Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!
Product-We Hunt Bugs
System- We Hunt Bugs 2nd Ed
Producer– Orcs Unlimited Games
Price– SOON on kickstarter!
TL; DR– A Solid Pamphlet RPG 83%
Basics– Time to go on a hunt! We Hunt Bugs is a SMALL rpg. It’s honestly printed on a pamphlet and that’s the whole thing. The GM/world guide is a slightly bigger book going 32 pages. Let’s look at the preview of this micro RPG.
Base Mechanics- This is a d6 based game. You have two parts to a character: abilities and skills. Abilities are like in any RPG; they are your base attributes. There are only three of them. Skills give a bonus to dice rolls in the right situation. For a check, you roll a number of dice equal to your ability. If you roll a 6, you reroll and add to that six. Then when you finish rolling, you then add a skill if you have it. If you hit the target number for a check, you succeed.
Combat- Combat is resolved like the base mechanic above. Turn order is determined by each acting character or creature rolling a d6 and highest goes first. Successes mean damage and most players only have three boxes of damage they can take before they are knocked out.
And honestly that’s it.
Mechanics or Crunch– This book honestly made me do some soul searching in a good way. I LOVE good, crunchy, in depth RPGs. This isn’t that. It’s short and sweet. It doesn’t waste time and that’s a concept at the heart of the games I love. What is here isn’t much. There is gear, toys, guns, and some light background bonuses, but not much else. And it doesn’t need much more. The crunch here isn’t deep, but it is done simply and well. 5/5
Theme or Fluff– Again, there is just enough to get you interested and help you build a world the basic of the story is humans discover faster than light travel and instead of hell like Event Horizon, they fall into a bug dimension where bugs now join our universe and kill EVERYONE! You play spacers who go kill those bugs. We’ve mapped where bugs are now, but there are still bugs out and about that are killing space ships adrift. Throw in some obvious evil space company shenanigans and a dash a cyberpunk and you got a solid game. I like the story here. It’s enough to help you get interested in where it goes and how you could play it next. 5/5
Execution– I’ve loved everything so far, but this is the low point of the book. The book is a PDF. It needs spaces, bold text, and a bit more layout work. The player pamphlet explains things not in the book which is ok, but given infinite real estate, I want more in the book, so I don’t need the pamphlet as a GM. It works, but some polish will help. 2.5/5
Summary– Monstrous bugs in space and a lightning fast system to deal with them and corporate evil? Literally one page building a world and system? SOLID FUN! If you have d6s, you can play this on a car ride. This might not be the 12 year campaign you play forever, but this is the fun one-night or few-week system that will be a solid adventure in the cosmos as you meet new creatures and kill them. Needs a bit of polish to make the main book a bit nicer, and that might happen by the time the RPG goes to print for the 2nd Ed. But overall, this is a solid game that you will easily get into and have a blast. 83%
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