The Real Thingwhich we are talking about in the review, is a role-playing game introspective of mold cinematiccreated by the group Accidental Cyclops Games. The game world is based on the 1989 musical album of the same name by Faith No More.
Drawing inspiration from the lyrics of the songs and using an adaptation of the game system Powered By The Apocalypsethe authors brought one to life 90's style sandbox scenariorun by a Narrator (the Game Master) and experienced by players in the role of ordinary people, involved in stories without heroes, but full of acts of heroism and personal growth.
The story is you
The manual of The Real Thing presents itself with illustrations similar to a album of cut scenesin black and white, maintaining a 90s atmosphere heavy but cheerful, due to the topics covered. As mentioned, the manual makes use of the themes present in the songs of the Faith No Moresuch as trauma, drug use, violence and sex, to create scenarios and provide ideas for players to narrate the stories associated with their characters.
Each character is represented by a archetype in person (class), as a artist or a architectwith three narrative veins created by players to describe their character and past. Character abilities are divided into 6 attributes main (Awareness, Intellect, Candies, Relationship, Reflexes And Subtlety) which determine their competence in passing the tests.
Narrative apocalypse
Accidental Cyclops Games has adopted an adaptation of the system Powered By The Apocalypsea system that wants to push the narrative through the moves of the players. Starting from a scene provided by the Storyteller, the player describes his actions and determines the outcome with the roll of two D6 added to the value of the attribute involved in the test. All scores from 1 to 6 are considered a failurefrom 7 to 9 a partial successand 10 to 12 a total success. The failure of a move is not always a negative element: of course, it entails malus, causing mental and physical damage complications And injuriesbut also leads to new ones discoveries by the character.
The discoveries they enrich one of the three narrative veins of the characters by adding new elements to the story, they are also used as milestones in the progression of the archetypes, as once five discoveries have been reached the player will be able to obtain one of the advanced moves present on the manual page relating to the archetype concerned.
The complications they are mental trauma obtained after a character has reached or exceeded his maximum stress threshold (calculated with Ratio +3) and used the Re-Center move to recover from accumulated stress. This trauma provides penalties on attributes for the duration of the story, and can be of three different types depending on the narrative, such as:
- A phobia on an element of the setting, capable of inflicting a -1 penalty on all courage checks (defined by Report);
- From the hallucinations on the past ties of the characters, described in their stories or discoveries, which will cause a -1 penalty in all environmental perception tests (Awareness);
- There paranoiacapable of undermining relationships with other characters, will cause a -1 penalty on finesse checks (Subtlety).
The injuries unlike complications, they are physical trauma obtained after the loss of all hit points (calculated with Might plus 3) and the consequent execution of the Second Wind move, capable of restoring lost hit points. The injuries, like the complications, persist throughout the history and can be of three types, such as:
- A broken armcapable of impacting strength tests with a minus one (Might);
- Broken ribswhich will influence the reflex tests with a minus one (Reflexes);
- An extortionwhich will affect intellect tests (Intellect) with a minus one.
Performing certain moves or progressing the narrative allows players to stack up advantages and disadvantages. The particular thing about these is that some moves you implement can provide two different types of advantages or disadvantages: the Forward And the Ongoing. The former, depending on how it was obtained, adds a positive or negative value to the result of the following move, while Ongoing is applied to all moves until the end of a scene.
A discovery after every challenge
In The Real Thing it's more about the journey than the destination, and each journey presents new things discoveries and challenges step by step. The challenges they lead us to face real and imaginary problemsnot limiting itself to imposing an objective value to be achieved, but providing complications by reducing the possible approaches available to us.
A complex challenge can be represented, for example, by having to face a ferocious animal, which will have an arsenal of dedicated moves, a high number of hit points, as well as modifiers on its contextual abilities: the speed of a leopard will impose a penalty on tests based on reflexes or the might of a bear will impose a penalty on strength tests. There can be challenges too environmentaland possess special moves/actions/conditions: our protagonists could, for example, find themselves defusing a bomb, which during their turn uses a move to reduce its timer.
Reality and illusion
The Real Thing Of Accidental Cyclops Games is a very flexible role-playing game, which deals with delicate themes to the tune of the famous group Faith No More. On this line, from the middle of the manual we find thepilot adventure which will catapult our protagonists into the heart of a rave towards psychedelic journeys and stoned vampires. The manual it is easy to interpret and full of references taken from the verses of the famous band. The journey down memory lane and the possibility of playing with a dedicated soundtrack will be an exciting experience for everyone, and especially for the older ones fan by Faith No More.
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