal get into (usually) light-hearted scrapes, in the style of classic duos from Pinky and the Brain to Dexter and Dee Dee to Holmes and Watson to this game’s original inspiration, Rick & Morty. In truth, that kind of story pattern is about all this game is capable of. But for being all this game does, it does it with a laser-like focus that could shave diamonds like prosciutto.

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The Way of Things

Another fine mess

Though A&B doesn’t have a GM per se, the developer describes A&B as “GMful” to separate it from typical GM-less role-playing games. This is both nonsensical and entirely accurate.

So. This review’s off to a good start then.

The game is designed for two players at the absolute minimum, one in the know-it-all Ariadne role and the other as their simple sidekick Bob. The rules stress that these aren’t actually character names so much as titles within the game. Your game’s Ariadne may be a cartoon ferret named “Xavier McGillicutty,” but they’re still filling the Ariadne slot.

The two main roles divide up the storytelling responsibilities that you would normally exploit a GM for.

Bob creates and describes elements of the world; adds weird things and twists without explanation; pokes holes in Ariadne’s explanations; gets things moving if the action slows down; and complains a lot. (That’s an actual game mechanic, by the way, not an editorial comment.)

Ariadne invents explanations for the weird things Bob creates; makes plans for them to carry out, usually with negative consequences for Bob; drops in little details that only they could notice; helps cheer Bob up; and pushes the story toward a positive result. Unless Bob slights them, in which case they can also unleash holy hell.

If you have a third or fourth player handy, they will portray the Chorus, incidental characters who flit in and out of Ariadne and Bob’s shenanigans. These players are mostly there to keep the story rolling for the two mains. A Chorus isn’t mandatory, but having another brain or two involved does make things extra lively. Choruses get their own C-plot as well (see below).

Before starting the game, the players need to decide a few things. Is Ariadne really a super-genius, or do they just think they are? Is Bob really stupid, or do they just seem so next to Ariadne? Does the Chorus have a recurring character as their main mouthpiece? Character generation is really just answering a handful of questions like these and then running with it. None of those pesky “stats” here.

Everyone must also choose a playset, about which (much) more later. You’ll also need a couple d6’s and a d10 if you’re fancy.

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Making a Scene

I‘m not asking you, I’m telling you: Who is on first

Every A&B game has at least two plots, designated A and B. (Ohh see what they did there.) The A-plot is the major thrust of the story, like having something stolen or an encounter with your nemesis. The B-plot is a smaller, more mundane thing that runs parallel, like running errands or babysitting. Both plots are randomly generated at story start.

During play, the plot switches from A to B four times. Scene A1 sets the stakes, A2 introduces the main conflict, A3 pushes toward resolution but adds a twist, and A4 is the big finale. The B plots are less structured but will invariably flavor everything that’s happening in the A plot. If there’s a C-plot, it will occasionally pop up in the background as a running gag.

Bob sets up the A-plots and Ariadne sets up the B-plots. To begin every Scene A, Bob will roll a random prompt (which they can ignore) and then gin up some weird happenstance which Ariadne must tackle. For Scenes B, Ariadne describes what’s going on in broad strokes, continuing the previous scenes’ action, and Bob tries to tie that into the main story. If anyone struggles for details or direction, they can roll on the many provided oracle tables, both generic and playset-specific (we’re getting to playsets soon, promise).

Each scene continues until its main player declares the scene finished. That doesn’t necessarily mean everything in the scene is resolved, just that the story has reached a point where the spotlight might swing elsewhere. It’s not until Scenes A4 and B4 that the plotlines really need to be tied up with a bow.

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Playsets

Pismo Beach and all the clams we can eat

The actual rules of Ariadne & Bob, including the generic oracles that apply to every set, take up a grand total of 16 pages out of the rulebook’s 116. By far the lion’s share of the game is its various Playsets, which are the story frames in which Ariadne and Bob can muck around. Playsets add genre-specific details to A&B games, in the form of extra agendas and moves for the protagonists, plus new oracles that apply only to that specific world.

Each Playset starts off with a great big colorful two-page spread which appears to be largely stock photography. Besides the cover and one lonely character drawing near the end, this is about all the artwork you’ll find in the book, so it’s not unwelcome. And it does set a tone.

All told there are 13 Playsets, of 3-6 (rules) pages each:

• Sci-Fi: Ricking and Mortying, a.k.a. the one Jimbozig had in mind when first writing the game
• Fantasy: The wacky adventures of Gandalf and Bilbo
• Twisted Timelines: Everyone into the Wayback Machine
• Horror: But, like, funny horror
• High Society: But what would Aunt Doris say?
• Superhero: An exploding shark was pulling my leg …
• Dystopia: Loooove that Big Brother! mugs for camera
• Time Loop (with Morgan Westbrook): Didn’t I just describe this?
• Magical Adventures in a Hidden Realm (with Mesarthim): Something something Ghibli
• Planar Portal Pandemonium (by Jason Pitre): Welcome to legally distinct Sigil
• Mech (by Austin Ramsay): Get in the robot, Goofy
• Cyberpunk (by Ettin): Gleaming that cyber hyper chrome stream info highway aaaaah nuts
• Explorer (by Vel Mini): No, no, here’s how I remember it …

A few Playsets make small but fundamental changes to the rules. Time Loop, for instance, inserts a montage of living the same day over and over in the middle of the A > B plot progression. The Explorer’s Playset tells the entire story in past tense, as old bloviating people recounting adventures from their youth. Planar Portal Pandemonium may even vault players into another Playset entirely.

Generally, though, Playsets are flavor. But they’re all the flavor. The game would be very bland without them.

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Theme and Variations

I’m not even on this stupid show anymore

The last few pages of the rulebook discuss some ways to shake up a long-running campaign by switching roles, adding new Bobs, and running a “When Bob Met Ariadne” flashback episode.

One of the more interesting variants adds a third major character, the Mastermind, to the mix. This character wants to defeat Ariadne in any way possible, but the greatest humiliation would be to drive a wedge between them and Bob and maybe even steal Bob away.

There are also a couple of major role variants: Alice and Bellerophon, where the sidekick is the competent one, for all those Jeeves and Wooster / Inspector Gadget and Penny character combos; and Anastasia and Bear, which sets Anastasia as the villain and Bear as the good-hearted simpleton who wants to help but ultimately unravels the evil scheme by accident. Pull the lever, Kronk!

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Settling the Score

Say good night, Gracie

All right. Let’s unpack all this.

This game is slightly guided improv. No sugar-coating that. There are practically no guardrails. Cooperation between the Ariadne and Bob players is an absolute necessity, even if the characters are in opposition. Everybody has to be clever and think on their feet. Oracles or no, prompts or no, plot structure or no, if any player doesn’t have their head in the game, the session will almost certainly be a turkey.

This isn’t a criticism (despite my kinda harsh tone), it’s a caveat. For a guided improv “GMful” RPG, it’s a pretty good one. But boy howdy is this not for everyone.

This game is definitely a cool and unique take on how to roleplay the smart-not smart duo paradigm. There aren’t a lot of two-player RPGs out there, and most of those are GM / player setups. Two people ping-ponging ideas back and forth, building a story in a shared but asymmetrical way, can be a lot of fun. The design hits that right out of the park.

Both the Ariadne and Bob players need to have something of a GM mindset, even though there’s not a GM in the traditional sense. If there’s a Chorus, they must understand how to support the story without being pushy about it. What I’m saying is all the roles here are unique, and no matter what kind of RPG you’ve played in the past, there will be a bit of a learning curve to really settle in.

The A/B plot swapping, though rather regimented, is generally a positive. I like the interplay between the high-concept A-plot and the B-plot about, I dunno, doing your laundry or something. Some may call it formulaic, but I call it a great way to ape a formulaic art form. The most fun way to go is resolving the A-plot with the B-plot. That’s when you really feel big-brained.

There’s a lot of content here for sure. Players never want for prompts. Sometimes they’re a bit vague, but that’s a feature, not a bug. Imagination and creativity are the point. If you have those in abundance, you’ll probably like it here.

I’d recommend this game only if you want the very specific type of game experience it gives you. But if that’s what you want, there aren’t any better games that I know of.

One point one thumbs, enthusiastically, up.

This World Summons Too Many Heroes!!: Definitive Edition (TWSTMH from now on, because I value my fingers) is a 2025 Kickstarter-funded compendium of the 2023 second edition of a 2021 RPG by Nick “Duffo” Duff. The Definitive Edition expands the original core rules and includes supplemental material written by Paul “Ettin” Matijevic, plus Tom Harrison and Joe Anderson from the Anime Sickos podcast.

TWSTMH is an homage to/takes the piss out of otherworld isekai fiction like Konosuba, Re:Zero, Overlord, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Uncle from Another World, Speedrunner Cannot Return from the Game World, So I’m a Spider, So What?, Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon, and a gazillion other light novels, manga, and anime that all have titles like that.

If you have no interest in that stuff, this might not be the game for you. If, however, you’re amused by the concept of several hapless doofuses from 21st century Earth bumbling around in a medieval fantasy world with cheat powers, this might be the diversion you didn’t know you were looking for.

Small note: Normally I like to break up reviews with masterfully captioned pictures from the game. I won’t be doing that (much) for this one, for reasons which will become clear.

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What a World, What a World

A hero ain’t nothin’ but a sandwich

A few years ago, the generic fantasy world of Ceria was having its shit pushed in by this generic fantasy villain fella called the Cryptlord. Powerless before the Cryptlord’s generic evil powers, the various generic fantasy kingdoms pooled their magical resources to create a powerful spell. Once cast, it would force Launrith, the Goddess of Resurrection, to pluck a person from another world, give him a super powerful magic Gift, and bring him here to fight their battles for them.

Luckily, it worked out. Their reluctant hero, a man named Yuya Muto, had the Gift of creating spell scrolls out of thin air, which allowed him to become the greatest spellcaster and sage the world had ever seen. With this mighty power, he managed to depose the Cryptlord. Then he promptly retired rather than taking his revenge on the people who yanked him out of his world, which may be the least realistic thing about this whole story. Maybe he’d been something unpleasant in his previous life, like an advertising copywriter or IT professional.

Before running off, Muto told the assembled kingdoms that he would leave them with the means to save themselves in case another generic overlord might appear. He used his Gift to create hundreds of scrolls containing the very spell which summoned him to this world, and left them in the care of his closely trusted mage friends with strict instructions to only use them if absolutely necessary.

So of course almost the second Muto vanished, war broke out between the kingdoms to gain control of these scrolls. Soon whole caches of them had fallen into the hands of petty monarchs with scores to settle. Soon after that, the world became littered with summoned heroes who have been tricked, brainwashed, or threatened into fighting each other. The world now shudders before their mighty conflicts, yet Muto is nowhere to be found.

The PCs, as you might have guessed, are recently summoned heroes as well, given the task to contain any unused scrolls, mitigate the damage done by their peers, find out what happened to Muto, and maybe (if they have time) see if there’s a way to get all these “heroes” back home and out of the natives’ hair.

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The Hero System

Wait, not … that is … you know what I mean

TWSTMH is based on the LUMEN rules system, or I suppose “Illuminated by LUMEN” because of marketing or something.

Characters have three Attributes: Might, Mastery, and Mischief. Cute. Might is simple raw punch-’em-up strength. Mastery is the character’s “control of the situation,” which could be anything from aiming a weapon to making a plan. Mischief is stealth and trickery and making people believe your lies. All three overlap conceptually in weirdly fuzzy ways. GMs should be ready for arguments about which Attribute works in which situation.

Players have 7 points to divide between these Attributes, which can be as low as 0 and as high as 7. This number determines how many d6 they roll when attempting a relevant feat. (They still roll one die even if the Attribute is 0.) The outcome of the roll is determined by the highest die rolled. If it’s 2 or less, they fail with a consequence. On a 3 or 4, they succeed with a complication. If the high die is 5+, they simply succeed.

The probabilities of success with this dice system shoot up very quickly. By the time you’re rolling 4d6, the chance of a failure is less than 1% while a full success is over 80%, and it gets even more ridiculous from there. GMs may struggle to keep things challenging. Since the PCs are supposed to be superhuman, though, it tracks.

Characters also start with 8 HP and 6 SP (“Special Points,” which activate their Gifts).

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It’s Heroing Time!

And then he heroed all over those guys

To build your very own isekai hero, start by choosing an Archetype.

• The Bystander: Whoops! You weren’t even supposed to be here today, but you were standing too close to someone else being summoned or were hit by Truck-Kun and got sucked into another world by accident.
• The Demon Lord: Evil cultists summoned you here to rule the world, but you didn’t care for their vibe and you look terrible in black leather, so you dipped.
• The Hero: You were brought to Ceria to defeat an ancient evil. You blew through that quest easily, of course, so now you’re just looking for something interesting to occupy your time.
• The Myth: You’re never alone; there’s the spirit of a great Cerian hero or magic beast in your body. Once per adventure you can flip them in so they can wipe up the bad guys for you.
• The Noble: You occupy the body of a previously existing high mucky-muck, who by all accounts was kind of a snot. Now you have to navigate their life and maybe make things better for the people around you.
• The Reader: Ceria was the subject of your favorite book or video game in your past life, and you know more about it than even the people who live here.
• The Reincarnated: Only your spirit arrived, without a body. Unfortunately the summoning spell doesn’t do “making a human body” very well, and you now have the form of something completely different.
• Tragedeigh The Tragedy: You were summoned by someone very bad, who used you for very bad purposes. You managed to escape but now you have terrible scars and trust issues.

Each Archetype includes a choice between two special background-style benefits. For instance, the Noble can choose either Disowned Heir (get better starting equipment) or Villainess (any attempt to bully people always uses your best Attribute).

People who know the genre will easily be able to recreate their favorite tropes here, except one: the person who changes the primitive world with their encyclopedic knowledge of some modern niche subject (16th century castles, miso making, book publishing, WWI artillery, eclipses and other natural phenomena, etc.). Sadly, out of the box, you can’t save the world with your mastery of actuarial tables. Guess it’s not that kind of story.

With Archetype in hand, it’s time to choose a starting Class. There are 26 different classes, from the mundane (Blacksmith, Brawler, Mage, etc.) to the exotic (Beast, Living Weapon, Phantasm, Vampire, etc.). There are also four extra-powerful classes, Magus, Sage, Champion, and Servant, which can only be acquired during the campaign at great expense.

Each class gives a character two basic Class Abilities, plus a unique third depending on their highest Attribute. For example, the Blacksmith Class gives anyone who takes it the Metalwork and Signature Weapons abilities, plus Full Potential (spend SP to power up your weapon) if Might is your highest Attribute, Mana Forging (able to create magic weapons) for Mastery, or Cursed Weapons (able to create and wield jinxed weapons) for Mischief. The player gets to choose if the character has two equally high Attributes.

Leveling up either unlocks one of the other Class Abilities or increases the power of one you already have. For instance, the Blacksmith above could change their Full Potential ability to Full Potential+, either doubling its damage, halving its SP cost, or increasing its area of effect.

Multi-classing is possible if the character buys a class treatise to learn a new class. Common class treatises can be found in any town, but the more rare and powerful classes may require some questing to find. No matter how many Classes they have, a character can only have three Class Abilities active at a time by default. Known abilities can be swapped around freely outside of battle.

Happy birthday, it’s time to receive a Gift. The Gift a character receives depends on their highest Attribute, and the rules encourage rolling them randomly. Each character only gets one Gift and can never gain another.

Gifts are, frankly, super powers. There are 36 enumerated Gifts, but GMs and players are encouraged to come up with others if they think of something interesting. Here’s a smattering of the examples given in the book:

• Phantom World: Your starting weapon is also the key to a pocket universe where time passes quickly and you are immortal. In this pocket world is the spirit of a great hero who will train you and give you advice.
• Mindfreak 100: Every time you do damage, tally your attack rolls. When your tally reaches 100, your next attack does +100 damage.
• Invincibility Frames: Automatically avoid as many enemy attacks as the number of attacks you’ve made this turn.
• Base: You have a house or other dwelling which you call home. You can fast-travel there and back without casting a spell.
• Shopping Channel: Freeze time to enter an interdimensional supermarket where you can purchase anything you want.
• Exposition Fairy: A tiny creature which only you and certain monsters can see will follow you around and tell you all kinds of hidden secrets about your opponents.

People who regularly consume manga/manhua/anime/video games will quickly pick up what the game is putting down. Others would at least agree that these are some powers, all right.

Lastly, a new character receives their Weapon(s), as determined by their Class choice. Weapons are semi-abstracted into the categories of Small Melee, Large Melee, Ranged, Tomes for spellcasters, Unarmed, and Shields. Weapons also have at least one Tag to customize them. Some Tags increase damage under certain circumstances, like a +1 when wielded by a Mischief hero, or have special effects, like paralyzing enemies anytime you roll doubles. Weapons can be enchanted with more Tags if you can find an enchanter and spend the required cost.

Tomes are the basis of the game’s magic system. Each Tome contains one fairly simple spell, and anyone can use it. Certain Classes can also unlock Ritual Spellcasting versions of each Tome’s spell, which requires spending SP and making multiple Attribute checks. The Ritual versions are far more versatile and powerful, however, so it’s usually worth the effort.

For instance, a Fire Tome can be used by anyone to poof out a small bolt of flame which does +1 damage. Yawn. With Ritualized Spellcasting, however, a caster could use the same Tome to create a wave of flame which sweeps over the entire battlefield, doing 2 damage per round to all enemies for 5 rounds. Decidedly not yawn.

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Fighty Bits

Heroically punching helpless goblins in the throat

Fighting evil in TWSTMH is your usual affair of going around the table, choosing a target or targets within reach, and attempting to thump them. Initiative order is up to the players.

One interesting peccadillo is, if a PC rolls 4 or less on their action, one of the enemies takes an action immediately afterward, before the next player gets a turn. That doesn’t necessarily need to be the enemy that PC is fighting, either. After all the players finish, the GM gets three more actions for the enemies to take, rolls Drops (HP, SP, or Materia) for each enemy defeated that turn, makes any changes to the battle (introducing reinforcements, changing the terrain, etc.), and then the process loops until one side is out of the fight, one way or another.

The GM-us interruptus nature of gaining an action on a player failure is an interesting mechanic in theory. However, it also incentivizes players to always use their strongest abilities, which could become dull or repetitive depending on the circumstances. The GM needs to stay on their toes and throw out varied challenges to keep things fresh.

Battlefields are divided into three ranges, Close, Near, and Far. There’s no blocking movement, so characters can charge around freely. Positioning is general and theater-of-the-mind. It’s very very abstract. You just gotta vibe with it, man.

Weapons and powers do set damage: all Small Melee weapons do 1 damage, Large Melee weapons do 3, etc. Armor is mostly not a thing, though Shields will always reduce damage by 1. Characters brought to 0 HP will fall unconscious and have their SP set to 0. Next turn, as long as any allies are still standing, they’ll reawaken with 1 HP.

If all the PCs are knocked out in one turn, it’s a TPK. The characters reappear before the goddess Launrith and have to bargain for their lives. If and when they return, it’ll be without their weapons and possessions.

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Goddesses and Monsteresses

Pantheism and You!

The world of Ceria has several goddesses who oversee the world and their worshippers.

Launrith, Goddess of Resurrection, for most of her existence, was a mysterious figure rarely thought of outside of births and funerals. After the hero-summoning scrolls put her front and center, her popularity exploded. Launrith discovered along the way that she loves the attention. Her personality has become bright, informal, and cheerful, almost like an entertainment idol, which scandalizes some of her older priests who preferred her all distant and spooky.

Henritte, Goddess of Law, has directly placed the crowns on the heads of state for time immemorial. She also polices said kings to ensure they follow the laws of their respective lands. This doesn’t prevent the monarchs from being objectively awful, but as long as the laws allow their awfulness to flourish, she’s cool with it. Henritte holds regular god-meetings so they can all discuss the best way to administer their power. Her sisters rarely attend.

Mellennia, Goddess of Drink and Festivities, has another title: Mother of Monsters. Mellennia has a dozen children with a variety of powerful beasts, like dragons, giants, elementals, and worse and weirder still. The Cryptlord was (secretly) one of these, in fact. In her mind, Mellennia’s demigod spawn were supposed to be the true rulers of this world, and she’s not happy that plain little Launrith’s heroes are stealing her thunder.

Cloe, Goddess of Secrets, is a recent addition to the upper god pantheon after Muto banished their previous fourth member, Death, back to the underworld. Cloe is obsessed with hiding objects of power all over the world, and is the source for a lot of the treasure chests and magic items heroes might find in otherwise empty 10’x10’ dungeon rooms. She particularly enjoys hiding hero-summoning scrolls where the weirdest people might find them.

There are several other minor gods and goddesses about, but Raphaelle, Goddess of War and Chaos, is a real up-and-comer. Henritte’s younger sister, Raphaelle likes to disguise herself as a human and sow discord wherever she goes. She dreams of a day when every kingdom uses their remaining summoning scrolls all at once, bringing a great war which will transform the world.

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People, Places, and Things

That which is seen

The book goes on to describe a number of realms around Ceria. Some of the more interesting ones are:

Checkout: Deep in the frozen north, there lies an enormous, twisting, non-Euclidian supermarket. Many believe it was the Gift of a summoned hero. Now that hero is gone, but the supermarket remains, and has become home to multiple communities of raiders, scavengers, and cultists who sentence shoplifters to gladiatorial combat at their brutal Food Court.

Prosperity: A summoned hero had the Gift of 10% Commission, which he used to become quite wealthy. Merchants and kings begged him to use his Gift to their benefit, and everyone became stinking rich as a result. Unfortunately he was tricked by the goddess Raphaelle into being unable to use his Gift, and now the only thing that keeps all his deals afloat is mounting loan debt. The hero will beg the PCs to help him find the stolen object which will restore his Gift. If they can’t, the entire kingdom will fall to financial ruin.

Volkovia: A bustling factory town full of skeletons and zombies, all working under the Gift of a summoned necromancer Demon Lord-turned-hero. The living people here relax and enjoy the fruits of undead labor. Other necromancers think the summoned hero has made necromancy boring, and skulk about painting graffiti on the walls like gangs of pouting mall Goths. Despite the peoples’ distrust of the undead after that whole Cryptlord business, the ease of life has won most of them over. This area is surprisingly peaceful. Smells a bit though.

Each realm has its own set of NPCs and monster mobs. The following chapter gives thorough descriptions of the more important NPCs, including (for the first time, here on page 70 of 122) illustrations. I hadn’t realized how much I missed having incidental pictures until we got a few. I mean I wasn’t bored per se, but it just kinda startled me that it was even a possibility. And while I’m usually the first one to poo-poo extravagant page-wasting art, there’s a difference between big multi-page spreads and occasional line art to break things up.

Sadly, the pictures abruptly stop after page 77, and there are only three more pictures in the whole rest of the book. Ah. What might have been.

(Addendum: After some research, I learned the lack of imagery is due to the Kickstarter not reaching its stretch goal for full internal illustrations. I’m totally sympathetic on that front. It’s still kind of a shame. Even a little more would have gone a long way.)

The book continues with over 40 mob, monster, and minor NPC listings. These run the gamut from your typical wolves and skeletons to feral catgirls and giant enemy crabs. Some mobs are gathered into groups which the GM can drop in to give the PCs some instant rivals to vie against. My favorite is the Egg Boy Gang, a group of bandits led by a juvenile dragon who has yet to break entirely out of its shell, so it’s just an egg with two feet sticking out.

NPCs and monsters can also gain Class Abilities at the GM’s whim, either to fill them out or shake them up. There’s not a lot of guidance in this, so it’s possible to inadvertently make something overpowered for an encounter. The flexibility is appreciated, however.

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The Frame of the Campaign

Falls mainly on the plain

The book wraps up with two mega-adventures that could well be campaign outlines. These were previously published as additional supplements which Nick (do you mind if I call you Nick?) has kindly bundled in with the Definitive Edition.

.Dungeon//Tower, by the Anime Sickos guys, outlines a 99-story dungeon tower which was the Cryptlord’s base of operations before he himself became … non-operational (pinky to corner of mouth, wry smile). Once the major threat was past, the tower became a popular location for newbie adventurers to grind its infinite monster spawners for XP.

Everything was hunky-dory until a group of heroes made it to the top floor and slew the main boss. This caused a cascade of magic energy to flow through the entire tower. All the monsters suddenly powered up, trapping dozens of lowbies in a dungeon way above their level. This became known as the “New Game+ Incident.”

This supplement suggests skipping past a lot of the boring dungeon exploration and getting straight to the boss fights, which include such iconic villains as The Bird Which Is Too Big, the Glitched Protagonist, and Slingo da Blue Mage. Then there’s Mr. Gun. The kobold who found a gun. And will shoot you. With his gun.

Season of the Sage is more of a traditional adventure. The PCs are hired to find a lost caravan which was carrying a summoning scroll, along the way discovering a grand conspiracy which involves goddesses, the lost Sage Muto, idol concerts, chaos demons, ninja, and even more silly things.

Both of these supplements are fun in different ways, and show off how a TWSTMH campaign can unfold in this weird-ass world. .Dungeon//Tower is by far the goofier of the two, and also the least focused. The Dungeon Tower is more a setting than a storyline. It’s mostly up to the GM to find a reason for the players to enter this cursed place. On the other hand, Season of the Sage has, like, a plot, and is set up like a proper intro adventure with motivations and everything.

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Thoughts and Prayers

My Goddess Can’t Be This Cute?!

And that’s it.

Presentation-wise, the game is workmanlike. Previous editions are somewhat infamous for their questionable design and Comic-Sans-like font choices, but the Definitive Edition is quite legible, even approaching the level of attractive, thanks to a bang-up layout job by Ettin. Too bad about the art situation. Darn capitalism.

Content-wise, there’s quite a bit here, a lot more than you’d expect from a high-concept comedy RPG in fact. Locations and NPCs, from goddesses all the way down to a kobold with a gun (who will shoot you, with his gun), all come with a passel of motivations and story hooks. Of all the parts of this game, I think the world as presented is surprisingly my favorite bit. It’s not always consistent, but it’s consistently entertaining. What more could you ask for really.

Rules-wise, it’s LUMEN with some extra stuff bolted on. It can be a little clunky but it mostly works. I guess that’s better than some games. It helps that most isekai fiction has a very video-game-y veneer to it already, so a simple mechanistic ruleset works in its favor.

Gameplay-wise … that’s the deal, isn’t it. The player experience will depend heavily on their understanding of the underlying trope and/or their willingness to go along with the gag. In practice, I can see the base game feeling something like Drawn Together, where you put several similar but disparate character types in a pressure cooker and see what happens. If you’ve ever wondered how the Shield Hero might interact with Bakarina, then (thrusting hands palms-up toward you) there ya go.

The humor of the setting mostly lands. .Dungeon//Tower really pulls out the stops on the wackiness. Everything else is vaguely more grounded (as much as a game like this can be anyway). Despite a few slight nods to dark anime tropes, the game remains positive and aboveboard, and very much discourages anything really awful like slavery and incest and the other stuff that gives some stories in this genre a bad name.

As a celebration of isekai craziness, this game works. As an actual game, it’s fine. To really have fun, you have to want what it offers. If you’re into that, I can totally recommend it.

One-and-three-eighths thumbs up.