I'd like to give a shout-out to everyone who participated in the jam, and huge thanks to everyone who read, rated, and commented on Red Star. This was my first ever game jam, and it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience from start to finish. There were just too many awesome games for my limited amount of free time, and I've learned a ton about design and ludistry by reading them. I learned how to do exactly two things and screw up one thing in GIMP while making the logo, I learned where to find open-license fonts and art assets, my partner and and I collaborated fruitfully on the character illustrations, and I worked up a real sweat wrestling LibreOffice into producing something that in a certain light could be seen as a TTRPG book. I'm very proud of what I created, I'm thrilled that it seemed to resonate with so many of you, and I'm seriously considering trying to make something real out of it. I'm going to keep the prototype version up for free until a better edition comes along, and if any of you wanted to playtest it I would deeply appreciate any feedback you can give me. I'm already making revisions and adding new content inspired by your comments and by other jam games; if you want a reason to support a finished product, I'm adding a whole suite of new supernatural Secrets for a more urban-paranormal type of game. Again, you have my endless thanks; I am going to cherish this memory for the rest of my life.
Last Minute Panic Games
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As a big fan of the novel Space Opera, I've been anticipating reading this book since the moment you started posting about it in the Discord. I'm really glad to get the chance to make it my last rating of the jam. Your layout looks extremely slick and professional; you make excellent use of pullout boxes, and I love me a nice drop cap. Your alien punks are very creative and the whole production gives really fun Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy vibes. The song mechanic is obviously the headliner (and really cool and innovative), but I also like that the standard Morale actions can be used to help other characters by default. Having enemies that have to be defeated to complete the objective is a clean, elegant solution to the "why not just run the objective as fast as possible" problem, and I like the Boredom mechanic as a transformation of the reinforcement rules; it's flavour-appropriate and I can see it being a useful way to speed up play. Your GM guide is the most complete and thorough I have seen of any entry I have read so far. I appreciate that you've provided the option to deal with some enemies nonviolently, but I feel like those rules could be front-loaded a bit to clue the players in that they can do it. Overall, hella punk, and a great read.
I've been wanting to read this one since the day I saw it posted, and I'm glad I was able to squeeze it in. Of all the awesome layouts I've seen reading jam games, this is the awesomest, and the art reminds me of the kind of comics I read a lot of in my teens and 20s. Great job capturing that vibe of being a teen delinquent and having some jumped-up petty authoritarian trying to rein you in. You use art and layout to great effect to communicate the Havoc rules with simplicity and concision, and your characters have so, so much personlity and mechanical uniqueness crammed into a very small package. I think picking your own stats could work with a little reimagining; my first thought, inspired by the merit badges in Bump, was a draft system with a limit on players taking a high rating in each stat. I want to play every one of your scenarios. I really like the idea of using your own local mall as the setting, and I can see this being an awesome game to very easily pick up and play.
Before even opening the book, I was a big fan of the title. The double meaning establishes a note of world-weary irony that prepares the reader well for what's inside.
What we have here is almost a board game with roleplaying elements, though the roleplaying is foregrounded and there's no real "win condition" (poetic!) You've created a really interesting structure on top of the Havoc ruleset, and the concept you're pushing toward of a GM-less game with two "teams" of players interacting is even more fascinating. I think it works well to communicate the encounter between the human interiority and social connections of the soldier on the ground and the almost gamified nature of modern warfare. It's complex, but I think condensing all of the information onto cards does a lot to help make the rules more legible and the modularity of the squads and objectives more manageable, as does the excellent extended play example provided. The orders deck does a good job of reifying the nonsensical and contradictory orders given by out-of-touch generals far from the front, and the fog of war mechanic piece by piece revealing hazards and the true objective is really cool and unique. The "trench gong" promotions are also an excellent flavour inclusion. I think players will have to be in a very particular mood to be interested in an experience where the game ends in mass slaughter and your soldiers just straight-up die if you roll a one, but I'm certain there's tables for that and I admire your commitment to unflinching honesty. It's similar to what I was trying to do with my game, though mine is a bit more amped-up action movie rather than All Quiet on the Western Front: The Game.
I'm not experienced with VTTs so I haven't got around to looking at that part. I can imagine a lot of players would find it a relief, but I'm old-school enough to still prefer playing with physical cards and I could see a full boxed release of this game making a real splash on the table. I'm impressed!
This really nails that "Goonies" type vibe, and I'm a fan of the hallucinatory "is this even real?" nature of it. The loose, freeform, modular nature makes a really interesting storytelling challenge and adds a lot of replay value, and the idea of scaling objectives based on how much prep the players want to do is really innovative. It's good to add some structure with the set scene templates, but I wonder if a strict real-time time limit is the right choice; I might go with something more mechanical like "scene X lasts Y number of rounds". Adding the Memories in between adds an excellent element of systematically tightening and slackening of narrative tension. Calling Bullshit as a resource is super funny, and I like the idea of having one resource that's more broadly utilitarian and easier to gain and another that's more strongly impactful but harder to gain. The Merit Badge system of drafting from a shared pool of skills is really cool and unique. I also like reimagining the Havoc Pool as a kind of brinksmanship resource; I assume using Bullshit to take dice from the Havoc Pool permanently removes them, although I'm not sure it's made clear whether that's the case or not. If I understand correctly, most of the scouts' Kit has unlimited uses but adds only one die and only when the item is realistically useful? If that's the case, I would make it so that that all and only Kit with limited uses gives extra bonus dice. The Help mechanic is a great way to keep players invested in other players' turns. Adding additional Conditions when facing the villain at the end of the game is a neat way to power the scouts up to help tackle that final threat. I also really like all the narrative/character building options you've included and asking the players questions to set each scene and directly involve them in building the storyline.
Gonzo Mad Max/Tank Girl vs. literally the people ruining our planet and culture is a great theme for Havoc; the satire is cutting, and you do an excellent job selling your setting. The character concepts are unique and feel mechanically distinct and unified (awesome art as well!) Each character having a unique motivation or "quest" is cool, and I wonder if there could be some mechanical rewards attached to completing those quests. I like the ability to use Power specifically to give bonuses to other PCs; that's way more interesting than being able to use it to give dice to yourself. I also like the ability of Ground Control to spread injuries around the team; it gives a good tool for managing dramatic tension and avoiding the feelbad where a PC dies purely due to a botched roll. Your mission structure adds some clarity and narrative direction to the very freeform system used in EtR while keeping that flexibility. I notice that a few of your secondary objectives seem to be for narrative purpose only, and I wonder if "helping the planet" is enough of a payoff to incentivize completing them or if some kind of mechanical advantage could be added to those as well. Perhaps the campaign could benefit from a capstone objective for the PCs to escape the crashing city alive, though there's no problem with just taking that as read.
My partner's headcanon is that Sineater is from Uranium City (that's a real place in Saskatchewan, and no, it is not nearly as cool as it sounds)
The flavour rating in this book is off the charts; you've done an awesome job of evoking that legendary-Samurai-story feel. I'm interested in the application of the Bluebeard's Bride-style players-fighting-for-control-of-one-character system to Havoc, and I would lean in to it even more; give the aspects competing agendas to provide a reason to vie for that top initiative slot. The initiative system is cool but I'm not quite getting how players decide how many dice to roll for initiative or what costs there might be to trying for high initiative. I like that burdens don't kill the PC, just set back progress. It wasn't immediately apparent to me how many burdens a PC can take (I assume 3 of each since there are 3 spaces on the circle above?) and if there was any further effect for taking more than one of the same burden. (I would venture to suggest, since I've seen it used to good effect in several other entries, that some form of positive benefit for higher burden levels could work well here.) The way the retribution pool works builds well on the Havoc Pool system with more of a strategic, give-and-take aspect showing up. I'd also note that the Blade doesn't seem to have a Special ability; I'm not sure if that was a deliberate choice, but I always feel like each PC needs at least one. I love the concept here, I think it's well realized, and I definitely would be interested in trying it out once the campaign is filled out a bit more.
With so many games in this jam about punching fascists (including mine), I appreciate the note of pure joy this book adds. Giving time limits and throwing way more objectives at the players than they can possibly complete in time is punk as hell, and as someone who regularly does live cabaret, absolutely accurate. However, my instincts tell me that the timers could be made a wee bit more forgiving and/or the objectives slightly easier to complete, particularly with the number of negative objectives hanging around. Transposing equipment into allies does a lot to sell your theme, and I like attaching ally refreshes to a narrative rather than a mechanical requirement. I'm a big fan of jams evolving into advances and Living On the Edge; characters getting more powerful as they take conditions just seems to really vibe well with Havoc. I'm not sure I'm quite on board with the show objective being just one big roll. I get that a lot of the strategizing around the show roll happens in the lead-up, but I feel like it could use one more mechanical wrinkle just to make it feel special. (Can I offer you exploding dice in this trying time?)
I definitely know all of the band members. Jackie's character art reminds me of a young me, so thank you for that.
You've turned Havoc into a much more strategic experience, crunchier but still with a lot of roleplaying hooks. I like that all dice are useful, and that different rolls are useful in different ways. Honestly, I think I like eliminating primary objectives to focus on threats and leaving hazards as secondary objectives that give you advantages. The approaches and tags do a great job of building character and signaling how to play the character. I wasn't sure at first, but after reading the extended play example I agree that being able to split your turn up creates a useful give and take between players that rigid turn order wouldn't allow. I just worry that there's a lot of variables for people to keep track of. One player having two characters is, like, weird, but in a good way. You have some impressive mechanical architecture here, I'd definitely like to see the fortress mapped out and some more stat blocks provided as well.
Thank you for the great comments. The Heat track is definitely something that's going to need a lot of testing. I'm trying to strike a balance of "it's possible but not trivial to hit the end of the Heat track" and rewarding play groups who make an effort to minimize Heat. Rolling 1s is not something you have a lot of control over, but I'll take it into consideration.
Man, there is so much lateral thinking going on here. If I talked about every mechanic I thought was cool, I'd write like a page-long comment, lol. The idea of Havoc as a competitive rather than a cooperative game is fascinating. I found voting on turn order really interesting as well. The skeletons are so mechanically distinct, every one of them has an amazing amount of creative ideas and hacks crammed in there. The basic rules are concise and straightforward, with really great retheming of the Havoc mechanics, but I did have a couple of confusions; first, are the skeletons rolling a vendetta for every NPC they meet, or just the ones they roll for when entering new locations? And second, how is it determined which NPC is rolled? They're not numbered.
Awesome derivative work with the public domain art. I love memento mori/danse macabre pictures.
I am a huge fan of this, and I had a blast reading parts of it aloud to my partner. Every one of your PC concepts is awesome; please keep the literal bear in some form. I like the flaw-injury system a lot; it adds some exciting choices, taking disadvantages vs. forgoing advantages and mitigable vs. permanent conditions. The tiered abilities play well with my sense of symmetry and also add some meaningful decision points around resource use. I instinctively got what a few of your Stats were for without having to read the description, but not Booty or Omens. Heat and the multiplicity of adversaries is an interesting twist on reinforcement rules; it does add a fair amount of crunch, especially for the GM. Your structure of major and minor/side objectives gives the players and GM a lot of narrative freedom while providing a nice clear plot skeleton and game arc. At one point in your rules you refer to "advancing an objective clock" rather than removing resilience, and I think this way of framing it actually adds a mechanical contrast that might help make Havoc games more legible. +1 vote for ending the campaign with a set-piece ship battle; just a capstone Objective would work great.
Flattening out the distinction between Objectives and Threats is an interesting choice. I know that in both EtR and my own game, I've had the problem of "why bother spending your successes eliminating Threats when you can just do the Objective as fast as possible?" I think you've got a good framework for a solution with your multiple sub-Challenges and wide variety of challenge characteristics, but again, I'm not always seeing the mechanical incentive to complete the sub-Challenges first. I understand you're going for a much more narrative-forward experience so maybe it's not that important, but if so, the narrator needs to really put in the work to get the players invested in doing the thing. I also note that there don't seem to be any mechanical adverse consequences for players, unless I'm not reading the rules right. I do like the idea of abstract character traits as Stats; I can see it forcing the players to be creative with their verbs, and I think you've included enough for each character that they have a variety of options for how to proceed. I might suggest, rather than spending a whole turn replenishing Reserves, giving the option to spend a success one-for-one to get them back. The characters are a good motley crew with a lot of variety; absolutely love the idea of a talking goose as a PC.
I love your motorcycle-riding goblins, zombies, etc. and the concept of a genre-agnostic interdimensional apocalyptic road trip on sentient motorcycles. Petrol as an essential resource to be rationed and then refueled is a cool take; Resources seem to be a place where a lot of innovation is happening. At first I didn't realize the petrol gauges on the character sheets were intended to track Petrol, and was confused because I couldn't figure out where it said how much Petrol you get. I like the contrast between the PCs as a whole having a shared Formation ability and each different Rider reacting to Bliss and Road Rage in different ways; having everyone have a degree of control over Formation while players have essentially no control over their own Bliss and Road Rage abilities is an interesting choice, and I think I'd have to play with it to know how I feel. Also, the table of petrol station encounters? Amazing.
I'm definitely on board with Eat the Reich reimagined as a stealth infiltration mission instead of a murder spree. Really like the theme of the occult experiments from the original game living on past the death of the Nazis to infect the new world order. The DEFCON mechanic of brinksmanship with character abilities is really cool, and I like giving the players that immediate reward for eliminating threats. Just "Something Bad" at the end of the track is hilarious, and please keep it this way. The Cryptid Corps are cool but a few of them could use a more unified mechanical identity. I note that with the removal of Blood from the game, there seems to be no way of healing conditions beyond a couple of character abilities. I can see this being a deliberate choice to incentivize hurrying up and being sneaky, but I worry that the characters might be a bit too fragile.
The layout in this book is off the chain, and the character art is amazing. Your PCs are mechanically distinct and have a lot of personality, and you've come up with a lot of neat hacks of the basic Havoc Engine rules for their abilities. I like the idea of the mutations, but I'd like to see combination of positive and negative in them. I also see the mutations stacking up pretty quick and downing characters; I might suggest separating mutations from conditions inflicted by adversaries or as suggested, make mutations a bit less likely to actually occur. Separating stress from conditions is an interesting choice, and I like the Overdrive ability being a pure positive to give that burst of power as things heat up. Your adversary and location descriptions give the perfect combination of funny and horrible; I do worry that the number of powerful adversaries at some locations could be overwhelming. It would be nice for the companions to be foregrounded more mechanically to emphasize the connection between pet and owner. Overall, a really solid entry with a lot of room for growth.
Seems like a great game to just pick up and play with zero preparation. I'm going to add to the chorus and say the tables are awesome (I hope I roll cheesemonger!) I like the tonal variation, both fictionally and mechanically, provided by the contrast between human scale and mech scale. You do a great job of concisely communicating your vision of what a play session looks like. The verbs on your equipment are very concrete and straightforward, which I think is the right choice here. And your adversaries have so much character in a small package. Really cool!
The idea of different character working different mechanically is really cool, and I would love to see that leaned into even more. I do worry that only three relatively narrow Traits will limit what verbs are accessible to players. I love the concept of Belief and I like the Belief consequence chart very much; the consequence of completely resetting the Objective is maybe too much of a feel bad, but the rest add interesting wrinkles to play. The Threats could be distinguished a little more, and having the Threats always show up again if you don't address them might overwhelm the players; I'd like to see alternative methods of getting them off your tail. You've got good bones and some innovative ideas here, I'd definitely be interested in seeing it after some refinement.
This is a really neat transcription of the rules and conventions of beat-em-up games into tapletop form. Clean, straightforward, though as mentioned, the rules for combos aren't fully explained. I assume filling the combo box is something that's supposed to occur repeatedly over the game, since the conditions are so simple to fulfil? The limit break, using adversity as fuel to build up to a powerful move, is spot-on, and the thing about earning arcade tokens for extra lives with high scores and items you get from breaking stuff gave me some serious nostalgia for the 80s. The fonts work well to evoke that feeling too, though the readability isn't the best for this aging GenXer. I had a lot of fun imagining all the cool art that's going to be in your book, so thanks for giving my imagination the workout!
The visuals in this book absolutely pop; the illustrations are amazing, and the bright CMY colours really give that four-colour-comic vibe. The arachno-nerd characters are exactly the right combination of funny, stylish, and ick. I like the addition of the Responsibility system; it provides an interesting source of narrative tension and impactful decision points. The random tables for generating setting, scenarios, and villains are a lot of fun and would make the game really quick to pick up and play, though I can see some GMs having difficulty improvising around them on the fly. A default scenario and villain might be a worthwhile inclusion, with the random generator as an optional replacement. Overall, I really liked this.
I really like the addition of the dice chain mechanic and building dice pools from many different sources; Drives, Roles, Aspects, Affinities, Assets, Resources, Foe Dice, and the Havoc Pool all feel fictionally distinct and I like the fact that characters have diverse sources of strength. The combinatorial character building system also appeals to me. These rules have a lot of moving parts, with multiple different rolls that are all resolved in different ways, and I had a little trouble wrapping my head around how the pieces mesh together. The visual presentation is very polished and I'm definitely interested in seeing the Adventure scenario when it comes out.