DayTrippers Core Rules reviewed by David Guyll

David Guyll of Awful Good Games, designer of A Sundered World as well as tons of great Dungeon World material, has written a mechanical overview and review of the DayTrippers Core Rules. You can find it on his blog "PointsOfLight".

It's always nice to have one's writing commended, and in Guyll's words "The writing is where the game really shines." You can check out samples from both the Core Rules and the GameMasters Guide to get a taste.

Breaking down the basics of the system, Guyll examines the core mechanics and explains how they work. This is a very valuable service, and I wish more reviewers would take a look at mechanics - it really helps in the decision-making when you're trying to find a game that possesses not only the right genre, but also the right level of crunchiness and fluidity for your playgroup.

Despite the fact that he's not a big fan of science fiction in general, Guyll grasps all the important points and recognizes the flexibility that the system supports, permitting a wide variety of science fiction subgenres and tropes to be played out at the table. Here's a quote:

What I'm getting at is that this isn't really a game for me, but if you like sci-fi roleplaying games I think this could easily be a game for you. It's well written and designed, and caters to a variety of playstyles: you could run something like Firefly, where the DayTrippers do odd jobs, get paid, and try to keep their SlipShip going, or maybe something more inline with Shadowrun, where the DayTrippers are hired to obtain Node coordinates, assassinate DayTripper teams, and/or steal artifacts recovered from a Node.

Personally if I were GMing this game, I'd probably do something like Alien, and have the DayTripper team get picked off one by one by a terrible monster...

He doesn't know what devious plans I have in store for upcoming adventures modules and sourcebooks - but sometimes he seems to be reading my mind!

DayTrippers Core Rules Review by David Guyll