Review: POWER RANGERS ROLEPLAYING GAME Should've Waited a Little Longer

Renegade Game Studios released the Power Rangers Roleplaying Game (PR RPG) at the end of January and when it released I put out a first impressions article based on solely reading the Core Rulebook. I was finally able to play the PR RPG and what follows will be me talking about how it runs and I’ll even include some thoughts from my players at the end. Renegade was kind enough to provide me with a review copy of the book and Roll20 provided me with a copy of the A Fools Errand adventure and materials on their platform so that I could play with friends virtually. The game uses the Essence20 system and is available for purchase from Renegade and your local game store now.

As I mentioned in my first impressions, there are a lot of errors and miscommunications in the Core Rulebook. This made some parts of running the game very hard and it really felt more like a playtest or a beta version of the game rather than a full release title. Renegade is working on an errata, has put up an FAQ, and is more active on the official Facebook page, but it’s still a lot of work (particularly sifting through the Facebook page) trying to find if there are answers to your questions. There is no denying that this had a negative impact on the adventure. Hopefully, this can be cleared up when the errata releases and the experience can become more streamlined.

Sadly, we were all trying to learn this system and so there are some areas we missed. For example, we completely forgot that critical successes are determined by the skill die (the non-d20) and so I’m sure my players missed out on a few of those. Sadly, we also didn’t get and natural 1s and so no Fumbles occurred. Another new mechanic that didn’t really get utilized because we kept forgetting about it was the Story Point mechanic. It definitely could’ve been used more but all of our questions about things in the book that weren’t explained very well and other problems made us forget about them.

One area that as a GM I absolutely hate is the fact that there are two defenses that could be used for any given situation. A physical attack can be overcome with either Toughness or Evasion and a mental attack goes against Willpower or Cleverness. Unfortunately, there’s no clear indicator for which defense would be utilized under any circumstance. My solution was to ask the player what their character would do if X was happening and used that as a basis, but that’s very cumbersome in practice. Maybe with some practice I could better determine that, but I would’ve really liked something more concrete such as using the higher of the two for all applicable situations or labeling Might attacks as targeting Toughness and Finesse attacks targeting Evasion.

All of that being said, I think there’s a lot of potential with PR RPG. Having a die roll instead of a straight bonus is fun. Having four main areas to put points in is nice and then having the scores determine how many points go into those skills works very well in my opinion. For example, if you put 4 points into Speed, you can spread 4 points across the skills Acrobatics, Driving, Finesse, Infiltration, Initiative, and Targeting. Something that I am torn on in this area is first level. At first level, you either have a few d2 skills and maybe a d4 here or there or you have a d6 or d8 and not much else to offer. I like this system because it helps force a team dynamic which is necessary in Power Rangers. I don’t like it because it can feel very restrictive and limiting. Each level you do get a +1 to an Essence Score which helps, but at the beginning it can be a bit of a downer.

Specializations are a part of the system that I don’t think I really like. The problem is that like the defenses, these are so open for interpretation and can be literally anything which becomes too overwhelming. It’s too much freedom and because of that, my players and I shied away from them a bit. It doesn’t help that at first level it’s almost pointless to have a specialization unless you want to put 3+ points into a single skill.

When playing the adventure that comes in the Core Rulebook, A Fool’s Errand, it was an okay experience. Roll20 was (and probably is) still ironing out some quirks with the character sheets and items, but as a very basic tabletop it worked very well. The actual adventure was a solid idea in my opinion with some areas that didn’t work. There are some kidnappings that happen and then the Rangers have to find out what’s happening and then go defeat a monster. The first part is actually the player characters doing a training exercise after becoming Rangers. What I did was had them do 1-2 rounds without morphing and then Alpha 5 walked them through morphing, summoning their Power Weapons, etc. I like to think that this went well because it helped highlight the character’s personalities a little bit since they have to fight a Mongo-HoloPutty. I wanted to see what they would do without powers and I think I accomplished that. The second part of the adventure is the mystery part where the Rangers learn about the kidnappings and so some investigating. This took a long time and I would consider cutting the number of victims down to two if I ran this again. Because so much time is spent here, this has the most problems. One of the kids is taken from school and there’s a whole thing in the adventure about breaking in to the school office and hacking the computer but there’s no lead in for doing something like that which can result in information not being given to your players. Later, the players are directed to go to the houses of the victims and when they arrive to the first one there’s a security detail which is very uninviting for some players. My players saw the guards and basically ignored the first two houses and with the third house they still played it vastly different than the book planned and so I had to adjust very quick to make sure they got the crucial information. However, I know that my players were a little frustrated about how this was laid out. The third act of the adventure is basically a series of combats with the big monster being the climax at the end. I really like the structure of the adventure and it has some fun ideas, but there are certain aspects that just don’t work well. Be ready to adjust it before and as you play.

Combat in Essence20 isn’t bad, but it doesn’t feel honed. There’s the problem I have with defenses, but it was also a thing where the Putty Patrollers were non-threats because all they could do in a turn was either move or attack. Most of the time, they were moving. Then, you get to the final monster and he suddenly feels very strong when he hits because of the minimal HP system implemented (most characters have 1-2 health at level 1). It felt hard to have intense moments since a single hit could easily knock a player character out (assuming it hit).

From my perspective as a GM, PR RPG is on the right track, but this really should’ve been treated as a playtest or beta experience with the full launch happening further down the road. Trying to learn a new system is always intimidating and difficult to some degree and the current state of the Core Rulebook really doesn’t help any. As I mentioned, it caused me and my players to forget about some of the unique mechanics of this system. That being said, some of my complaints I’m sure are user error (aka my fault). Any time you play an RPG, you’re bound to make mistakes, misread/misremember rules and other aspects, etc. I do like that this game emphasizes teamwork and a lot of the concepts are cool. I just struggle with some of the implementation and hope that errata can clear things up to get me more invested into the game.

I did ask my players for their feedback as well. My group consisted of 5 players with various levels of experience playing tabletop RPGs (one of them had never played one before and knew next to nothing about how to play them) and differing levels of knowledge regarding Power Rangers (the same player knew nothing about Power Rangers). I’m going to share their thoughts below and will just explain that we met three times. The first time was to create characters and not everyone could make it, the second time was going over a few things and starting the adventure, and the third time was finishing the adventure. When JD refers to the first and second nights, they’re talking about the two nights that we played the adventure:

AA:

Things I liked: Really good integration of Power Rangers themes. I expected like how our one shot Stranger Things campaign went, where it was vaguely ST themed. I get that this wasn't DnD and something different, but I really did like how they went all in with the details.

Cons: A little clunky, could use some cleaning up.

I also liked the look of the character sheets, i think the design was aesthetically pleasing. I liked that it was similar enough to DnD to be more intuitive, but different enough to feel new and exciting.

AW:

Overall, I think it's a good start. I'm not sure I liked leaving my modifiers to a die roll, but I can see how it would encourage you to specialize and diversify your team. For me it just made me feel like I wasn't actually good at anything, but that could also be the nature of playing a level one character. What it really needs is some clarity in the rules, it felt more like play testing a system more than a final product.

I like the concept of the system and I really liked how they didn't just copy paste something else and put a Power Rangers skin on it. Having a built in team dynamic is a fun change of pace that, once it's gotten some more updates and rules clarifications I think it would be fun to try again.

DA:

It was obviously a 'beta' experience. There were rules/concepts in the game that fully flushed out, I imagine because flushing out so many details is a lot of work and takes time. This was my first time really trying a different system from what I'm used to, and admittedly, if it's a system that isn't fully tested and developed, it can be distracting and kind of takes away from the excitement. The best part of our game was, by far, being together and role playing. Granted, our group made it fun. So being in the Power Ranger world and experiencing something new together was fun. Referring to the book over and over was difficult. When using Roll20, the UI wasn't great, it would sometimes get stuck when trying to reference the book and I would have to go back to the compendium and open it up again so I could navigate. I eventually just stopped trying because that wasn't fun. The character sheet was pretty cool, despite some issues with the UI (i.e. locking and unlocking the sheet is not intuitive). I liked the writing of the story. It was fun trying to discover what was going on, being detectives, and then fighting the big boss at the end. I didn't feel like there was a lot of variety to the fighting. Basically it was just shoot my main weapon each time and that was it. I did like how I could overcharge, that gave some variety, but I could only do that once per battle. The various stats/abilities were interesting. You did a good job getting us to use a variety of different skills, which made it fun.

JD:

I had more fun than I thought I would. The first night was so confusing, I had no idea what was going on, I had no clue what to do or expect, and who any of those people were except for you and AW. So I left the first night having thought I made a fool of myself. The second night was much better! It went so late, but I had a better idea of what to expect and who everybody was. I got explanations for who Alpha 6 was and some background on Power Rangers themselves. Which helped a lot.

Do I think that, as a person who doesn't know Power Rangers, others would be able to learn this game easily? Not really. I didn't know if Alpha 6 was the criminal mastermind, or a leader, or an alien until after we defeated the jelly/putty monster the first night. Then the whole clown thing? I still have no idea if clowns are a typical enemy of the PR, or if it was just a plot made up by the game makers...or if you made it up as the GM. But everybody else in the game was able to get me at least enough knowledge to participate a bit.

I am glad that I was the only person of the group who didn't have experience with RPG games. It was confusing for me on two levels, but I had the whole group to help me. I think that if another person in the group was new to RPGs then it would have taken just that much longer and a whole lot more effort with confusion and headaches more than what was already there! You already had to spend extra time with me outside of the group times to explain to me what would happen which I am very grateful for. I was able to ask questions I might not have in front of the whole group. It did help that it was apparently different enough from other RPG's that everybody else had questions about the character sheet. I didn't feel like I was such a huge liability the second night after I got some background info and had the previous day's experiences to figure out what was happening and how to act.

So to sum up: yes I had fun, I still have a ton of questions, I was able to participate, and I'm glad I had such a good group to introduce me to RPGs. Would I do the PR RPG again? Probably not. I don't know the backgrounds or the characters in order to really enjoy the game. Would I do another RPG game? Probably. I would ask to at least read an introduction to the game, but I enjoyed learning and interacting with others who welcomed me into their game even knowing how little I knew.

PW:

It's fun and I appreciate the flexibility in that you don't have to follow usual Ranger stuffs too rigidly (i.e. Red Ranger is a role, but there's lots of flexibility in how you want to play that out). Currently, it seems like nostalgia is the main commodity the game traffics in, and that will work differently for each person. However, if you get a group together who can really get into it, it can be fun.

I'm not so big on the actual playing system. Granted, I may just be too fond of D&D's mechanics, and this felt like it was trying too hard to both hold on to the basic d20 system while being different enough, but I didn't really find it very intuitive. In fact, it often felt rather cumbersome. It's possible that it just takes time to really get used to, or maybe it actually improves with practice. But at level 1, I found it far less interesting than what I'm used to.

As with any RPG, a lot will depend on people finding the right group to play with, and a growing familiarity with the mechanics. Give it time and I think we'll see some really original stuff come out of it as the right people start playing and sharing about it. It's not a bad game, but for now, it's not the game for me.