The Crash of 20*6
Genre: Tabletop RPG supplement, system-agnostic but pitched to traditional D&Desque games
Bundle: Racial Justice
Sabe's rating: 💾💾
Ah, the first tabletop game I've run across in my "pick random" adventure! My "did it hold my interest enough to finish the game?" style rating scheme doesn't work very well for those, and yet there's enough of them floating around the bundles (as opposed to, say, productivity tools like Tape or Textreme 2) that having some rubric would still be useful. So let's imagine an alternative scale, like:
⭐: Repugnant. I couldn't even read it, and/or couldn't imagine anyone playing it.
⭐⭐: I'm not especially interested in playing it, but I'd do so under the right circumstances.
⭐⭐⭐: I've played it and it was a coherent game. Or I'm at least curious to try it sometime.
⭐⭐⭐⭐: I played it, and it was a blast! Or, this looks amazing and I want to get into a game of it ASAP.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: One of my all-time favorites. I play every opportunity I get.
The Crash of 20*6 (pronounced "twenty dot six", not "twenty splat six", alas) is a peculiar animal. The author apparently wanted to play some cyberpunk, but didn't want to bother with a TTRPG tailored to that purpose. Instead, he came up with this guide, which describes how you can reskin a collection of D&Desque fantasy characters as if they were science fiction characters instead. Elves are digital entities with holographic projections. Dwarves and dragonborn are robots. That's... about as deep as it gets.
That's not entirely fair, though--the booklet also supplies a bit of setting, which is by far the stronger element. It's impressionistic, with a blurb about the capitalistic "Man" the player characters oppose, the "Districts" of people whom the Man exploits, and a few dashes of local jargon, but it's enough to evoke a mood. There's also something akin to a "Dungeon Starter" for Dungeon World, with a dangerous locale to start the action in media res and lists of things that might be found there, to get the improvisation flowing. I looove a good Dungeon Starter, and this one would be solid... if it weren't for the awkward "we're playing D&D5 with a cyberpunk skin" framing of the booklet as a whole.
In the end I'm probably not the target audience for this. There's a sizeable contingent of tabletop roleplayers who learn D&D, recognize that it'd be fun to play in another genre, but for whatever reason want to keep playing D&D while engaging with that alternative genre. I find that outlook quite alien! Square pegs do not go well into round holes! But The Crash of 20*6 is for those folks. If that's you, check it out!
Genre: Tabletop RPG supplement, system-agnostic but pitched to traditional D&Desque games
Bundle: Racial Justice
Sabe's rating: 💾💾
Ah, the first tabletop game I've run across in my "pick random" adventure! My "did it hold my interest enough to finish the game?" style rating scheme doesn't work very well for those, and yet there's enough of them floating around the bundles (as opposed to, say, productivity tools like Tape or Textreme 2) that having some rubric would still be useful. So let's imagine an alternative scale, like:
⭐: Repugnant. I couldn't even read it, and/or couldn't imagine anyone playing it.
⭐⭐: I'm not especially interested in playing it, but I'd do so under the right circumstances.
⭐⭐⭐: I've played it and it was a coherent game. Or I'm at least curious to try it sometime.
⭐⭐⭐⭐: I played it, and it was a blast! Or, this looks amazing and I want to get into a game of it ASAP.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: One of my all-time favorites. I play every opportunity I get.
The Crash of 20*6 (pronounced "twenty dot six", not "twenty splat six", alas) is a peculiar animal. The author apparently wanted to play some cyberpunk, but didn't want to bother with a TTRPG tailored to that purpose. Instead, he came up with this guide, which describes how you can reskin a collection of D&Desque fantasy characters as if they were science fiction characters instead. Elves are digital entities with holographic projections. Dwarves and dragonborn are robots. That's... about as deep as it gets.
That's not entirely fair, though--the booklet also supplies a bit of setting, which is by far the stronger element. It's impressionistic, with a blurb about the capitalistic "Man" the player characters oppose, the "Districts" of people whom the Man exploits, and a few dashes of local jargon, but it's enough to evoke a mood. There's also something akin to a "Dungeon Starter" for Dungeon World, with a dangerous locale to start the action in media res and lists of things that might be found there, to get the improvisation flowing. I looove a good Dungeon Starter, and this one would be solid... if it weren't for the awkward "we're playing D&D5 with a cyberpunk skin" framing of the booklet as a whole.
In the end I'm probably not the target audience for this. There's a sizeable contingent of tabletop roleplayers who learn D&D, recognize that it'd be fun to play in another genre, but for whatever reason want to keep playing D&D while engaging with that alternative genre. I find that outlook quite alien! Square pegs do not go well into round holes! But The Crash of 20*6 is for those folks. If that's you, check it out!