FOB

Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary posted a pointer to the Ad Astra pencil-and-paper roleplaying game Minimus today. The schtick of Minimus is that it attempt to define a complete, playable RPG on one side of one sheet of paper. The game is being sold as $2 voluntary donation-ware.

What follows are my offhand impressions of Minimus. This is not a proper review; just impressions from the school of RPG hard knocks. Take them for what they're worth…

First of all, I love the concept! I would really like to see a contest along these lines: devise the best one-page (or maybe two-page) generic RPG system you can. I'm tempted to take this challenge on for myself.

In my first quick read I tripped over several blatant typos. Even for $2 I'd expect someone at Ad Astra to have proofread that single page pretty carefully. Maybe this game isn't really released yet? This impression is reinforced by Tayler's comments ("the author emailed me to show me the game") and by the fact that it doesn't appear in any obvious place on the Ad Astra website proper. Because the terms attached to the work allow redistribution and the cat's out of the bag at the Schlock Mercenary site, I don't feel bad about reviewing this—but I wouldn't be surprised if it improved right quick also.

Play looks pretty complicated for the GM, who has to try to stay consistent with all the characters and advance the action in a consistent way. Looks like the GM will be pushed into a pretty passive role.

The description of character creation is a bit confusing about who allocates the skill points: it says "the player" but I assume from context and for consistency of the system that it means "the person on the owner's right", who allocated the drawback? No, that can't be right, because the owner may choose not to have a drawback.

If the original owner allocates the skill points, though, it makes for a bit of munchkinism; because a level-one skill has such a small effect on a d20 roll, it seems better to allocate a level-four, a level-three, and give the rest level-one (assuming this is required by the rules; although it's not stated the example strongly indicates it) and ignore them.

The "combat system" has some obvious over-simplicity problems. For example, as I read the rules, a character in leather armor cannot be harmed by a character with a knife. In fact, I assume from the combat description that "negative multipliers" (good armor, bad weapon) make the target invulnerable as well? This part of the combat system is not well-described, and would need some elaboration to play.

The leveling system encourages the skill stacking noted above; because higher level skills are much more expensive to raise later than at the start of the game, it appears way better to max out 2 skills at the start of the game and spend your leveling bennies on raising skills from 1 to 2. (I'm supposed to spend 4 bennies on getting one extra increment out of a die roll?) It is unclear whether skills can later be raised beyond the initial maximum of 4, but it would appear not.

The system is very theatrical, with an emphasis on roleplaying and cooperative play. This is a valid roleplaying style, but hardly the only one.

All in all, it looks like the system mostly meets its goal. With a little work, it could be a cheap, simple system to introduce people to pencil-and-paper RPG, or for a quick game among friends. I'd pay my $2 the first time I played, if they didn't insist on PayPal, which I use only as a last resort.

As it is, I'll probably try to do my own page instead.

Update 2008/01/04: Apparently my impressions about the tentative nature of the document were correct—based on feedback from a number of people, it's now Minimus: The Two-Page Roleplaying Game. I re-review the modified game here.