You can preorder the Sea of Thieves RPG, which is a real thing, from Mongoose right here if you think that might be something you're interested in; such preorders come with access to a PDF of the same content so we had a chance to dig around in there.
I've played a couple tabletop designed with kids in mind, but I'm not sure I've ever seen one so friendly and just… conscious of the broadest range of player ability. You have a little dock you keep your stuff on - it has "hand" slots for your items and current inventory, it's very much like the kind of grid-based inventory you'd see in Diorblo or Minecraft. That's your character sheet, the end. The game uses a custom die, as many new RPG systems do. If I had to compare directly, I'd say it's like a very simple version of the system in the Star Wars and Genesys games from Fantasy Flight - the Narrative Dice System. Except where that system has a ton of complexity around how you form dice pools, incorporate negative dice, and then collaboratively create outcomes, this compresses that waveform down a bit. A "Legendary Die" has two Coin faces for Victories, two sets of Bones for Not That, a Skull and Crossbones that indicates Trouble you must manage, and a Chest that offers a Victory and what it calls a Fun Choice. Storytellers in this game don't even roll dice - but you can bet they're there to interpret what it means when the Skull & Crossbones comes up. You roll these dice toward successes in a fast, legible system that feels like 4e's skill challenges. Which I like. So there.
This is all well and good if you haven't just, you know, spent a couple months handmaking a bunch of these things yourself. Gabe talks a little bit about that process today here, if you didn't catch it.
There's a book preorder and a box preorder, and both come with the PDF so you can get in there. You can covet all the stuff the boxed set offers in the PC Gamer preview I guess and when you see what it costs shipped to the U.S. you can curse the stars of your birth. That's my go-to and I can't recommend it enough. They did include a code for a set of sails in the game; I suspect that for the true enthusiast this is an irresistible flavor.
So, Ryan is gonna be out this afternoon, which means no Bespoke Recitations - our exceedingly strange radio play thingamajig we're currently doing to Phoenix Wright. But! Our engineer Mike Buland and I will be cracking back into Zachronics' code- writin', 'zine readin' odyssey EXAPUNKS, which takes place in a darker, more cyberpunk 1997. The last level we beat was a literal hacker battle. That should help you enter the correct mental arena. Join us on stream at 2pm PDT!
(CW)TB out.
