Stranger Things had a two-pronged effect on the roleplaying hobby. One, it put Dungeons & Dragons front and center on an extremely popular television series. Two, it inspired a number of RPGs playing with the themes of Stranger Things. The 80s, or kids solving mysteries, or both. The wonderful Kids on Bikes was the first game of this kind I encountered, then I saw Dark Places & Demogorgons, which was based on the same era of Dungeons & Dragons the kids in Stranger Things played, I knew I had to check it out.
DP&G comes to us from Bloat Games, who has made something of a name for itself by creating a number of old-school based games hitting various genres. I'm particularly fond of their Valor Knights game inspired, it feels, by the original Transformers cartoon. But we're talking about DP&G.
The game has its own Appendix N, full of references to 80s movies and TV shows, music, games, toys, and so forth. The classes are the archetypes of 80s movies with kids involved - Jocks, Nerds, Goths, Preppies... This game could easily do The Goonies, or The Breakfast Club, or E.T. Teen horror? Sure. Fad movies like Breakin', or BMX Bandits, or any of the old Bones Brigade skater films? Absolutely. There's even a character class called the Karate Kid.
Anyone familiar with Basic D&D will immediately recognize the core of DP&G. The six Ability Scores have been expanded to seven, adding Survival, a pool of opportunities to re-roll dice that regenerates a point per game. Some mechanics, like Saving Throws, are now roll-under, this and other mechanics are borrowed from the most excellent The Black Hack. What emerges from the pages of DP&G is a good time in the pattern of the films my generation watched growing up.
So... throw on some Cyndi Lauper, and let's create a character for Dark Places & Demogorgons.
Character Creation
First, we roll Attributes. It's 3d6 seven times, so here we go. 8, 9, 16, 16, 8, 9, 13. DP&G allows players to arrange the stats to their taste, so I want to look at the classes and figure out which one to create. Hey! There's a Random Background table, so let's see what we get. Wow! 100! So, parents were Doomsday Preppers, they live in the country, have a bunker, and this grants Hunting & Fishing at +1, and Toughness +1. There are 15 classes, so I'm going to roll randomly there, too. d20, ignore anything over 15. 20... dammit. Okay, 6. Karate Kid. Well, I kinda hoped for a Nerd, Jock, or Preppie as a more ubiquitous 80s archetype, but I'm old school and like to play the dice as they fall.
So, Karate Kids need a Dexterity of 9, and Constitution of 8. I've been watching Cobra Kai, so I kinda want to build a scrappy little kid who is smaller than his peers, but all martial arts-y. So let's put our stats as follows:
- STR: 8 (-1)
- INT: 9 (0)
- WIS: 13 (+1)
- DEX: 16 (+2)
- CON: 8 (-1)
- CHA: 16 (+2)
- SUR: 9 (+0)
HP is 2d6 plus CON modifier, 3+2=5, -1=4. Well, a character with less than 5HP gets 5HP, so our karate kid has but 5 HP to call his own. Saving Throws are rolled randomly, which is interesting. 4d4+CON Bonus.
- Courage: 12
- Critical Injury: 11
- Death: 7
- Mental: 13
- Poison: 9
At Level 1, we get Basic Athletics, any Asian language, and Martial Arts. Dexterity goes up one, Charisma goes down one, and Armor Class goes up 1.
We start with a Karate Gi, Nunchaku, 3 Shuriken, $17, a bicycle, a library card, a lot of Bruce Lee posters, and The Last Dragon on VHS. Having grown up in the 80s, I can totally dig the Black Belt Magazine advertisements where this character probably bought his 'chucks and "Chinese Stars."
The shuriken can be thrown two per turn, but only do 1d6-2 damage.
I couldn't find the 'chucks, but I'll guess 1d6 since that's what a nightstick does.
Skills are based on the bonus given plus the Attribute bonus linked with the Skill. In addition to the starting skills, a character may choose four more skills. Our Karate Kid takes Investigation, Dancing, Video Games, and Persuasion.
The Character
Marc Wierzbowski was not what his parents expected. Scrawny, more fond of his Atari than a fishing pole, the pressed him to learn the things that would allow him to take care of himself. Rather than learn how to hunt, or shoot, he went with the one thing he had an interest in- the martial arts. He enrolled in Eagle Fang Karate, read Ninja and Black Belt magazine voraciously, knew every Bruce Lee film by heart. Still, he was five foot nothing and ninety pounds soaking wet.
When the thing- whatever it was- shambled into the school and started trying to eat people, Marc stepped up, distracting it with the shuriken he kept hid in a Tupperware box in his backpack with his Garbage Pail Kids cards, he enraged it and it gave chase. Marc led it to the gym, where he grabbed a baseball bat and made like a ninja sword. That was a mistake... he just didn't have the muscle to make a bat harm the... thing. It took him down in a single backhand. He remembered thinking before he hit his head, maybe his parents will finally be proud of him.
When Marc woke up in the hospital, the nurse told him he'd injured himself in gym class. Nobody seemed to have seen the thing, even with all the kids in the hall none of the adults would acknowledge the thing was even real. It wasn't on the news, it wasn't in the papers, and his parents were terribly disappointed in his embarrassing PE injury. Several kids apparently got hurt that day, every one of them a mysterious accident. A dog bite, a bicycle wreck, each of those kids one of the ones the thing had been attacking.
But there was something going on. And Marc was going to find out what.
My Thoughts
Goonies R Good Enough played in my head the entire time I was making this character. The idea of playing scrappy kids with foul language who solve a mystery without the help of their clueless parents just sounds fun.
In fact, I kinda want to toss Stephen Spielberg, Richard Donner, and John Hughes in a blender and see what comes out. Like, The Breakfast Club versus monsters. Ferris Bueller saves the world. Hell, even WarGames might be in this game's wheelhouse... and there it is, on page 196, in Appendix N.
I've not yet taken this game for a spin, so I can't say a lot about my experiences playing it, but it's been a pandemic read of mine, and I'm looking forward to playing it at some point in the future.
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