This is going to be a really odd review. On the one hand, I've never had so much fun with a combat-focused game. The combat is really rewarding and people can really let loose! What an experience! On the other hand, I've never seen a published book so badly edited and laid out. It's the definition of a mixed bag. If you're okay with learning how to get around the rulebook this game is genuinely a blast to play, working for a wide variety of ages and affections for the franchise.
Also: this a review that covers my impressions of the book and gameplay up to level five. I don’t feel confident talking about high level play yet, and I feel that will be its own review. I fully intend to get there. So stay tuned!
You'll see a lot of licensed products get by just on the hype. And that's not wrong (more on that later), but that is not the case for Power Rangers gameplay. This game definitely has the chops to not just be for fans. Improvising is rewarded and spamming of actions is discouraged. There's two ways they achieve this: low HP and allowing improv actions to be the equal of regular attacks. Low HP means that you can't just rush into combat. You have to have a plan, and everyone has to be on the same page. One wrong hit and you’re out of the fight! Improving your HP with leveling isn't automatic, meaning you have to put in resources you’d normally use for offense to survive hits. And even then, you won't be getting that much more HP. So at best you'll be using your HP as a resource for your team, as opposed to breaking gameplay and removing risk. The damage in the game is also lowered and flattened, with all damage dice removed. This means that improvised attacks aren't outpaced by "regular" attacks. So if you want to just spam attacks, over and over? It does exactly the same as people who are being creative. Given that being creative is usually more fun than spam.... creative actions actually become more rewarding, because of the mechanically even playing field. That might sound a bit odd, but that’s what I’ve found at my table, and so that’s what I have to report. I also really appreciate the Power Point system. It allows for some really neat tricks without going overly much into straitjacketing how you do those tricks.
Character building (once you've gotten over the book) is a lot of fun. While the customization looks sparse, it's actually extremely robust, and possibly even broken, depending on how far you're willing to push getting perks. Each ranger color is its own class, granting you a series of well-defined roles. Red is the leader, black the buffer, blue is support, pink is tac-nuke, green the lone striker, and yellow the combo master. The colors themselves are really straightforward, with the origins (more like beginning stereotypes!) and influences making your character unique. As stated before, it's the perks that really make characters stand out. One of the perks lets you change your ranger color (multiclassing) and another let’s you choose from an advanced spectrum color (redo, essentially). There's a lot of variety in a very small amount of space. I’ve made more than a few characters and never felt like characters were being pigeonholed, as there was enough structure for everyone to have solid expectations of each other, but enough room for some surprises and individuality. That being said, I’ve home brewed some perks and found the examples in the book to be helpful in reverse engineering for my table. I’ve not had a dissatisfied player yet!
Granted, any ranger can do this with the right perk:
And thats not not elicited an excited giggle from all my players, regardless of age. So that may be a low bar. Dunno. Up to you and all that.
The role playing systems in this book are pretty middle of the road. The Power Rangers RPG is a combat storygame with obvious inspiration from 5e… to its detriment. Characters have Origins and Influences. Both words are not very indicative of what the concepts actually are: stereotypes and life paths. Origins provide base health, some initial spread of skills, and a base personality type. Influences are where the details are: it gives the stereotype you picked some nuance. You can have as many Influences as you like, and are given some guidance on how to modify the ones provided to get a concept you want. Influences also have the elements that most directly impact story point gain: Perks, Hang-Ups, and Bonds. Perks are special options you gain from that Influence, Hang-Ups are really wordy flaws (which give you disadvantage in certain situations) and Bonds… are even wordier character traits. The origins of Bonds are clearly from 5e, and they really are too large for players and GMs to remember and challenge. I GM’d Burning Wheel two to three times a week for approximately three years, which is far chunkier and much more involved. The problem isn’t that Bonds are complicated, but that they’re unwieldy for the amount of mechanical weight they have on them. Even the Hang-Ups are overly verbose, in need of an actual editing pass. None of this is insurmountable, but the system is getting in its own way here.
The Story Points mechanic is similarly mixed. On the one hand, the designers clearly made the game to need Story Points, which is good. You want the game to be mean enough to necessitate the actions you take to get the Story Points. Having fudged more than a few rolls for my kids I can tell you the system needs the Story Points. But there’s six ways to spend them! Six! My players in Burning Wheel had trouble remembering one type of expenditure for two (occasionally three) types of metacurrency! I have GM’d a good dozen sessions of this game and still couldn’t tell you what the hell all the uses for Story Points are. There’s also two pools: one for the GM and one for the players, each with their own requirements for increasing their own respective pools. This isn’t insurmountable, but if any page of the book has to be printed and given to each player as a handout, it’s page 91, where all the information on Story Points resides. But again, once you get the hang of it you’ll find a system that’s satisfying to use, one which rewards good RP and problem solving.
Now for the bad: the actual book. The art's lovely, but the actual layout and editing is a nightmare. I own more than a few RPG books and have learned quite a few systems over the years.... and I had to get help. Flat out. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it! Fortunately the Power Mafia Discord group is composed almost entirely of helpful people who have figured out how to play this game and are willing to share their knowledge. I highly recommend going there after a quick look through the book. They're friendly and knowledgeable. Once I found the information in the book I could figure out the logic, but this is what it looks like when one of the designers is editor! I'm in the middle of writing my own game and the sheer amount of typos that other people find in my own text is more than enough proof that you need someone a bit more separate from the work to look it over. That didn’t happen here, by the credits on the inside cover.
I do not like the zord combat rules. I do not use them. I find them to be unusable. I'm sorry, it's just that simple. There's nothing kind to say about them, as they strain character resources to a degree I just don't find fun. I have use the Zord autopilot rules as the base ones to acceptable effect and have found the Zord customization rules acceptable enough. This part of the game needs work.
But it gets worse. The ugliest part of the game is the absolute lack of any advice on building combat encounters and monsters. The outcry over this was so intense that Renegade released these guidelines for free, but the lack of those guidelines being in the book is a severe black mark for me, particularly because there's not a whole lot of monsters in the book to begin with! I'm honestly baffled by this decision, given just how many thousands of monsters Power Rangers has had in its 25+ year reign. Decades of awesome Japanese rubber suits and there’s barely enough to run even a campaign, nevermind multiple! Given just how weird Power Rangers monsters are it would have been really simple to set up a crazy monster generation system. But the lack of support in a book that claims to be a one stop shop is just criminal.
And honestly that may be too much for any reader of this blog post. I find that sad, because this game is a lot of fun and encourages creativity in a way I've not seen a lot of combat focused games manage. It's ultimately up to you if you want to take a swing at the game, but hopefully with an indication of the flaws of the product in mind. I've been playing with my kids (it's simple enough to where you don't have brain overload managing mechanics) and with other folks and have found that this game is worthwhile for me. Despite Renegade's errors with the text their design acumen really can't be denied.
I’d also like to throw a shoutout to the fantastic customer service at Renegade. The binding on the book appears to be sewn (I’m terrible at telling things like that), but pages began to fall out of my initial copy of my book. I’d done nothing to the book to warrant such an outcome. I contacted customer service and they sent me a new book within a few days. They were polite and horrified that my book hadn’t lived up to reasonable expectations. I’ve contacted them a few times for other issues in the past and have always found Renegade’s customer service to go above and beyond what I expected. And I do think that’s a part of the picture that’s worth relating to you.
Power Rangers the RPG has some fantastic ideas, great gameplay, and really unhelpful layout and editing. If that doesn’t scare you off I think it’s worth the time. I’ve had a blast and so have my players. It’s worth the effort, I think. But if that’s not what you want to do? I totally understand.
No comments:
Post a Comment