“Try Before You Buy” is an occasional segment of Astral Projections. It spotlights free (or nearly free) supplements, quick-start rules, and modules for various RPGs.
Save Game is a FATE World of Adventure, a retro campaign setting celebrating 8 bit video games. Like Wreck-It Ralph and its upcoming sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet, it takes place inside the “universe” where all these old games and characters “live.” The premise is that some sort of Glitch is infecting these inhabitants and slowly taking over their areas, and is about to conquer the last holdouts, unless stopped. The PCs are game heroes who have volunteered to take out the BBEG leaders–themselves once heroes of famous games.
Like many FATE settings, this one has variants of the standard FATE mechanics. In this case, they mimic the tropes of the games. Coins, Hearts, and Lives replace the familiar Fate Points, Stress Boxes, and Consequences and some may be used in other ways. There’s a store PCs can visit in just about any part of the game world and spend Coins on gear, for example. Plus suggested GM options for the proprietor…
Player Character stats are the standard High Concept and Aspects, plus Stunts and Skills. The Stunts and Skills are a little different in some ways from FATE Core, again to make play feel more like playing an 8 Bit video game.
There are five different “games” for PCs to defeat, one for each Zero (BBEG, Boss). They are from a variety of video game genres, such as a vampire’s castle (Templevania) and rescuing a princess (Opera Fortress). The Stage Select chapter covers three ways to run the campaign. A “speedrun,” for a single session, such as a con game or change-of-pace from a group’s normal game. I am not sure if a speedrun would really work for a con session, even though it is described as mainly just the Boss Fight for each area plus a small amount of downtime between.. The text says that, “We’ve found that one sidequest and one big battle with a Zero takes most of an evening.” So I can’t see fitting five Boss Fights into an average con slot.
The longest play time option is a “metroidvania,” a campaign which gives parties time to explore each game area, including all or most of its sidequests, before taking on the local Zero. In between, in time and depth, is the default, where each game session (called a “scene”) is devoted to one game world. This sounds like the semi-open world adventuring games to me and might be a lot of fun for an RPG group with players who also like those video games.
Save Game looks like good fun for up to five (more, if doing the metroidvania style) sessions, although, as I mentioned above, I have my doubts about whether it would actually work as a con game. The 56 page color PDF is available on DriveThru RPG as a Pay-What-You-Want title (suggested payment is US$4) or at Evil Hat Productions ($10 for book plus PDF or $4 PDF only).
Linda Whitson
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