I’m an enormous fan of CAPERS, Craig’s award successful RPG of people wielding superpowers throughout Prohibition. It makes use of a card base mechanic that implies a type of playing that completely fits the hedonism of the period’s recreations. Cards and playing put towards a world of gangsters and speakeasys is storytelling and mechanical perfection, providing gameplay that enhances the in-game tradition of the setting. Because of my excessive esteem for CAPERS, I’m at all times looking out for Craig’s subsequent thought. When I obtained a preview at Gen Con 2022 of Code Warriors, Craig Campbell’s subsequent full RPG, I used to be to see if he might mix parts once more to create one thing wonderful. To my delight, with Code Warriors, Craig Campbell strikes once more!

To get into the mindset of this tabletop roleplaying sport, take Tron, Wreck-It Ralph, Ready Player One, The Matrix, and any story of the characters inside the pc, then pull the plug. Code Warriors tells the story of these applications as their system fails and their world involves an finish. Think Disney household enjoyable seen by means of the pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy lenses of MÖRK BORG’s ambiance. The juxtaposition of those parts creates a stronger complete. Humans going by means of an apocalypse has been executed, however pc applications going through a complete system failure of their pc, that’s a recent coat of level for the idea.

Code Warriors is 192 pages of setting, guidelines, NPCs, aberrants (monsters), and system hazards. The core system runs on Trait Checks involving 4 Traits (Body, Mind, Charm, and Heart). During character creation, you’ll decide your Program Type (your class) and quite a lot of particulars to develop your character background whereas offering a cause to care in regards to the finish of the system. Despite the summer time tentpole inspiration for this RPG, the tone leans in direction of severe and even somber. With the tip close to, this RPG requires a session zero to determine on the general tone of the RPG. While it might be addressed as a severe tackle the thought of residing applications (and the sport feels good for that), your gaming desk might want to talk about how severe the world shall be.

Be ready: for Code Warriors you’ll want six d8s. If you’re at house, you could have no less than twenty d8s or you wouldn’t have clicked on this text. Hey, you’re a gamer and cube are life, all of us stay that fact! However, I don’t journey with six of any kind of die save for d6s and d10s. If you’re like me and have the cube at house, ensure you pack a couple of further d8s should you signal as much as play this RPG at a conference.

For a verify to perform any motion (ability, fight, and so on.), decide a Trait and roll that variety of d8s towards a Target Number between 5 and eight. You must roll no less than one success to succeed at any Trait Check. Additional successes provide boons to boost the outcomes. In fight, your character will assault and defend, because the GM won’t roll cube on this RPG. Damage can result in Glitches as your program degenerates. Like many RPGs that contact on expertise as a base, this one presents quite a lot of upgrades to customise your character.

The setting has two eras, “Before the Collapse” and “During the Collapse”. When the pc is operating, life is OK. When the Collapse begins, so begins the collapse of pc society. In phrases of the general tone of helplessness and despair, the sport presents three modes. Easy Mode is the world of most post-apocalyptic films; it’s unhealthy however life finds a manner. Hard Mode ratchets up the strain as the tip is eventual, although it could be not quickly. While Easy suggests the world will go on in a lowered gear, Hard implies that this case is momentary and the gears might ultimately strip. Finally, there may be Hopeless Mode, the transmission goes to die on the following gear shift and with it, this journey. Hopeless Mode is the MÖRK BORG ambiance I discussed earlier, making a darkish choice inside a style that leans in direction of action-adventure, not grimdark. If you go along with Hopeless, the tip is inevitable.

Environmentally, the world is a program very similar to Tron the place there are plains, some bodily options, and “rivers,” however there’s no climate, no animal life, no solar or moon (although there are cycles that quantity to day and evening). Ultimately, the strangeness of the setting is its disconnection from our on a regular basis background. No breeze, no AC, no warmth, no snow, no animal noises, simply terrain and applications. It is perhaps like being on the moon; there’s a world, but it surely’s not like Earth.

Graphically, Dan Morison delivers a Transformers G1 Marvel Comics vibe with sure parts. His grids recall Tron, particularly the graphics of the TRON: Uprising TV collection. The coloration scheme is a vibrant imaginative and prescient of Decepticons within the desert. Taken as an entire, the paintings expresses the world, it conveys the robots-in-Mad Max idea that’s the root of this setting.

Is Code Warriors a subsequent degree hit just like the award successful CAPERS or NerdBurger Games’ ENNIE nominated Good Strong Hands? Conceptually, Code Warriors has a stronger draw than any NerdBurger Game thus far. Turning worlds like Tron and Wreck-It Ralph into apocalyptic ideas is a degree of inventive brilliance that ought to flip heads in Hollywood, comics, and sci-fi novels. This is an RPG so, like all RPG, it may be introduced in a number of methods, however this one would possibly profit from a severe tone. Heroes battling towards the inconceivable will create tales of nice heroism. NerdBurger Games’ Code Warriors guarantees a glitchy apocalypse that solely your finest applications will discover hope in. As an RPG, Code Warriors reaches NerdBurger Games’ lofty heights of originality and creativity.

CODE WARRIORS

• Published by NerdBurger Games LLC
• “Upgrade your Code. Avoid Deletion. Survive the Collapse. Rebuild Your World.”
• Game Design and Layout: Craig Campbell (he/him)
• Additional Design: Chris Boyer (he/him)
• Editing: Ginny Loveday (she/her)
• Graphic Design: AnitaWiebe (she/they)
• Illustrations and Cartography: Dan Morison (he/him)

DISCLAIMER: Egg Embry has attended gaming and comedian ebook conventions with NerdBurger Games. He participates within the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Associate. These applications present promoting charges by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Games, and Amazon.