The hubbub
Over Presidents Day weekend as is my ritual I attended Con of the North, the local tabletop gaming convention here in the Twin Cities.
One of the two games I ran was Tales From the Loop. The game has generated a lot of buzz winning a lot of awards this summer, all well deserved, the game was the darling of this years ENie awards.
The nostalgia
I first discovered the universe of The Loop when art by Simon Stålenhag started popping up in my instagram feed. The art showed the landscape of a 1980s similar but different from our own. A world of robots, weird science, a world changed by discoveries made possible by supercolliders aka Loops! Juxtaposed with the weird science are normal kids doing kid like things in this fantastical world that the adults take for granted.
This is the space where the game lives. Player characters are tweens and early teens living near a supercollider and dealing with kid problems and Loop related weirdness. The kids largely fend for them selves, adults are too busy adulting to notice or care about the wonders or the weirdness.
The game hits all those sweet spots if 80s nostalgia that Stranger Things hits for the Gen X set. No worries the game is still fun for folks under 40. My players at the con ranged from twenty somethings to 40 somethings. If you have seen 80 kid flicks and teen movies you will be just fine, although the lack of cell phones can be a bit jarring for some.
The game features a nice guide to the 80s so you can get the feel of things.
System and gameplay
TFTL is very rules light. The basic dice mechanic is a pool of D6s consisting of an attribute plus any applicable skill. The system puts player agency first and is very narrative. The game works best when players run with the story elements the GM lays out.
In my convention game the players added things into the story that took it into many interesting directions that I wouldn’t have planned or even occurred to me. The unobtrusive rules allow the story to keep rolling.
The game does have a GM screen and it is great all of the minimal crunch fits nicely on the 3 panels. I only had to open the book once during the game almost all rules questions are dealt with in the screen.
Final thoughts
In the whole this is a beautiful game inside and out. It has an elegant rules set that stays out of the way and lets you tell a story with your friends that will leave you wanting to delve deeper into the world.
veg-geek 