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In H&H, players take on the role of one of the older (16 to 18 year old) students at St. Erisian’s school for girls. A tried and true institution nestled somewhere in the remote English countryside. And being remote is important, since St. Erisian girls are notorious for their rebellious attitudes, violent tempers, stock market trading, demonic summoning, and occasionally blowing holes in the space time continuum with technology that would leave Doctor Who scratching his head. They are the girls who will go off to lead the world, or kill the ones who lead it, or both. Whatever strikes their mood.
Character creation in H&H consists of picking a Clique, spending 5 points on Curriculum (i.e. Clique) skills, and then 15 more points to spend on out-of-Curriculum skills. It helps to have a broad education after all. Cliques are the stereotypical high school types: the jock (or Hockey Girl in this case), the Nerd, the Goth, the Japanese Exchange Student, and so on. Besides offering specific skills, each Clique also comes with a special ability. Perhaps it’s the power to turn the heads of men, or convince people you’re perfectly innocent, or to have contacts in debt to you. All in all, there are 9 Cliques to choose from. The only difference between Curriculum and non-Curriculum skills are how many points you have to spend and how high you can start with them (5 for Curriculum and 4 for non). Girls at St. Erisian are instructed in those fields deemed important for a young woman to learn. If the girls decide to take their lessons in Needlework and apply it to lock picking or use their Home Economics lab time to brew up some poison… well, the school is secluded for a reason. A wide range of skills are taught and listed on the character sheet, but almost all of them have applications that one wouldn’t normally consider. In terms of game play though, players quickly pick up on most of the more irregular uses of, say, Maths or Current Affairs. And reasons for those Religious Studies girls to be sneaking off at night (black robes and candles tucked away in their backpacks) shouldn’t be hard to fathom.
But how do the girls get things done? It’s a little bit involved. You roll a number of six-sided dice equal to your skill rating, and try to roll equal to or higher than a difficulty number ranging from 4 (easy) to 8 (impossible). Yes, I said 8. You can trade in 3 dice to lower the difficulty by a point. And you can also spend up to three points of Willpower (more on that in a bit) to add extra dice to your dice pool, on a one-for-one basis. There’s also an optional rule for Bidding under combat that would work well here I imagine. Bidding allows players to get an extra die by declaring some flavorful fluff relevant to the current action (the book only mentions combat, but I think expanding it adds a bit to the game). GMs can also bid as well, to remove dice from a player’s pool. Honestly, it feels like the traditional bonus and penalty modifiers more traditional systems might use, only here it’s rewarding player initiative and creativity rather than relying on someone to cross-reference a chart somewhere. Opposed rolls are determined with the winner being whoever gets the most successes. Ties can either be determined by each person rolling a single die with the winner being the high roller, or the GM can decide that “the prettiest one wins (of course it isn’t fair, but lets face it, that’s what happens)” to quote the book. GMs can also designate who has “the edge” before a roll is made, to determine in advance who gets the tie-breaking call; an interesting idea, especially for a system so rules light.
Combat in H&H is not realistic. And by not realistic, I mean “you just crashed the Physics professor’s experimental jet plane from five miles up and are going to be knocked out until I feel like it.” This isn’t a bad thing, and is in keeping with the over-the-top comedic action of the rest of the game. What is bad is that getting hurt not only means your impaired or unconscious (or comatose, or intangible, or whatever bad thing you got yourself into), but you also lose your Willpower. Your precious, precious Willpower that lets you get away with stuff and have the confidence to stand up to the other girls. And if the other girls sense weakness, they will pounce. No really, there’s a whole system for declaring someone your friend and then tearing her apart, and the perk for doing so is that it’s the only way to permanently increase your Willpower. And taking sides with the winner allows other girls to replenish their Willpower as well; if they choose the winner of course. So combat can’t kill you, but it can make you wish you were dead.
There are also some rules for hazard situations like fire, falling, drowning, hypothermia, explosives, and so on. Sometimes I think game designers include such things so their system seems more complete. Here I feel like it’s a challenge: “how can my character make use of things like fire, falling, drowning, hypothermia, explosives, and so on, when dealing that ^*&$@# in Physics class?!?!”
Now we explore the most important part of any role-playing experience. Of course I mean the cool powers your character gets to play with. In H&H you have one source of power: invoking the Goddess for magical energy to do horrible things with, and weird science. Correction, in H&H you have two sources of power: mad science, exploiting neopaganism, and making potions. Okay, you have three sources of power: using your Religious Studies texts to summon demons, abusing your chemistry set to ruin people’s lives, conducting horrible experiments that are an affront to both God and Science, and creating zombies. If there’s one thing besides cool powers all RPGs must have, it would be zombies.
To elaborate a bit, players can try to summon demons, build mad science devices, brew potions, and create zombie slaves. Characters in H&H can try these things as well, and are more likely to achieve success than their players. Summoning demons, harnessing magical energy, and creating zombie slaves all require Hollywood-style witches Sabbaths, with pentacles and candles and robes and more than one person (ideally). After completing the ritual, the target has a number of energy points. These points can be used to heal wounds, stand in for Willpower points in some ways, fire energy blasts, perceive other sources of magic, and drive you megalomaniacal with power. Energy points are also used to summon demons, which are beings of immense and game-breaking power. Basically they’re plot devices the players (and their characters) can control, for one task within the demon’s power. Zombies are the re-animated dead, but in H&H they are more about waiting for orders as they slowly fall apart and less about eating flesh and brains. Energy points unused however, will rapidly bleed out, and given the trouble it takes to collect them in the first place it’s likely characters will have a specific purpose in mind before seeking out other girls to help in the gathering.
The Laws of Man and God are interesting for two reasons. First, they are the limits which define how hard it is for a would-be mad scientist to do mad science. Secondly, it’s a trademarked term in the book. The game design theory used at Palladium Books is spreading I see, and that’s always worth a grin (I’m 99.8739% certain the author was joking with the trademark, give or take 99.8738 percentile points). Anyway, characters roll various skills depending on what they’re trying to make. Sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads would be a combination of several Skills, with variable difficulties (it’s easier to build the laser than it is to wire it into the shark’s brain for instance), and needing to pass a number of rolls equal to the number of Laws broken. It’s a neat idea, but the Laws are pretty vague, overlapping in places, and really feel like a fancy way to say “just tell the players these are the rules, quickly show them this page before taking it away, and then pick whatever number you like.” It seems the design theory used in the Paranoia RPG is also spreading, and that’s always worth sadistic cackling.
Potions are next. Like Mad Science or a summoned demon, potions can do anything. Like Magic, they’re exempt from the Laws of Man and God. The only real speed bump potion brewing has are that it can only effect one person at a time in a specific way and making a batch requires a truly esoteric ingredient (as determined by a handy little table). What the heck is the Smallest Laughter of Nightfall, or the Rotting Sadness of a Bat, and how do you get it in a slow cooker? Nobody ever said alchemy was supposed to be easy though.
Honestly, the rules for the various powers are kind of awkward and a bit sparse I think, but groups that don’t mind freewheeling games (and if you’re playing H&H you’d best be one of them) shouldn’t have any big problems. And for including three free-style systems for cool powers that actually feel different, it’s really impressive what H&H manages to pull off. I just wish it felt a little bit cleaner somehow.
Wrapping up the book are some adventure seeds, a pre-made adventure (decent), a random adventure generator (also decent), and a rather impressive reference list of relevant movies, shows, books, games, etcetera. There’s a few, all too brief, pages on the school’s faculty and staff and surroundings. Partly it needs more because it’s pretty sparse, and partly it needs more because I enjoyed what was there and am a greedy git that wants more of a good thing. There’s also some stuff on how to GM the game that is both relevant and surprisingly interesting. It’s also brief when it starts becoming more familiar and generalized, so that’s a plus.
“But I don’t want to play a gonzo game about girls at a private school in England!” There’s not a single word in that sentence that has to be held to. The book explores how setting the tone before play begins is important, the various powers can be dropped simply by refusing to let PCs (or NPCs for that matter) have them, boys can be added (and some quick and dirty rules variants are included for them), the angle of school girls gone amok can be dropped, and we can dump England for anywhere else in the world. Really, just dump England. Personally, I’d recommend Hawaii. Better climate, more volcanoes. In terms of design H&H is pretty modular, and easy to convert to different tastes. Having said that, I think it does an excellent job of making the idea of playing girls in an English private school filled with transdimensional accidents, misunderstandings with the mafia, and breaking curfew to seem like excellent fun.
Who Should Get This: Fans of comedic games like Paranoia or Toon, or fans of films like the “Apple Dumpling Gang” or (hang on a second) some series called “St. Trinians” should snatch this one up. People looking for something different and like indy games are also likely to be in for a treat.
Who Shouldn’t Get This: People looking for serious drama. While you could use H&H to recreate “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit” I think you’d lose a lot of the anarchic fun the game is designed around. Also, this game probably won’t convince more “traditionalist” gamers to embrace “indy” game design; it might, but I’m doubtful. Finally, those of you who hate the idea of playing teen age girls can obviously keep moving on. Oh sure there are options for playing boys (you just had to be a “unique snowflake” didn’t you?!?!) or even playing at a boys’ school, but that’s like wanting to play a cyborg in a game of D&D. For shame! Man up and put on a skirt!
Style: The interior art is great. School girls in uniforms beating up people, blowing up labs, and waving sticks around. The writing is pretty excellent too; funny, well edited, and it does a nice job engaging this reader. Layout is crisp and simple. There’s no index, but the table of contents is alright and things are fairly easy to find. And then there’s the cover…. I have nothing against attractive women dressed in school uniforms. But the cover of H&H is borderline “softcore fetish mag” material. People complain about the cover of Savant “& Labia” & Sorcerer for the Exalted gameline, but that’s subtle compared to this. It’s not that the cover to H&H is all that vulgar, but it’s much more sexualized than the actual game. One mistake (and this cover really is a mistake) isn’t worth lowering my score, but it does mean I’ll hide the book from random eyes. My one complaint (not to be confused with a mistake) is that the book uses English school terminology that is so much gibberish to me. “6th Form”, “1st Year”, “Biology”. Some sort of “English to American” language translation would’ve been nice. I’ll give it a solid 4 for style; the book is fun to read, and it really captures a feel I’d never considered before.
Substance: Honestly, it’s got some neat ideas and mechanics, but mainly it kinda’ makes me want to pretend to be a teenage girl getting into trouble. And not in the “internet chat room” sense. I’ve got to give it a very, very, very high 4 for that. I’d rate it higher if I felt it had more potential for long term play, and perhaps more support for guiding character through different stages at St. Erisian. And maybe more information on the school itself. Actually, there’s a lot of stuff I’d like. But really, just making me actively want to play something I wouldn’t normally be interested is worth a 4 for substance.
Conclusion: In all seriousness, I went in thinking this would be some weird sort of pervy thing, and the cover did nothing to help alleviate me of that false assumption. What I found instead was a surprisingly well written indy game that sold me on a genre I’d never have considered before. It might be a hard sell for most groups, which is a shame because it’s a quite clever little product, but Hellcats & Hockeysticks is a really impressive little book. Kudos!
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