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A couple of years ago, a tabletop RPG inspired by Zelda, D&D, and Studio Ghibli set the world on fire… and now the award-winning game is doing it again with an all-new campaign.
BREAK!! is currently crowdfunding for its first ever adventure, START, and fans have gone just as wild for this project. In fact, it's earned more than $143,800 at the time of writing against a $27K goal (a feat not many of the best tabletop RPGs achieve), and the campaign has also won an official Kickstarter 'Project We Love' seal of approval.
If you want to see what the fuss is about, you can try BREAK!! by grabbing the core rules or a PDF of them direct from the developers. (The physical rulebook is currently out of stock via Amazon US, if you were wondering, but I was able to find it for £47.60 at Amazon UK.)
"With START we got to flesh out part of that region, where people have an almost literal 'points of light' situation where they live in a network of small towns illuminated by lanterns, old machines, that sort of thing," BREAK!! co-creator Reynaldo Madriñan tells me. "The main scenario of START deals with the players trying to help out a family in one of those towns as they enter an old world structure and deal with overgrown magical plantlife and old magitech devices to try and find something that might cure a disease known as the Shadowblight."
From movies to unkillable houseplants
Originally, what would evolve into START began life as a small adventure site at the end of the core book. However, partway through development the team decided that there was a chance to "really flesh out the idea into something bigger and more evocative."
The trouble with creating something "bigger and more evocative" in a whole new world is the blank page effect; there are so many different directions you could go in. That was certainly the case with START, which won out against two other distinct adventure pitches that weren't as good fits for a starting scenario.
"I tried really hard to listen to the essence of what people wanted for BREAK!! - there is a strong desire for a monster book, as another example - but one of the main things was more ready-to-use material and ways to introduce the game to a group," Madriñan says. "The book provides you a lot of ways to make your own stuff which is essential for a core rulebook, but things like adventure paths and all are popular for good reason! So we settled on something that was a combination of ready-made scenarios and rules to START off a game with a sprinkling of additional character options and tips."
"The whole region used to be a series of amusement parks and recreational areas crafted at the behest of a mage knight in a previous era," Madriñan reveals, "so there are a lot of quirky things there too like a miniature city recently inhabited by tiny mushroom people and little spirits."
The result is crammed with new ideas and familiar throwbacks that readers may recognize from video games, anime, and beyond. Generating all these is a free-flowing process, according to Madriñan; he and co-creator Carlo Tartaglia will bounce ideas back and forth until they solidify, with one example being a set of characters Madriñan noted were inspired by the main trio of movie Tokyo Godfathers. Tartaglia then kept them in mind while designing an aesthetic that'd suit BREAK!!'s setting, Outer World.
"As far as individual inspiration goes, I try to pull from lots of things to avoid getting too stale," Madriñan tells me. "I mentioned Tokyo Godfathers, which is one of my favorite movies, and obviously anime, video games, and books are going to provide a lot of ideas. But I’ll grab them from my daily life as well. One of the monsters is based on my wife’s ancient, seemingly unkillable houseplant."
Choice and consequence
Personally, the thing that interests me most about START is the Kickstarter's mention of players being able to see "the impact of the choices they make have on the game world." How does that work? While it's difficult to predict what people might do because players have so much freedom in a tabletop RPG, the team have tried to address this by including suggestions about how certain key choices may play out after the fact. As a case in point, Madriñan says there is a "pretty despicable merchant in the main town that offers the players a lot of money for the cure the players are looking for. I imagine lots of groups are going to tell this guy to buzz off, but we included a little bit on what might happen if the party decides to take the payout over helping the people in town."
It's a similar story with STARTs various magic items, many of which are designed to encourage creative problem-solving or allow you to interact with the world in interesting ways. As an example, Madriñan mentions "an ancient era’s version of vinyl records that function as keys in a few of the adventure sites," but also "little candies that let you willingly take on an ailment to gain a thematic bonus ability for a short time." There's even a 'Wishflower' which serves as the primary focus of the main quest. While Madriñan doesn't elaborate on its function, I suspect we can all guess what it does.
Another project that recently caught my eye was the synth-soaked Neon Odyssey, a sci-fi campaign setting using D&D mechanics as a base.
Speaking of which, can we 'wish' for more BREAK!! Beyond START? Probably. To begin with, the project is so absurdly over-funded that follow-ups feel guaranteed. Secondly, remember those other adventure pitches Madriñan had to leave behind? Well, what helped with that decision "was that we plan on doing more stuff, so I can get back to them eventually!"
Want some more tabletop recommendations? Try our guide to the best board games or the best card games.
