One of the main ways that most RPG players classify their games is "gritty versus cinematic". Gritty games tend to feature rules where the hit points are low, the dice are cruel and the game rewards clever execution over trusting in character abilities. Cinematic games lean into genre emulation over real world simulation, giving the players a chance to pull off awesome stunts by supporting them with mechanical support and making it difficult for characters to die because of one bad roll of the dice. Outgunned, by Two Little Mice, comes in hard on the cinematic side of the line as a celebration of wild action movies and modern cinema. Designers Riccardo “Rico” Sirignano and Simone Formicola have already won some hearts on this website with a pair of Silver Ennies for Best Game and Product of the Year. I was a backer of the game and am anxiously awaiting the next expansion which takes this game into pulp adventure territory sometime next year. Does Outgunned have my heart at dead bang? Let’s play to find out.
The system uses a pool of D6 that’s created from character attributes and skills. Instead of successes based on individual dice, success comes from matching rolls. A pair is a basic success all the way up to five of a kind is an impossible success. Difficulties can be adjusted by gaming and losing dice but GMs can also aim for complicated successes by splitting a roll into multiple tasks on the same roll. Driving a car might require a basic success, while shooting at the bad guys might require a critical success of three of a kind. There are a few different ways to reroll dice but once the final totals are set up players choose how their successes are applied. If you’ve only got a critical success, do you hit the bad guys but now have some car troubles to deal with or do you keep the car in the chase but miss the mastermind?
Failing forward is the name of the game here. The book offers some great suggestions on how players can still succeed but cause more problems for the players either now or later. Maybe the bad guys swerve into oncoming traffic making the next roll harder. Maybe police join the chase trying to force everyone off the road. There are also Dangerous rolls which can cost players Grit, the closest thing to hit points in the game. The difficulty of the roll determines how much Grit you lose if you fail, although lesser successes can absorb some of the hit. Losing Grit can also give characters conditions, which are semi-permanent penalties to dice pools like Looking Like A Fool or Looking Hurt. Grit also can trigger gains of Adrenaline which power some abilities. This simulates those classic action movie moments where the hero spits out some blood, racks their shotgun and charges back into the fray. In play, it can be fun to give scenes a little back and forth as players reroll attacks and describe how they duck behind cover in between volleys of two fisted gunfire before finally taking down a target.
Characters come together quickly by pairing a Role and a Trope. Roles are broad character classes like The Spy or The Brain and Tropes inform their personalities like Jerk With A Heart of Gold or Hot Stuff. These choices lock in players points in their skills and abilities while also accessing feats. Fests usually give free rerolls or bonusesin certain situations. The pair also gives the character a log line that sounds like it’s straight off a movie poster. He’s.A Brain With A Heart of Gold. She’s A Spy That’s Hot Stuff. Only they can stop...The Icarus Gambit!
If this sounds familiar, Outgunned has its roots in the pulp adventure game Broken Compass from the same designers. It also looks similar thanks to the gorgeous artwork of Daniela Giubellini who gives everything a movie poster in the lobby look (back when movies had posters that weren’t just all the actors photoshopped together in a column). This design refines that original work with concrete answers to rules questions and a better sense of the flow of play. While I’ll be keeping my Broken Compass stuff for the art and ideas, I’m running Outgunned for this style of game from here on out because it’s just a better game overall.
It’s also a game built with characters who remain fairly static. Action heroes don’t really change all that much during their sequels even as the stunts get bigger and the stakes get higher. This is not a game where zeroes become heroes even if one of the Roles is specifically built to play the regular person swept up in high action that someone like Jackie Chan often plays. Campaigns tend to run between five to eight sessions. The designers encourage game masters to think like producers and make each campaign one big movie. Though characters don’t grow that much, the game does have an XP rule that I love that really reflects the genre. Players gain an advancement before their final boss fight rather than after to reflect the classic moment in action movies where the hero busts out some new tech or bigger guns at the start of the final fight toYq put the bad guy away once and for all.
Outgunned embraces one of the grand traditions of RPGs by offering an unofficial setting based on popular media. World of Killers is for everyone that’s been hunting for a John Wick or Kill Bill RPG full of impeccably dressed killers, arcane intrigues and assassins that jet around the world to kill people in exotic locations. Action movie are often characterized as big, dumb and loud but I think this book offers the opportunity to play a game that mixes intense action with factional intrigue that fans of Vampire: The Masquerade would eat up with a spoon.
The company also released Action Flicks which offer small genre guides for everything from classic swashbuckling to legally distinct wars in the stars. These genre write up are eminently lootable for a baseline game as well, though I found the lack of a car centric “Furious Family” guide surprising given the popularity of a certain cinematic franchise. For fans who have a hard time picking one genre, the “Everything At Once” guide sounds like it would be a wild ride for a game by allowing players to switch genres multiple times within a campaign and, perhaps, even within sessions.
Bottom Line: Outgunned is the best cinematic action RPG since Feng Shui. Nothing else plays faster or more furiously.
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