Review: Outgunned RPG
Rights issues give us a new and improved version of Broken Compass
The Italian publisher, Two Little Mice, is back with an updated version of Broken Compass — an excellent rules-light game that looks to emulate the action movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s. I had backed the original Kickstart of Broken Compass back in 2020 and was pleased with the that game, which was more aimed at the pulp action genre. The stretch goals included expansions for classic ‘30s pulp, Victorian sci-fi (I’m not calling it “steampunk”!), pirates, and other settings. I used Broken Compass to run a Space: 1889 game for my daughter that she quite liked.
Apparently, shortly after it’s release there was some issues related to rights or some such, and last year we got Ougunned!, a sequel — in keeping with the action movie motif — to BC. The system mechanics? The same, although now they’re calling the mechanics “Director’s Cut”. There’s some tweaks here and there, and characters are slightly different, but overall, you could pull material from one game to the other without much tweaking. the stretch goals included the Action Flicks book, which like the What If? sourcebook for BC gave new rules and character tropes for specific settings. There’s also the World of Killers book which presents your John Wick-style universe of stylish assassins. There’s an Ougunned Adventure! book coming that will bring back the original pulp focus of Broken Compass to the new game.
I met the 2LM folks at GenCon this year, and found them enthusiastic, fun folks. As a small press author and producer in the gaming industry, I know how tough it can be to gain tractions, but they seem to have done an excellent job. their Kickstarters are well managed and they deliver the good and on time. Buy their stuff.
The mechanics are simple…it’s Yahtzee. You look for matches on 6-sided dice. They have neat little specialized die with symbols on them, but you could use any old d6s from board games and get moving. You have to get a certain number of matches to be successful — a basic success requires two of a kind; a critical, three of a kind; and so on. The number of dice you roll is equal to your attributes and skills. For instance, to knock down a door, you would use your Brawn attribute and Force skill. the number of pips you have in both gives you the number of dice you roll, plus of minus for disadvantages (say, deadbolt takes one away), and advantages (may be you have a door ram that gives you one extra die). There’s also “adrenaline” — the game currency that allows you to tweak things: you can get an extra die, activate a “feat” — a particular thing you’re good at, or if you have enough, you can have a “spotlight”. A spotlight (and you can have up to three) allows you to save a dying friend or your vehicle, automatically succeed at an extreme test (you would need 4 of a kind), or remove a condition (more on that in a moment.)
Characters have five attributes, each with four tied skills — Nerves ties to Shoot, for instance. You start with two pips in an attribute and one in a skill, but your role and trope of your character adds to them. You also get three feats tied to the role (what you do) and trope (who you are). You can take 12 “grit”…damage, and certain levels of success can give you a condition. These conditions start with the phrase “You look…” and the descrioption affects your die pool. You look hurt? -1 on brawn tests. You look distracted? -1 on Focus tests…and so on. Guns and gear give an advantage.
Failures typically are how you get conditions, but also when you lose enough grit. If you lose all your grit, there’s the death roulette. You have a gun cylinder on the character sheet that represent the chances that you are done for — Everyone starts with one in the chamber, and they add as failures and injuries mount up. You roll a d6 and if you’re equal to or under the number of bullets in the chamber, you’re dead, unless another character chooses to Spotlight to save you. The stretch goals came with a six-sided bullet dice to roll for this.
Play goes this way — the GM narrates much of the action, but doesn’t roll. The players roll their action and reaction rolls. Attacking or doing something? That’s your action test; dodging bullets, trying to avoid a fall, that’s a reaction. It’s dead simple and great for pick-up games where you need to put together an adventure fast.
One of the reasons for this is bad guys and various dangers are treated the same way — as a reaction test. The bad guys, from “goons” to “bad guys” to “bosses” are stated out in the book in different types. The card decks that came with the DVD-styled box set stretch goals gives you all of these, as well as special actions. There’s cards to hand out for adrenaline, if you don’t want to mark them down on your character sheets, and they even had the character roles and tropes; you can build a character and run a game out of the card boxes, fast and easy. I’ve run three pick-up games so far, complete with character creation, with high success and almost no preparation.
Chases are handled in a novel way, with a “Need for Speed” mechanic. Your vehicle has a base speed — 0 through 2 — to show how quick it is. As you succeed in your tests, “speed” can go up to represent the increasing danger of a long chase. The goal is to hit the “need” — the number of successes before the chase is concluded and you (or the bad guys) have escaped. Failure means that you lose a point toward the goal. Get to zero and you’re caught.
So is it worth it? At €40, or about $40, it might seem a bit pricey, but the production values are excellent. Daniella Giubellini’s artwork is decent, the writing and game design is solid, and the books are tough and conveniently sized as 5x7” (The GM folds to the same size.) You don’t need any of the extra bits and bobs, really; but they are handy. If you like the action genre for the game table, and you want fast, light rules that encourage the players to really throw themselves into danger, it’s a definite buy. If you are looking for crunchy, tactical rules, not so much.