Product– Ink Ribbon
System– Ink Ribbon
Producer– Old Oak Games
Price– Free Quick Start here https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/old-oak-games/ink-ribbon-a-survival-horror-tabletop-rpg
TL; DR- So awesome I wonder if it’s legal. 100%
Basics: 4 Itchy tasty… Ink Ribbon is a love letter to old school Resident Evil. You play survivors in not Raccoon City as a pharmacy giant has a lab failure and the whole town is full of zombies or worse! Let’s break this down
Base Mechanics– This game is a d6 dice pool game with different target numbers. Simple targets are a 2. Hard targets are a 6. When you do something, you take a number of dice equal to an attribute and a number equal to your skill level in the thing you are doing, learn your target number, and roll! If you get at least one die equal to the target number, you succeed. Extra successes can be banked or even reduce your stress.
Advantages and disadvantages– Advantages and disadvantages represent times when you have good or bad circumstances for an attempt. You get +1 die for each advantage, and you get one less die for each disadvantage. Then you roll as normal.
Adrenaline– Adrenaline is the control the characters have. You have adrenaline points, and you can spend them before a roll to double your dice pool, or you can spend them after to reroll failures.
Stress and Horror- It wouldn’t be zombie horror without stressing out characters and the horror of it all. Stress represents strain on the characters. Stress measures how bad things are. For each point of stress, reduce your dice pool by one. Stress rises and falls as story events happen. Stress can even cause a panic roll. Here you experience a panic attack, and it might get better or a whole lot worse! Horror measures the story’s progress and crazy effects. It affects your search results. When the movie first starts and the horror is at 1, the characters find items that help, but nothing crazy. When the horror hits the fan at 5, the movie characters find rocket launchers and more! Horror affects how much good the characters have and what they find as the game continues.
Combat and damage– Combat is easy. The GM rolls a die, and either the players or monsters go first. Then it’s one character on a side till all characters go. When you attack, the mechanics are the same as the base mechanics. Every character and monster has a defense, which is the TN for the attack roll. You can use additional successes for additional damage added to your base weapon’s damage. Then the target subtracts armor from that damage. Damage first affects the target’s toughness. Then damage spills into an ECG tracker. As damage flows into the ECG, the target gets more stress and adrenaline. Go too low, and you die!
Ok, now the review .
Mechanics or Crunch: This game feels like Shadowrun and DnD had a baby. It’s a dice pool system with different target DCs. It’s fast and easy, but it’s got enough to build on that I am intrigued. I like what I see and enjoy how quick this one is. Solid, fast fun. 5/5
Theme or Fluff– I played RE on a PlayStation before it was called a PS One. This brings back memories from long ago. I love the games, and this honestly feels like less of an homage and more of a copy in some solid, fun, good ways. Honestly, I a surprised by how close this game gets to Resident Evil without copyright strikes. But, I love RE, so I love this one as well. 5/5
Execution: It’s free. That’s the first thing that I need to say, so check out the quick start. From there, you see this is an absolute labor of love. The game has four pregens, maps, a full four-hour adventure in a police station, and handouts. This is everything I want to see in a quickstart for money, but IT’S FREE! I honestly want to run this before the Kickstarter ends. It’s that well put together. 5/5
Summary: I entered the world of survival horror long ago. This quickstart has everything I want to take away and bring to the tabletop. It’s solid, quick gameplay. It has all the pieces I remember from long ago and from modern Resident Evil games. It’s well put together. This is just a solid product that is 100% free to try. I love what this is, and I can’t wait for more. 100%
