Nimble TTRPG: An Overview, Part Six
The Summing-Uppening
Zoom zoom zoom in the boom boom
The Past, Extracted
While writing this review, I’ve done some research online to see what other people think of Nimble. The response is varied. The people who’ve played it (almost) universally love it; those who’ve read it but haven’t played it think it’s intriguing; and those who haven’t done either are SUPER skeptical of the no-roll-to-hit mechanic. Most of the latter trot out all the other no-hit games and what they did wrong, and therefore this system must have the same problems and ugh no thanks I read a review of Into the Odd and it’s not for me.
But I think concentrating on that one aspect of Nimble buries the lede. What Nimble actually does, quite well I think, is give players agency even when it’s not their turn. The Action/Reaction three-action economy allows players to shove allies out of the way and take hits for them, give their friends advantage, reduce the rolls of enemies targeting them or their buddies (increasing the chance of a miss and making it impossible to crit), force the GM to answer one question honestly, and a whole bunch of other things, on demand, any time. You don’t roll your dice and then sit on your ass watching your friends and enemies bumble around for half an hour.
Nimble also has a lot of fun dice mechanics. I know that’s a shallow compliment, but it’s true. Rolling a bunch of clicky-clacks for Advantage or Disadvantage is fun. Counting dice from left to right is unique and kinda fun. Exploding dice is always fun. (One thing I didn’t mention earlier is that even if a monster has armor, if you crit, the extra dice are applied directly to their HP without armor being considered. That gets players hyped up.)
Anyway, back to the no-hit thing. HP in Nimble aren’t the be-all end-all. Reaching 0 HP does give you the Dying condition, which is bad, but any amount of healing fixes that. What you really need to keep track of are Wounds. If someone gets boofed to 0 HP away from the group, they’re not dead, but they’re SUPER vulnerable to more attacks that will kill ‘em quick. The rest of the group has to make Sophie’s Choices to either fix their friend or squirrel them off the battlefield.
Nimble modestly increases a character’s HP at the beginning, but doesn’t do a whole lot else to make characters survivable. This makes Nimble a little more deadly than D&D, especially 5e, which IMO errs too far on the side of caution. At higher levels particularly, most characters will need the support of their comrades and good tactics to survive what the system considers “tough but fair” fights. It’s not OSR deadly but it doesn’t hold your hand either.
My initial negative reaction to the Armor system has been lessened after going in depth on the martial classes (Commander, Berserker, Zephyr, Oathsworn, etc.). Most of them have ways to increase their number of Wounds, a one-time-per-fight ability to ignore a hit that would take them to 0 HP, limited abilities to heal themselves, and other ways to stay standing long enough to either get in the killing blow or get away. Meanwhile, Mages had just better hope nobody gets too close.
One special thing to note: Nimble doesn’t have opportunity attacks unless you’re a Berserker. Kiting is back, baby!
The Present, Examined
Nimble has a buck ton of support out there. I mentioned everything you get with the digital version. There’s also a very active Discord, support on about every VTT, more How to Play videos than you can shake your mystical staff at (oh is that what you kids are calling it these days), a homebrew zine called Nim+ which is up to five issues now, and a bunch of character generators and reference websites. The most popular “unofficial” one as of this writing is the Nimblenomicon, which not only lets you build a character but has export functionality to Foundry.
There’s a class which I didn’t mention in this review, the Hexbinder, which Evan came out with after Nimble’s first printing. I didn’t touch on it because, well, it’s not in the book yet. But it is now considered a full official core class. It’s mostly a debuff type which casts hexes and curses on things, Scarlet Witch style. Pretty cool if that’s your jam.
The Future, Expected
Evan recently finished up a Kickstarter for the first major Nimble expansion, Monsters & More. This book will contain a huge roster of new monsters and legendaries, plus … hold on to your hat … more. In particular, two new subclasses for every class, four new classes (Hexbinder, Psion, Artificer, and Revenant), a new Earth magic school, a bunch of new adventures, more loot, adventuring companions, standees, VTT tokens, an expanded GM’s screen, and more more more more. Geez, Evan, take care of your health, son.
Beyond that, who knows. I have a blog, not a crystal ball.
The Long-Awaited Summary
About time
Nimble is really cool. I liked it enough to write a six-part series on it. I suppose, comparatively, that means I like it 60% as much as Sword World. (But of course how could I choose. You’re all my precious children.)
It may well be my favorite take on heroic fantasy, rules-wise. It not only occupies a similar space as D&D, but it almost aggressively elbows its way in and pushes D&D aside by being the cool kid with the nifty mechanics. You just get out of here with your 50-year-old rules baggage, old man. We’re doing things different around here. *draws on a cig, blows smoke in D&D’s face*
One criticism I will levy is that it’s thin on anything not combat related. As I mentioned last time, I think that’s mostly due to combat requiring more rules to retain enough verisimilitude to keep everyone at the table. I’m not sure how to change that without just adding more rules, a.k.a. more pages. And it’d probably be unsatisfying to boot, like most social adjudication rules are.
Also the game world as presented is just like the most average thing in the universe, but I’ve already said my piece about that unflavored bowl of Quaker’s Oats.
Anyway, beyond those itchy bits, it’s a really good system, verging on great. Give it a shot. Two point four thumbs up.