Visuals & Layout

It's hard to comment on a game which has no visuals, so I'll keep this strictly to the layout section. It's layed out in a fairly logical order, progressing quickly from character creation to gameplay, with the obligatory "What you need to Play" right up in the front. The font used (Courier New) is easy on the eyes, and large enough that it's easy to read when printed. More bonus points to the game come in the fact that it can be printed out easily, even using an old Ink Ribbon printer.

All in all, it's a decently put together product.

Minor Gripes: Character creation tells you how to use the Attitude you get for the six skills the game has, but doesn't tell you how much you get untill after it lists the skills in detail. This really should have been switched around for clarity... but given that this product is six pages long, it's a minor gripe at best.

Content

This is where the game shines.

It's simple, and easy to run. Between the game itself (the first three pages) and Terminal Blitz, the adventure generator (the second three pages) you'll have everything you'd ever need to run the game. It's fantastic for pick up and play.

In fact, I didn't playtest this game by inflicting it on my RPing group, which tends to prefer the more sophisticated games. I played it with a pair of my friends while we were getting hammered. Completely drunk and with two of my friends (also completely drunk) never having played a roleplaying game before, we still ran into no problems throughout the course of the entire game. We had fun for a solid three hours of play, when the session finished.

The system itself is a simple roll under system, where you roll a die and if you get under your skill, you succeed. The six skills (one of which is the catchall "Basically Worthless Stuff!") cover everything a hero needs for an action movie. Simple rules for the mooks keep 'em from killing the heroes (basically rendering them unable to do much more than die or get in the way) and keep the conflict between the heroes and the main villains.

The character's health is determined simply by attitude. The more of a badass you are, the harder you are to take down. Simple, elegant, and in-genre. I loved it on sight.

As a devious little bonus, it's never the head villain who's the main opponent. He's just a mook with some social power, meaning he's useless against you when you've chucked his younger, military-trained brother off the side of the building... meaning he's easy to kill even for heroes who've been sufficiently drained by their opponents.

Minor Gripes: RANDOM ROLL CHARACTER CREATION!!! GAAAAAH! If there's one thing which can spoil a Hero's day, it's rolling a 7 on his 3d6 roll to determine how much "Attitude" he has. Thankfully my two friends both rolled a 12 and an 11 for their characters, but in a larger group I can easily see having one person get lucky and having their hero be the showstealer, since the entire game rests on your character's Attitude score.

Unfortunately, despite the implication that this should be used for multi-session games, Bad Attitudes could never stand up to the sustained play a group might want to run it through. Skills go up pretty quickly, and it wouldn't take more than a couple sessions for the heroes to resemble each other perfectly.

Conclusion

This is a fantastic little game to just pick up and play when you're feeling like doing something a little lighter for your gaming sessions. I recommend it for everybody who occasionally indulges in the occasional "light" game, perhaps even just as a break.

Just remember what John McClane says: the Master Villain and the Right-Hand Man can't come back if you throw them off buildings or blow up their planes!

Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.