1986 Called, Will You Roll Out? - Transformers Core Rulebook Review
It's pretty well known to everyone, but I know TikTok is spying on me. Here I am, reviewing Renegade Game Studios' Transformers The Roleplaying Game, and so I've been talking about it with friends. Suddenly, over the past week, I've started getting clips of various Transformers cartoons and movies in my Tik Tok feed. I'm onto you TikTok, you aren't fooling anyone. Then again, I'm enjoying the nostalgia, so maybe it's working as designed?
Enjoying the nostalgia seems like a common key to this book in general. More than likely, if you are interested in this game, you probably were an 80s or 90s kid that grew up watching tv shows about Robots in Disguise. Technically, I grew up watching the "G2" Transformers show, which was basically the G1 cartoon with newer transitions between scenes and commercials. Considering that I was born like 2 months before the original Transformers: The Movie, it would have been hard for me to watch the shows when they first aired. Regardless, I remember watching so many of the episodes and owning many of the different toys (just not the one I wanted, Optimus Prime of course).
Basically, I'm the target demographic for this game…..and the Power Rangers game, though I never really got into G.I. Joe. All 3 Hasbro properties use the "Essence20" System that Renegade came up with, which means that you can run adventures combining aspects from all of these properties to really make that inner child in you happy. The Transformers RPG is my first exposure to said "Essence20" system. For reasons that will become apparent, I'm going to break up this review into 2 pieces: the Transformers aspects/flavor of the game and then the actual system itself.
You've Got The Touch...
Upon opening up the book, one of the first things you are presented with is a foreward by Chris Metzen, which immediately made me giddy. If you play video games at all, there's a good chance that you recognize that name. Chris Metzen spent most of his career working at Blizzard Entertainment on many of their games (he's the voice of Thrall if you've played World of Warcraft). Why is he writing an RPG foreward? Well first of all, he now has his own game studio called "Warchief Gaming" that has published a 5e-compatible RPG setting called Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent. But, probably *more* importantly, he wrote a great Transformers comic for IDW called Transformers: Autocracy. So having him do the foreword to this book shows me that this was written by Transformers fans.
If you've been out of the Transformers loop for a bit, the artwork might seem a bit off to you. I haven't kept up with the more recent Transformers tv shows, but thanks to TikTok I have been exposed to some of them. Between that and some of the more recent comics from IDW that I've read, I can say that the artwork is along the same style as those more recent portrayals. For the old fans, the designs of the characters still look like the G1 characters, they just have more of a CGI look to them. Then again, occasionally you'll get a piece that looks more in an updated style of the old cartoon, so effort has been put into trying to appeal to all kinds of Transformers fans.
Basically, when it comes to anything Transformers specific, this book is great. The book is written almost as an "Autobots field manual", which I really enjoy all the sidebar bits and pieces along the way. Due to this focus, it does mean that you are limited to creating "heroes"\Autobot Transformers in your RPGs. However, apparently, there is a book on the way for creating Decepticon characters and/or custom 'bots for your campaigns. Down the road, there's also possibilities for Dinobots and/or "Beast Wars" style Transformers. Personally, I think it would be interesting to see if they come up with rules for the combiner bots like Devastator or Superion. Having to RP a bunch of different 'bots at the same time could result in some great moments in stories.
You've Got The Power....?
Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I'll be playing the Transformers Roleplaying Game as written. Reading through the book, I'm just not sold on the Essence20 system. First of all, I feel like the "Essence20" name is a bit misleading - I kept thinking it was a knock off 5e/D20 system. Even if you go look up Essence20 on reddit and other sites, you'll see people refer to it as a 5e knock off. Yet when I read it, it didn't feel as close to 5e as others made it appear to be. This might be a bonus for you - I know a lot of people that are tired of 5e games. For me though, it felt more like "we were told not to make this 5e based so they could claim its not 5e, so we took a bunch of other mechanics and added them just to make the game different".
Essence20 revolves around 4 essences: Strength, Speed, Smarts, and Social. Just like in other D20 based games, you have a target number that you need to hit so you roll a D20 and try to reach that number. Instead of having skills with a bonus that you add to your D20 score, Essence20 uses extra dice to give you those bonuses. This isn't unique to the system, but as you get more skilled in a specific area, your bonus die will graduate from a D2 all the way up to a D12. So far, so good right? Then, there are things that can affect your bonus die, such as shifts/downshifts/edges/snags. These 4 modifiers remind me a lot of the narrative dice system in the FFG/Edge Studios Star Wars games. Shifts and edges are things that can move your skill die "up" a level (Shifts are usually skill based, edges are circumstances based), and downshifts/snags move your skill die "down" a level, for the opposite reasons.
So far, seems pretty straight forward. If that was all to the system, it might be interesting to try. However, this is just the baseline. In addition to skills that determine what die to add to rolls, there are "Specializations". If you have a specialization that applies to a roll, you roll a D20 along with *every* die along the skill tree. So if your specific specialization is set at a D8, you are rolling a D20 + D2 + D4 + D6 + D8 for your roll. I could be wrong on this, but specializations were a bit hard to understand. To me, it felt like when you have a Proficiency bonus in D&D5e. Honestly, I feel like using the shifts/downshifts system would be a *much* better way of keeping track of this rather than adding in extra mechanics.
That's my overall impression of Essence20: too many extra mechanics. If this was a board game, I'd call it "fiddly". For instance, the number of "actions" that you get in a turn is based on your speed. That's pretty thematic and great way for showing speed in a D20 style game. Yet...when you get into an actual play session, that seems like a good way for a couple of people to have fun and get to do more things, while the rest of the party gets to do one or two things and then wait forever for their turn again. Might be thematic, but doesn't really sound fun to me.
Then there are crits. Like most games, you get a 20 on the D20, that's a crit. However, you also get a crit if you get the max number on any of the other skill die (except for the D20). So....you are penalized for having a higher skill? Once you move from a D4 to a D6, you've now made the odds of performing a crit *worse*. The system *kinda* makes up for it by saying if you get double the target number, you deal more damage in an attack. But if you aren't in a fight, that doesn't really help you. Also, in most RPGs, those target numbers should be getting higher as your characters level up. Also, several systems have some kind of "Story points" - tokens that players can spend to change up the story. Fate calls them Fate Points, Star Wars has Light Side/Dark Side points, etc. Essence20 has "Story Points" and "Energon Points" (for Transformers), and doesn't really explain the difference between the two.
Conclusion
I love all the Transformers lore and bits in this book. It appealed to the 8 year old in me who remembers trying to figure out how all my toys converted back and forth.
Essence20 sounds like a lot. I might try and jump into a game at a convention where someone else can run me through a game, but I am definitely not trying to run a game of this myself.
Tiktok, if you are listening (I know you are...), I've got some D&D books to read next, but I'm perfectly fine with all the Transformers cartoons in my feed.