No Thank You, Evil!

Sunday March 6, 2016 at 6:04pm gaming, family Comments (0) »
No Thank You, Evil! Image

Kickstart

Back in May of 2015, I backed a Monte Cook Games project called No Thank You, Evil.  This project was to be a tabletop roleplaying game aimed at kids for families to play together.  It sounded awesome - awesome enough to get me to, after considering it for several other projects, actually make an account on Kickstarter.com an contribute some money to making it happen.  It has thus far been my only kickstarter experience, and I have been really impressed with the whole process.  MCG does a good job.

Yes Please, Adventure!

Just about a week or so ago, I got my copy in the mail - having been eagerly awaiting it.  The production value of the game is amazing, and the guts of the game itself did not disappoint.  It uses a simplified version of the Cypher System, and does a great job tayloring its mechanics and flavors to a young audience.  The game is beautiful and solidly designed.

We - myself, my wife, our daughter, and Tony - just finished our first adventure in the world of Storia, and, I have to say, it was a blast.  My 4-year-old daughter actually picked up the concepts pretty quickly, even if some of the minutia is still a bit over her head.  She took to the roleplaying elements quite well, and seemed to catch on to the "game" parts with only a little coaching.  We all had a great time with it, and she's excited to play it again soon.  

My Storia

Like any game I touch, though, I had to make some adjustments.  I'm sure a person can quite easily run the thing as-is, right out of the box, and have a great time.  As any of my friends can tell you, though, that's just not me.  I have to tinker.  I have to tweak.  I have to make it my own.  This ability is what I love about TTRPGs.

I did a little cherry-picking of the mechanics for our first game - we kind of played something between the "triangle" and "square" levels - but mostly left it as-is.  I do think that some additional differentiation between characters could be acheived by introducing one or two special "skills" that the characters can have - allowing a possible of three factors that could lower a Goal number - and I may do this in the future.  

Really, the most significant considerations for game tweaking were focused on setting and plot.  The setting is brilliant, but some things aren't clearly defined in the books and a couple of other things seemed like they would be a lot cooler if I changed them just a little.  I actually didn't change that much of the game, but I think what I did tweak added a lot.  What I had in the end was a solidified structure for an awesome game taylored to my tastes.

~PS

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