Day 29th: Kacklin, Garbarge & Glory

 This is it, only two more characters to go after this one, for Day 29! I'm still debating on what I should do for the final character, I have a goofy idea in mind that would take some effort. I'm excited for it and it should be fun to do, but I'm also very exhausted off this January so going easy and just bullshitting a Fate: Accelerated character is kinda tempting! But, that's a problem for the future, instead for today I'm continuing that streak of showcasing some games I haven't before from my Kickstarter list. I would have also liked to maybe do a Shin Megami Tensei character, but I won't get the physical book in time, despite having pre-ordered my book two years ago. Anyway, today I did Wet Ink Games' Garbage & Glory, one of several Raccoon based TTRPG that cropped up in recent years, I know I got at least 3 of them lying around, probably more from bundles on Itch.Io and one page RPGs and such. I don't think I'll write a lot today, the system seems fairly serviceable and I can see people enjoying it, but I don't think I liked it much. Maybe it's just the tired talking though.

Starting with the positive, the concept is pretty cute, we're playing as raccoons in a sort of Saturday cartoon universe where raccoons and some other animals have a secret society, can do magic and live in a sort of heighten fantasy version of the modern world and have magical adventures. We aren't playing as raccoons going on adventure, though, we're playing raccoons telling each others about the adventures they've had previously. Now, I haven't read the book cover to cover, mostly just the gameplay basic and character creation, but it seems like that premise isn't all that core to the actual gameplay, you could excise it pretty handily and have the game be a standard D&D style romp with raccoons and garbage can mimics if you wanted with no actual change. Instead of a traditional 1 GM and several players, this seemed pretty ripe for GM-less play or some sort of guiding play mechanic where the main narrator switch around scenes to scenes. Missed opportunity there.

The game is also using a dice pool system, throwing as many d6 as you have rank in the relevant skill, counting 5-6 as success. There's some clever addition too, where the attribute linked to the skill also lets you manipulate the dice rolls in various way, you also get two decks of cards, one for Glory and one for Garbage, that you can use to further modify the dice rolls. I've made my general dislike of dice pool systems known a few time already, so I'll just say that I feel like the amount of success you need every time the game gave an example is much too high even with the dice manipulation aspect of the system. Pretty much all the example of play have the character fail, which isn't great. Now, maybe you'll say "But cute raccoon trying to do wild thing and failing is pretty funny, wouldn't that be great to describe?" which I'll allow, a system that favors failure could make sense, in theory PBTA games are supposed to push partial success as the more common result, but this game outright states that a failed roll result in nothing happening. That has to be the most boring outcome possible, don't do that! Also, I think the cards you hold at the end of an adventure is how you level up, so you probably don't want to use too many of them. Second also, you take damage directly to your attribute, so you also have the death spiral effect that the more you get hurt, the less you are able to modify your roll and the more unlikely you are to ever succeed. Bummer.

 Anyway, character creation is pretty easy, you pick one of the 8 class, which give you base attribute and two skills at rank 1, then a choice of a special ability and a class skill between two option each. Then you gain a few extra attribute ranks to distribute between the three attributes of Brawn, Smarts and Courage, you also select two other skills that you know but have no ranks in until you distribute 4 ranks across the 5 skills you have. You then select a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, but I didn't read close enough and didn't realized attacks are dependent on two specific skills and didn't put any of my few points in them, so I didn't bother picking any weapon. I was supposed to also draw cards to create my starting hands, but it doesn't really inform much until I actually use them in play so couldn't be bothered. I made a mage raccoon, so I did get to pick two spells, but the realization that the success rate was so low just took the wind out of my sails and I couldn't get excited for the spell list.

 I feel a little bad for how unenthusiastic I ended up being for this game, it really doesn't seems like a cynical cashgrab using a memey animal to get click! They could have made this a poorly adapted D&D 5e based game full of of sloppy AI art, but they didn't! The illustration are very cute and fun, honestly I'm happy I grabbed the game even if just for that. Please, do give it a look, maybe you'll love it more than I did!