 Goto [ Index ] |
Such a beast is difficult to quantify, but it would definitely need ninjas, and robots, and pirates, and perhaps, just perhaps, a couple of monkeys. Nothing else would suffice! The demand for monkeys must be met or else doom upon the land!
Thus enters Chad Underkoffler’s newest addition to the small, cheap PDF RPG scene: Monkeys, Ninjas, Pirates and Robots: the Roleplaying Game, based loosely on the card game of the same name from Atomic Sock Monkey Press.
What is this Strange Game You Speak Of?
MNPR: the RPG is the story of monkeys, robots, pirates, and ninjas, their quest to gather sweet, sweet uranium, defeat their Blood Enemies in brutal Challenges to the really quite tired, and protect the Earth from mysterious, strange, and badly coifed alien invaders with squiggy heads. Characters must acquire cool in the form of Mojo, the ultimate in suave funky awesomeness by being cool and funkily awesome.
Who should prevail? Ninjas? Pirates? Robots? Or, the ever elusive but so adorable Poo-Flinging Simian of Doom?
System
MNPR: the RPG uses the same Prose Descriptive Qualities, or PDQ, system as introduced in Dead Inside. For the uninitiated, PDQ is a very fast, lightweight and easy FUDGE-like system using general qualities as quantifiers for skills, equipment, headquarters, vehicles, or anything that needs a description. Chad designed the system for fast play, few rules arguments, and blazing skill/task resolution.
A quick read through Chad’s loving examples of play, further into the book, and his thoughts on system become obvious: more talk, more action, and less worrying about hit tables. MNPR: the RPG is no place for fatal foot wound lookup tables – although it has plenty of room for the comedy of a good, solid fatal foot wound.
Character Generation
Character generation has seven steps: pick a name, pick a race, pick a Goal, pick some qualities, pick a weakness, roll starting Mojo, and play. Each of the four main races comes with a lifestyle, Gift, a headquarters, a pile of likes and dislikes, and the desire for sweet, sweet uranium. For example, monkeys have an innate advantage in social situations (monkeys are cute), live in the Monkey Haus, like Pirates, and want to roll in uranium because it makes them smart. On the other hand, Robots have the Gift of logic, live in a Robot Factory, like Pirates, and need uranium for their robotic upgrades.
Goals are what the character desires in life. The example character of Salty Dave, Pirate Accountant dreams of burying the world’s biggest pirate treasure, while the monkey Jimbo just wants to party. Goals can be world sweeping from “save the Earth” to “eat bananas.”
Qualities describe a character’s talents, skills, and flaws. Qualities cast a “penumbra,” or have an umbrella over a large set of generic bodies of knowledge. For example, a monkey knows how to do monkey things, while a ninja knows how to be sneaky and stabby. Qualities have ranks, which describe how powerful they are. They increase by 2, so Qualities are of a power -2/0/+2/+4/+6. Weaknesses are a Quality, and work exactly like a normal one except as a hindrance instead of a help.
Qualities are simply nouns and verbs, for the most part. The game warns about modifiers; players should focus on verbs and nouns for their qualities exclusively.
Bug:: I found the example lists of qualities to be a little bit on the unbalanced side. They are definitely funny, but “Nice Pants” is not as powerful as “Armour Plated.” It seemed like a potential problem for conflict. (Of course, I would always pick the shiny nice pants.) Also, I found the list of qualities to be a bit short; I desperately wanted a longer list.
Combat
Combat comes in the form of Challenges. Challenges may be conceptual (a chess match or a cook-off), static (climbing a wall or picking a lock) or actual face-to-face combat. Challenges are simple: everyone rolls and whoever has the highest number wins. The difference between the winning roll and the losing roll is the amount of damage. Damage imposes penalties on the loser, who must then penalize various Qualities. When the loser has no more Qualities to penalize, he loses the fight. The player is in complete control of where the damage is applied and how.
Characters may Upshift/Downshift to give more damage or take more damage during a Challenge. Basically, an Upshift allows the player to increase a Quality by one rank (+2) for the duration of the Challenge. A Downshift forces the player to decrease a Quality by one rank (-2) for the duration of the Challenge. “Taking it on the Chin” allows a character to voluntarily Dowhshift a Quality to ignore damage for the duration of the Challenge.
Whoever wins gets one of the loser’s Mojo. The loser must give up the Mojo or face instant death.
Note – Chad’s loving, multi-page examples of combat, both actual combat and conceptual combat, are wonderful and extremely helpful in bringing the entire game together. Overall, I found the representation of combat to be fast, easy and fun. The design emphasises picking the game up quickly and playing immediately.
Mojo and Uranium
Players collect Mojo to do “cool stuff.” Each different type can do different, cooler things for the price of Mojo, from turning invisible to singing sea shanties to fusing Robots together to make a single, super Robot. Players are encouraged to be as strange and bizarre with their Mojo as possible. GMs are encouraged to repay crazy antics with more Mojo, so Mojo begets Mojo. The more Mojo the player earns, the more strange things he or she can do with the Mojo so the player can earn more Mojo -- all with the aim of getting toward the character's ultimate yet strange Goal.
The aim of the Mojo is to get at the sweet, sweet Uranium. The core here is comedy gold: to fuse with the Uranium and get more Mojo, the character must eat the Uranium. The image of a monkey gorging herself on large, radioactive chunks of Uranium is a bit disturbing, but there you have it. The scene of eating the Uranium is, undoubtedly, Comedy Gold.
Game Master Section
MNPR’s Game Master Section covers the bad guys, Aliens, the construction of various toys, and some firm game mastering advice. The GMing advice is general: how to build NPCs, how to stage a scene, how to recruit players, and how to help players create their characters. It is good solid advice, and helpful to GMs getting their feet wet, but it is the standard advice in almost every RPG book. Chad does offer one very important piece of advice: have a sense of humour while running this game.
The GM section also has a loving piece on the Aliens, including their strange Mojo-riffic powers, their UFOs, and their driving need for Uranium. It is unclear if these guys are good, evil, sleazy, or just dumb. The advice makes it clear that this decision is in the hands of the Game Master. If the Aliens are anything, they are definitely entertaining with the powers to Probe, make Crop Circles, and use spooky Telepathy. Beware the player who defeats an Alien, and converts Alien Mojo to a Quality – strange things can occur, strange and unnatural!
The rest of the section includes Critters (although no bears), creating vehicles, headquarters, and equipment for player characters. All extras in MNPR build on the same Quality system from PDQ as the characters. No surprises lurk here, although the lists are surprisingly complete and should be enough for players to start playing "out of the box." The section is solid, although I was momentarily confused between car (sport) and sport utility vehicle.
The Dubiousness of the Artwork
I must mention the art – the fine, fine stick figure art. This is low budge theatre, and nothing says low budget like stick figures. Hilariously, though, it works for MNPR: the RPG. The game does not take itself seriously, and putting in high-brow full color matte paintings would destroy the effect. The art is much like that of Kingdom of Loathing. There is something to be said for the pure honesty of the low budget production, and here, it works stunningly well.
I love the stick figure art. It works.
Final Say in the Matter
The game ends with a complete small adventure featuring the player characters vs. a motorcycle-owning evil Ninja clan. No giving away the twists here, but the adventure comes complete with NPC sheets, red herrings, maps, and suggestions for alternative play.
For the few flaws, MNPR: the RPG is a great beer and pretzels game. It is definitely a great and entertaining read. Chad goes out of his way to pepper the game with entertaining examples and goofy asides. It is solid, workable – and cheap! Yes, cheap. The game comes highly recommended. If you are a fan of monkeys, ninjas, pirates and robots – and who isn’t? – you will get a kick out of the game.
Monkeys, Ninjas, Pirates and Robots: the Roleplaying game is available at RPGNow.com for $8.
Please help support RPGnet by purchasing the following (probably) related items through DriveThruRPG.
