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Heads or Tales
by Jim B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/28/2020 10:55:37

Heads or Tales is great storytelling fun. According to your preference, make it all up on the spot or plan some material ahead of time (situations, characters, locations, items, etc.). Be ready to "run with it and have fun" during play. If your group can't approach this as improvised group storytelling, or if you can't bear to do without rules crunch, this isn't the RPG for you. We played this over video chat (because of the pandemic and geography). It worked out just fine because our group can use the honor system for flipping coins and eating tokens (yeah, eating your do-over tokens is a thing). If you have a player who isn't adept at making stuff up on the spot, let them plan ahead a little, or let other players suggest stuff during play when needed. If a player hates making stuff up on the fly, they might not enjoy this unless they're content to leave the improv to the other players.

The coin flip resolution mechanism is dead simple. You know an RPG is dead simple when the core rule "book" is all of two pages long, and when the genre-specific supplements are one page each. Everything has a 50/50 chance, so instead of scaling the odds, we scaled the task until 50/50 felt about right. Is kicking in the door too easy for 50/50? Make success automatic instead, or declare you're not only kicking in the door, you're also dealing with whatever is behind it (if that feels like a good 50/50 task). Is taking down that dragon too hard for a single 50/50 coin toss? Come up with a couple or three successive challenges (which are 50/50 each).

Recall basic probability: Estimate that roughly half of the coin tosses will fail, and therefore have consequences (injuries, mistakes, unwanted attention, unexpected delays, comical pratfalls, or whatever you make up on the spot). If you guess that your three players will face four or so coin tosses each, for example, realize that you could easily have about six mishaps along the way. Don't make the consequences too harsh or the characters aren't likely to survive past the first couple of challenges. The do-over tokens help offset the "house always wins" outcome.

My advice is to minimize the number of coin tosses. Don't toss a coin unless both outcomes are plausible, fun, exciting, interesting, or relevant in some way. If one outcome is far more interesting than the other, skip the coin toss and go with the fun outcome. Save the coin tosses for the best moments.

The genre-specific supplements are good. They use a series of coin flips to establish a situation. In a Wild West setting, your situation could be: "The problem is outlaws. The sheriff is dead. You're on a ranch." In a science fiction setting: "Your destination is a space station. Your ship is in red alert. You're searching for a piece of lost technology."

Each supplement suggests some character archetypes. In the fantasy setting, "I'm a wizard" could be the full extent or your character creation process. Or maybe you'll punch it up with a descriptive adjective or two, or you'll declare yourself a member of some order of wizards. In the "run with it" spirit, we didn't worry about specific powers, limitations, or equipment. If you're a wizard, you can do wizard stuff and you have wizard stuff. That's enough to just run with it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Heads or Tales
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Heads or Tales
by Mark C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/11/2017 12:32:56

Even an RPG newbie like me can jump right into this. And it allows enough freedom so my experienced RPG friends can create super cool elaborate worlds that we all love! Definitely check this out!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Heads or Tales
by Timothy C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/08/2017 13:49:06

I'm fairly new to RPGs, so I greatly appreciate the simplicity of of the rules of this game. This game allows me and my friends to craft interesting stories without bogging down the narrative with overly complex rules. I recommend this to anyone! (Also, the expansions are pretty cool too)



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Heads or Tales
by Colin I. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/07/2017 15:31:01

This system works well for those just beginning to get involved with role-playing as well as frequent visitors to Castle Raven Loft.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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