Product– Don’t Play This Game

System- Don’t Play This Game

Producer– Parable Games

Price– Soon on Kickstarter! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/327195066/dont-play-this-game-a-cursed-solo-rpg 

TL; DR– You get out what you put in.  98%

Basics–  DON’T PLAY THIS GAME!  Welp you didn’t listen and now you’re gonna die… or so the game starts.  Don’t Play This Game or DPTG is a solo RPG that relies heavily on your own storytelling power.  It’s got some randomness built in, but often it’s you building a story from the world around you or the fake world around you as you fight the entity that has come for you!  You play you, a version of you that you want to exist, or some pretend person.  That person is attacked by an entity that is after you for…. Some Reason.  That’s where the fun really comes in.  This game has some random tables and events.  You move between an event that might be a funeral to a dream and then use a random table to build out the event a bit more.  As you go through the events, DPTG has you write down information, take pictures of things, or even physically go to a place a do something (nothing crazy but maybe find a book at the library or take a picture of a place your character woke up at after a dream).  As you go through the story it has several questions that help you build out your own story.  This is VERY much a collaborative storytelling game with the designer.

Mechanics or Crunch– Mechanically this is a VERY simple game, but it’s not built to redefine how we roll a d20.  The game has some random tables built in and some fights and events are just random rolls to see if you lose some health/sanity from an event.  You have less control over the dice than you do in DnD, but there are some things you can do like use items, burn through resources, and even sacrifice friends!  It’s simple and that might turn off some players, but if you are ok with sometimes the dice screwing you, you will have fun! 4.75/5

Theme or Fluff– DPTG is a solid story that I told to myself.  This is something I have to emphasize-you and the writer are telling a story together.  If you want a complete adventure where you read box text to your friends, this is not for you.  If you want a choose your own adventure game where you read box text to yourself, this is not for you.  Consider this almost like story prompts as you co-write with Charlie and Barney Menzies.  They have major set piece ideas and you either randomly go to different ones or they give you a leading sentence and you build from there.  It’s a fun bit of collaborative storytelling.  I have a story that happened in my head that was a fun afternoon building.  And honestly that was a fun way to spend the time.  5/5

Execution– This book is well put together.  It’s a hyperlinked PDF that reads easily, with solid layout and formatting as well as pictures to break up the text.  Parable did a solid job making this book and I didn’t have to squint or move around the tablet at all kinds of crazy angles to read it.  I simply loved what they put together.  5/5

Summary– I am going to recommend this book to everyone, but with a hefty bit of discussion.  DPTG is not a lot of things.  It’s not a canned adventure.  Love those, but this is not something you just buy and run on a friday night after beer and pizza.  This also isn’t a choose your own adventure book.  This is telling a story to yourself as you get story prompts from Charlie and Barney with random dice rolls thrown in for good measure.  It could honestly lead to you writing a solid book.  I had an adventure where swirling darkness that looked like Freddy started following me after my Grandfather died and he sent me a music box and I fought the darkness in a burned out factory on the edge of my town and I ended up hitting it with my car and barely surviving because I wouldn’t sacrifice my wife to it.  Man is she gonna be pissed that I totaled my car!  You won’t have that adventure.  Heck you can read the exact same thing I did and have a COMPLETELY different story and thats the beautiful thing.  I’m looking forward to a longer story and crazier stuff happening as you build a story.  The full game has you do part of the story and literally hand off stuff to a friend who continues the RPG.  What my wife does when I wake up from the hospital after I’m found in the burnt out factory with a totaled car would make for a fun sequel, or her strangling me with a pillow.  Either way I’m invested and suggest you check this one out as well, if it fits your gaming tastes. 98%