"It's more like long hours, poor wages, and irate customers, with very little vacation time and intolerable deductions from
every single cheque, so that after income tax you barely have enough money left for rent or food or clothing much less going anywhere not that you'd be able to get enough time off anyhow and then there's..."
The Premise:
Players are members of TOP DOLLAR, a secret crack commando team tasked to clean up the world of retail sales making it safe again from oppressed and abused workers everywhere despite the danger to their own personal sanity.
What Ya Get:
Top Dollar is a twenty-nine page PDF file. You will need the Adobe Acrobat reader software or some other program capable of rendering the PDF format to make use of this game. The game is also available as a Microsoft Word file.
Cost:
Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Gratis. Free.
Appearance:
Top Dollar looks good... it looks very good. Text is arranged in two columns with grey boxes indicating notes to the GM and some fairly well done cartoons included to spice up the appearance. In fact, this looks more like an actual product from a small press game company rather than a free RPG. Top Dollar goes above and beyond what you expect from a free game and gains my kudos for it.
The Game:
Character generation is a simple affair. There are three attributes: Strength, Charisma and Sanity. Each are determined randomly by rolling 2d6. High rolls are preferred. You gain 12 points that you can put into any skills that you want with the stipulation that you must at least have two skills. There is no skill list so you make up your own like "Comic Book Trivia", "really good impersonations of the boss", etc. And that's it. Characters are simple and disposable. Top Dollar really wasn't intended for campaign-style play although rules are provided for it. Its more of a silly little game that you can play ever so often with some friends for a good laugh or for stress relief rather than to actually go postal.
Your characters job is to infiltrate various retail stores and clear them of the undersirables such as cranky customers, rude suppliers, time-bomb bosses and anything else that needs to be taken care of. Actions are divided into ten second long rounds and movement is kept track of on an included battlemap. The map is a simple grid affair but is very nice in PDF because you can write all over them and just print out more when you need them. It also adds a bit of fun when you can draw sprawled senseless bodies on the map without the GM getting annoyed at you.
Fighting isn't the only option (although it has its undeniable charms), however, you can also try to Fast Talk. Namely because you have to KEEP your job in order to clean it up from the inside. Fighting will only get you fired or severely
beaten up unless you're careful about what fights you pick. Making sales is how you gain experience. You just have to be careful or you'll Flip Out.
Flipping Out happens when you encounter customers or anyone else who is out to get you and drive you mad. Each type of problem person has a "sanity-sucking" score. You contest these with your own Sanity attribute. If you fail the roll, you have to roll on the "So You Failed Your Sanity Check" chart. These provide amusing neurosis for you to roleplay. Failing a check by more than five, however, premanently reduces your Sanity by one.
Skills and any other actions not covered by either Fighting or Fast Talking is handled by rolling a d6, adding in your attribute and/or skill and compare that against a target number between 1 and 100 decided upon by the GM. Experience is gained by selling things and surviving a game session. Experience can be used to increase skills and Sanity.
The "GM Section" covers such things as how to generate annoying customers according to verious charts based on age, annoying habit and if they travel in packs. Information is also supplied on employers and other NPC characters that would be encountered while at work (mall Santas, deliverymen, etc.). The crowning cap to this section is information on the Triple S Corporation, a malignant group of senior citizens determined to maximize the money they save by any means necessary.
Top Dollar wraps up with a Shopping Mall scenario that includes four detailed stores: Polly's Pet Store, Tortellini's Steak House, Kindly Klothes, and the Garden Shop of Spack's Department Store. Each of these four stores are detailed and have maps included for each. Included with each is information on the hours, merchandise, employer, customers and store policies.
Overall Impression:
If you've ever had a crap job dealing with "Joe Q. Public" you should get each and every joke in this game. If you have friends that work retail, you owe it to them to print this game out and give them a copy. Get friends over after bad days at work and relax the rules to let off steam. Use it as release therapy to demonstrate all the stupidity you've had to deal with onto your soon-to-be-former friends. The possibilites are endless. The rules are there to allow for continuing play but I think most people will find that Top Dollar is an amusing little game that is played only so often but is fondly remembered each time. I highly recommend that you check out Top Dollar.
MetalMan signing off.
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