Product– Outgunned Quickstart
System- Outgunned
Producer– Two Little Mice
Price– $0 here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/433185/Outgunned–Quickstart?affiliate_id=658618
TL; DR– Shadowrun lite action movie?? 98%
Basics– Getting too old for this! Welcome to the world of 80s action movies! Outgunned is a light weight RPG focused on action movies from the 80s. Let’s break this down and see what’s up!
Actions and dice rolls- This game has attributes and skills. When you do anything, you pick an attribute and an associated skill, count the number you have in each, and then roll that many d6s. This number can never go below 2 and can never go above 9. Your goal is to get sets of the same number or symbol on the shared dice. Two is a basic success and three of a kind is a critical. Most actions you want to do require critical success.
Feats and rerolls- You further customize your character by getting feats. These abilities often get you rerolls for specific actions. You can also reroll dice if you get a basic success to try to get a better success. BUT, you lose that success if you fail.
Adrenaline- As story candy! Adrenaline is the story candy of this game that you earn by acting like your characters. You can spend one to get an extra die on a roll, one to activate some feats, and you can spend six to get the spotlight. Spotlight is when you are a god among men doing crazy things, saving lives, ignoring pain, or whatever the heck you want!
Combat rounds- Combat is very free form in this game. The heroes take a turn doing anything, and the bad guys respond. If the heroes succeed on their actions they can do whatever game plan they had or just injure the bad guys. For the response players need to tell the director/GM how they avoid damage and make a roll. Failure means losing grit/HP. There is not a number of bad guys, but instead a giant pool of grit that the bad guys share, so you don’t get one shot kills on bad guys too easily, but you do get an action movie vibe where heroes kill a wave of thugs.
Ok, on to my thoughts.
Mechanics or Crunch– This is a prelaunch for the kickstarter, so you can’t see everything. But I am intrigued. The basics of add two numbers, roll that many dice, and count sets is an interesting one. The bad guy hit point pool is fun and an easy way to keep the action movie feel. I do have some rules questions on how to do all that, but the full rules will hopefully explain more. 4.75/5
Theme or Fluff– Ya, this feels like an action movie. I’m honestly surprised there are not that many puns in the book, but it feels like an action movie in terms of the rules, art, and characters. 5/5
Execution– PDF? Yep. Cheap intro? Yep. Hyperlinked? Yep. Free adventure? Yep. Pregens with nice art? Yep. SOLD! That’s all the things I need out of an intro to get me and my friends to the table. I read it in about 15 minutes and now I think I could run the provided adventure. 5/5
Summary– As I get older, rules light and fast is more and more fun. I also like brainless action movies where bullets and popcorn flow in equal, reckless abandon. This feels like that. I have the basic system of Shadowrun (add number and roll d6s) with the simplicity of an indie game. I have some questions on mechanics, but its a FREE intro. Those will hopefully be fixed in the full game. I’m in for the kickstarter, and you reader should at least check out the free PDF. Solid intro to this game. 98%
Throat Punch Games 