From the Top

"Dime Heroes" is a spanking new game of Pulp Heroics, Jungles, and occasional silliness from Deep 7. Using the 1PG (one page) RPG system "Dime Heroes" focuses on being quick, easy, and playable within moments of downloading. It's companion booklet "Jungle Adventures" adds new ideas and rules for Lost World, Tarzan, and Savage Jungle style adventures, while still focusing on simplicity, and instant playability. Both are PDF files, done in full color with attractive and well laid out pages, and full color art that fits the genre and tone of the game. They both printed quite well on my computer, being easily readable even at low print quality.

In a lot of ways cracking open "Dime Heroes" felt less like cracking open an RPG book and more like breaking out a very fun board game (well, actually it felt like hitting the open button on a word processor – but I'm being metaphorical here!). Now this is not to say that it is not an RPG, but rather than focusing on deep and controllable rules, campaign characters, or reality simulation it focuses on making it easy for everyone in the game, including the GM, to actually start playing immediately. There were no long rules to be read, no deep background to be absorbed, and there were plenty of pre-generated adventures meant to be ready to go in 10 minutes and taking up 2 hours or so of playtime. The result is a game that plays out of the box and takes up a pleasant couple of hours, without the massive time consumption of more in depth RPGs.

(While reading the game I had this hallucination of Nobilis, "Dime Heroes," GURPS, and Vampire climbing into a ring for a four corners match. Salma Heyek was the ring girl. I think the hallucination might have been going somewhere having to do with the radically different ways you can approach an RPG, but I got distracted by Salma's body and lost any thought other than a desire to watch Dogma again.)

I got these books from the author for the sole purpose of reviewing them. I sat down thinking, "I must give these books a thorough reading, capturing every word and thinking deeply about them. I must then play test them to be sure I understand the mechanics." After all RPGs involve rules, and setting, and plot, and character... and a lot of stuff. GMing involves tying all of these things together and making it all work smoothly. It often takes time, and it always takes effort, and that is just the price of a good game, right?

Well, maybe not so much. Rather than reading the rules, rereading them, then setting out to get a group together for a many hour session of character building and introductions, I printed the sucker out with my brothers on Thanksgiving day, and we'd played a full adventure before dinner was on the table.  We played another one while waiting for Green Bay to kick the Lions' butt across the field. A good time was had by all, and considering how inexpensive this product is, I don't think we could have asked for more. (Well, maybe to have had the Lions win for once. It would be nice, I really used to love those guys. When did they start to suck like a Hoover with an anti-matter engine? I mean really, they were playing the Packers, ANYONE CAN BEAT THE PACKERS! I need to lie down.)

The Rules

The primary reason that the game is so "out of the box quick" is the rules. The 1PG rules are just that, one page long. In fact, the whole system fits onto the character sheet. Thus when you hand each player a blank sheet, you also hand them everything they need to know to play the game. Give them 5 whole minutes and they'll be going, give them 10 more and they'll all have characters ready to go.

Of course, these characters will not be wonders of depth and complexity, They are quick sketches of types that are rolled up randomly, played for a couple of games, and then discarded. 1PG is not looking to make campaign characters, and if that is what you are looking for then look elsewhere. It also isn't meant to make characters fine-tuned to the exacting specifications of the cultured player, so once again if you want that look to another game. While this would be a problem in a big game, and expensive game, or a deeply serious game, it is not a problem in "Dime Heroes" because the game is all about doing it and doing it now. I wouldn't want to play that way all the time, but as a nice change of pace, to have a fun one-off, or to play while everyone is drunk, stoned, or not in a serious mood, 1PG works quite well. (Though I can tell you from experience not to use the little 5mm dice when eating M&Ms and playing while in an "altered state." Your sphincter will hate you forever if you do.)

As far as the actual nuts and bolts of character gen go, you roll 1d3 to determine attributes (Moxie, Glitz, Cunning, and Grey Matter). You then get 1d6 points to split among all your skills, with no skill higher than 3. There is some small measure of customization available by lowering skills from their default 0 to a maximum of –2, giving you more points to spend elsewhere. In keeping with the game's tone, the skill list is quite short and consists of things such as Fighting, Drinking, Fashion, Repair, and Science! (Sorry, I just can't resist putting an exclamation point after science. It isn't science, it is SCIENCE!) Next, characters all get a Background and Status that gives them special bonuses. With that done the characters Blood (hit points), Guts (willpower), Wits (self-control), and Notoriety (fame/karma) are determined with more quickly disposed of and totally random dice rolling. Then all you really have left is to name the sucker. Fine control? No. Accurate to reality? No. Play balanced? Not even close. Quick and easy? Yes.  Fun? Definitely.

The mechanics are similarly rough and ready. You take a skill, add it to an attribute, and then roll 1 6-sided dice against it. If you roll under your total you succeed, if you roll over you fail. A roll of 1 always succeeds, and a roll of 6 always fails.

Yes, this does mean that you have a 1 in 6 chance of failing any action no matter how cool you are, and a 1 in 6 chance of doing the craziest crap on earth no matter how much you suck. Because the game is supposed to be fast, loose, and easy (something like Bill Clinton) this works so long as you are only rolling for dramatic actions, things that there is a real big chance of screwing up. If you roll for anything else you're gonna get annoyed real quick.

This is one of the few places that I would fault the game. It assumes that you will only roll for dramatic actions without making it utterly, insanely blatant. When your default mechanic is going to have characters failing 1 time out of 6, I think it fitting to grind in the fact that you should only roll for really important things. Something along the lines of "When you roll, which you only do in dramatic situations, you want to roll under your combined attribute plus skill. You should only do this for dramatic actions. Rolling a 1 is always a success and rolling a 6 is always a failure – which is why you only roll for dramatic and dangerous actions. In combat, which is a dramatic action..." Well, maybe not quite that much, but you get the point.

Combat uses the basic resolution system, plus a simple hit point and armor system to keep things moving fast and easy. The result is that combat feels very board-gameish unless you are good at narrating combat. Considering how easy the system is I find it an acceptable trade. You learn the system in 5 minutes, play it in 10, and get hours of fun – so long as you don't want anything that looks like reality. (And who does? My good friend LSD has taught me that reality is for squares and zone dweebies.)

That's the system in a bucket. Now, seeing as how I have spent more space talking about the system than the system actually take up, I'm going to move on to other subjects.

Break it Down

The main set of "Dime Heroes" starts off with a cover, imagine that. It's quite a nice cover and gives a good pulpy feeling to start off the book. Then comes the credits and blah, blah, blah. The meat starts with the character sheet, which has space for all you character goodness – and also has a nearly complete set of the rules right on the sheet. This makes it very easy to print out several copies of the sheet and hand it to players, they read the one page and roll a few dice and then everyone is ready to rock n roll. After the sheet comes the full rules, which take up exactly 1 page. There is then another page of options and advice for the GM. Most of this could probably have been skipped – though the table of weapons and things to blow up is nice. Instantly after that the adventures start. The main book has 5 adventures, all scenes linked into a mini-campaign based around super-science, mysterious arch-villains, car chases, and tramp freighters with undead gangsters raised by twisted mad science! Though the writing gets confusing at some points, the adventures are good pulpy fun and could be stolen for other games, such as Adventure!.

"Jungle Adventures" also starts off with a cover (if Deep 7 keeps this up they could start a trend), though this one is not quite as good as the main book's. Where the main book had a very pulpy cover, this one looks just a bit to computer generated. The book has a table of contents too, though for a book this short it really is more or less a waste of space. Once into the meat we are instantly introduced to new rules for making Tarzan and Sheena style characters, including options for animal companions. This was a well done section, and expanded the game nicely – as Tarzan is about as staple to pulp adventure as the Shadow. We then are given rules for explorer and hunter characters, involving non-jungle characters in jungle adventures, and rules for Natives in the pulp genre (those silly natives, eating other people and dancing around naked while wearing carved masks... seriously, this section could have been quite racist, as many of the pulps were, but manages to keep such a tongue-in-cheek tone and sense of humor that I ended up deciding not to be offended. Which offended me. I mean really, I live to be offended). Offered up on the altar next are ideas for using lost civilizations, brief tags for adventures based around jungles and lost civilizations, and a very quick guide to how to handle survival in harsh jungle conditions in game. This last section I quite liked, as it focused more on playing than on rules and gets the feel of pulp heroes using their wits to survive across quite well. All of these nifty rules – which I really would have liked to see in the main book, as they round out the game very nicely – are followed by another 5 part mini-campaign. Focusing on lost temples, exotic locations, and wild animals and natives the campaign manages to be both satisfyingly pulpy while also being completely different than the adventures in the main set.

The Good

If you're an old geek like me, you might remember the Lone Wolf CYOA books. These books had a very simple system and totally random character generation with few stats and little customization. Characters were made so quickly and so easily, and the system was so linear and direct that it was really just a bit silly. However, you could have an absolute and utter blast playing through those books. Even now, years later, I still like to go on the quest for the Summerswerd and sink the evil armada with a system that involved rolling random numbers on a ten sided dice to determine if you live or die. "Dime Heroes" captures that feeling again, in a multi-player rather than solo environment. Yes, c-gen is limited and random. Yes, the rules set is painfully over simple. But damn, this game is fun to just whip out and jam along with.

The best thing about "Dime Heroes," from the system, to the adventures, to the whole presentation of the book is that it is quick, it is easy, and it is fun. It makes RPing with a group of non-RPers on short notice and with little time not only doable, but a positive blast.

The Bad

"Dime Heroes" really needs another round with one of those ugly, crass, cruel, joy-sucking, writer-hating, soulless, disease infested, corpulent, priggish bastards like they keep around newspapers, publishing houses, and institutions for the criminal degenerate. What do they call 'em again? Oh yea: editors.

As an example, in the experience section it says, "If you survive a whole story, you get 1 Character Point for every person at the table. Put these points into Attributes, Skills, Blood, Guts, or Notoriety. You can also put Character Points into Wits."  Now, is that each character gets points equal to the number of players, or number of players and the GM, or everyone at the table gets one? I think it is the first, but it could be clearer. (It also leaves me wondering why characters in big groups get more experience.) Also, that section really need to be smacked down with a club, just like a baby seal, and stitched into a nice fur jacket. Something along the lines of: "At the end of a story characters gain 1 Advancement Point. Advancement Points are used to raise any statistic, other than Wealth, on a 1 per 1 basis."

No, these sorts of things are not as horrid as I've seen in many RPGs, and they certainly don't make the game unplayable. However, when you are dealing with a game that has such little space and short rules, every word must count. (Unlike in an online review, where I can babble like a monkey for pages and pages, just like I'm doing now. See, isn't it funny how much crap I can write, just typing on and on with no point or message at all....) The trend continues in the adventures, which though they present good material, often present it in a rather disorganized manner. In the very first adventure, for example, we get told what the villians do when they enter the scene, then what happens if the heroes chase them when they leave, what should happen as the end result of the scene, then what happens if they fight in the lab, then how the villains managed to make their daring raid. All the information is there, but it lacks a coherent, linear, and strongly stated format. There is also a slight tendency towards talking around an issue rather than stating it directly then nailing it down. I can't help but think that a bit more outlining and another rewrite would have cleared up these issues.

The Ugly

Down at the bottom of the character sheet there is an area marked "Vehicle" with boxes for various stats like Agility Rating and Structural Integrity. There are, however, no rules at all for vehicles in the book. Not one. Well, other than the possibility of having a jet pack or rocket ship. I would really have liked some vehicle rules, even if it made the 1PG rules become 1PG 1P rules. Come on guys, give us zeppelin armadas! (I strongly suspect that this will be featured in a future supplement. Of course, I also strongly suspect that I am a dung-beetle dreaming that I am a purple ninja kangaroo commando.)  Seriously though, having something on a character sheet and having no rules or explanations associated with it is an ugly little bit of business.

The End

In the end I found "Dime Heroes" to be a fun game with a system whose simplicity and fun level is much like the system from the Lone Wolf books. It works very well as a simple, fun game to play right out of the box. Its two primary flaws are that it needed tighter editing, and that more options are needed: vehicles, journeys to the moon, and so forth and so on.  With all that in mind, the game is still a decent value for it's price. If you want a detailed, massive, flexible game with long term characters and great campaign play, get Adventure! If, on the other hand, you want a game that is great for several nights of fun beer-n-pretzels gaming, or if you want some scenarios that could easily be stolen to make a RISUS Pulp mini-campaign, all for under 8 bucks, then "Dime Heroes" is worth picking up.