Identical Games

I received an email about Tiny Wastelands kickstarter recently. I've really enjoyed Tiny Epic Kingdoms and Tiny Epic Galaxies. A post-apocalyptic game sounded awesome. When I checked out the kickstarter, I realized it was a "Tiny" game not a "Tiny Epic" game. I could have just stopped there but I decided to learn more about the Tiny games from Gallant Knight Games.

The TinyD6 system has a number of games out using it. Gallant Knight Games is working on a second edition of the Tiny Frontiers game. Due to this Tiny Frontiers was made Pay What You Want. Even though I've heard from various people that game developers want you to try a game if it is Pay What You Want, I don't like paying zero for something. I did in this case and I'm glad.

The "Tiny Epic" games of Gamelyn Games took the core of a 4X board game and reduced it down to a small half-hour game. TinyD6 system of Gallant Knight Games did the same thing to RPGs. TinyD6 had a seemingly simple system. Roll 2d6 for an action. If you got a five or a six on any die you succeeded. If you had disadvantage you rolled 1d6 while advantage gave you 3d6. All weapons did a single point of damage.

Character creation was similarly simplified to the core. You picked a race, three traits, a profession, a drive, and bought equipment. The drive had no game effect. Profession replaced much of the skill system found in other systems. If your profession related to the task, you got advantage on the action. The traits were varied with some giving advantage in certain circumstances while others alter the system in other ways such as heavy weapon expert allowing two attacks at disadvantage.

Combat had a variety of different actions that everyone can do. It gave everyone some variety of options even if none of their traits gave them any combat abilities. I haven't tried it yet but it definitely looked entertaining without overwhelming with options or rules.

There are other lightweight rules systems. I've found them typically too free form or too complex. TinyD6 seemed to give the right amount rules while retaining the simplicity. For many years I'd considered a Star Wars game to celebrate May 4th but I didn't have a Star Wars RPG and adapting another system seemed like a lot of work. While reading Tiny Frontiers, I thought the Hacker trait could be reflavored as an Astromech Droid that follows you around. The enemy wouldn't be able to target the droid but that's fairly consistent with Star Wars. I'm not sure how to handle deflecting laser blasts with lightsabers yet but overall it seems relatively easy to use for a Star Wars game.

I would have liked a sample adventure in the game master section. The various mini-settings all included sample adventure hooks but I felt a complete adventure could help. Alternatively a small beastiary with unique sample traits might be good.

There are two special systems in the game. The first covered starships. The rules were created for a single ship carrying the entire party. You could model the Millennium Falcon or the Enterprise but not a X-wing. The second system allowed for Mecha. As they are individual vehicles, it could be adapted to implement space fighters like the X-wing. (There is an expansion for Tiny Frontiers called Tiny Frontiers: Mecha and Monsters.)

The micro settings were interesting. Some seemed to have a more humorous tone than I would normally run but even those ideas can produce inspiration. My favorite setting was the Guardians of Forever due to it's Masters of the Universe tone.