(Barf Dribble) Tonight we are doing a playtest review of High Strung by Flying Mice Games.
(Princess Doodad) Right Barf! We ran a game with Chicken Eatza, Macho Pizza, and Earthworm Jim - and me of course - taking the parts of the various characters. Barf was the Game Master, and came up with the scenario.
(BD) Yeah... they guy who wrote this piece of crap didn't bother writing an adventure.
(PD) So I made this awesome character, Stephie Dildo, who is like 17 and really cute. She plays like this guitar shaped like an axe, and made of steel. Her costume is this awesome black leather armor with lots of spikes. Her Race is Jail Bait, Jail Baits get +2 to Cute, and her Class is Headbanger.
(BD) Chick made a Beatnik Soulman named Bob Chick, Machie made a Elderly Funkmaster! named Fred, and Jim made a Hippy Blues Brother named Sunshine Moon, cause he's this hippy. The Races and Classes in this game are totally stupid! Like who wants to be Elderly? But you randomly Roll your Race, so we played it RAW.
(PD) (Giggles) I liked MY character! Stephie was ultra awesome!
(BD) So anyway, Bob Chick's weapon was a bass guitar shaped like a sword, Fred had two drumstick wands that he used to cast his songs, and Jim played a tabla, which is some kind of Hippy drum.
In this game, the idiot who designed it makes you draw Hit Points and Magic Points from the same pool, called Hope...
(PD) Yeah, like they have anything to do with each other!
(BD)... which is another thing that bothered me, along with the no module thing. The designer keeps naming stuff wierdly. Like the Race names are weird, the Class names are weird, and the stat names are just fucked! Like VOIS for casting Songs, or FNGR for fighting. Just stupid!
(PD) I liked CUTE for, y'know, being cute!
(BD) Well, one outa... a lot isn't too good, Princess! Why do designers always gotta change names for stuff that already has perfectly good names? I just don't get it, and it irritated me.
(PD) I think I liked the game more than you, Barf!
(BD) Aaaanyways, The party was, like, totally poor. A total Zero to Hero trip! We had Crap Jobs, Crap Clothes, and Crap weapons... I mean Instruments. See? Why change the name? I had to ask them all these stupid questions about their families and shit. Nothing at all about fighting. I suggested everyone just be orphans who just quit their crap jobs, and everyone was cool with that.
(PD) Remember, the Hippie and the Elderly guy had decent stuff!
(BD) Yeah, but the Hippie sold his stuff for weed, and the Elderly dude was old so he forgot he was rich or something. What kinda stuff you got was tied into your age for some reason, so the guys who couldn't do anything got all the decent swag!
(PD) Yeah, right! I made Stephie's costume, though, so that was cool!
(BD) Yeah - she had the most useful skill there, making costumes!
(PD) She made +2 Costumes!
(BD) Pretty swank for a Jail Bait!
(PD) Thanks, Barf!
(BD) So anyway, you gotta get a gig. A gig is like an adventure...
(PD) And you lose HP between adventures, and gain HP from doing them.
(BD) Totally numb! Why? It doesn't say. I just said you guys all have wounds that didn't heal good.
(PD) Which made sense. That was some sweet GMing there, Barf!
(BD) Ya gotta know when to improvise, Princess! The designer just forgot to explain it, so I had ta improvise.
(PD) So Barf came up with an aawesome gig!
(BD) (Laughs) Yeah! Totally! They went to the tavern and were like dicking around with their weapons, and I had this old geezer...
(PD) ...He had the most awesome songs!
(BD) ... come in and say WHO HERE DARETH TO CHALLENGETH THE MIGHTETH OF GORTHAR?
(PD) Then when the Party jumped to their feet, the bottom of the tavern like opened up and we slid into a pit! Us and all our groupies too!
(BD) Groupies are what this dickhead calls henchmen.
(PD) Stephie had like the most hen... groupies...
(BD) See what I mean?
(PD) ... cause she was so ultra cute!
(BD) And she had the Groupies skill too!
(PD) So we fight the orcs in the pit, and found a door that openend into the dungeon! Oh! There was treasure too! New +1 instruments and armo... i mean costumes.
(BD) Yeah - there was no treasure even mentioned anywhere! I just made it all up!
(PD) So we fought these undead, and like we were wailing with out weapons, and Fred cast a Song. We all had to sacrifice HP to power the song, which was awesomely dark! I was imagining Steffie cutting open a vein to let out the blood! Cool idea!
(BD) But there was no actual songs! We looked through the book and found squat! It's like they dicked around with the formatting and lost like half the rules, and didn't notice! So I made shit up again! Gotta keep the game moving! We allrolled our skill dice, like the RAW says...
(PD) And we rolled AWESOME! We all almost maxed out!
(BD) So I looked up the result on the charts - I'm doing this completely RAW, like I said before - and the party gets some treasure deal with multi albums and creative control. I was like what the fuck? Then it says game over. GAME OVER? REALLY? Totally LAME! LAME OVER I say!
(PD) Yeah! That was weird!
(BD) I fugured multi-albums was like the games gold pieces, and creative control meant something like controlling other people like zombies, but why was the game over? We had jusr STARTED!
(PD) I really liked Steffie too!
(BD) What's the use of getting treasure when you can't use it because the FREAKING GAME'S OVER? That was just NUMB! So I just had the gang make characters for D&D 5, and we started that. So, my verdict? PIECE OF CRAP! Stay away from this insane dogpile of a game! It was incomplete, confusing, and just pretentious as shit!
(PD) I liked it better than Barf, but I still don't know why it ended!
(BD) Talk to you next week, when we'll review another new game!
(PD) See ya!
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