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ysabetwordsmithKids on Brooms: Core Rulebook - Hunters Entertainment
This is a collaborative role-playing game about portraying a student at a magical school, with a rules-light, narrative-first storytelling game.
Read my review of Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4.
Information for the Game Master
This starts with a big spiel about safety, of which the useful bit is that toolkit on page 68. Tools include script change (rewinid, pause, fast-forward) and Lines & Veils.
Starting to Craft the Story touches on some plot dynamics and goes into more detail about world building as a group. If any of the game's rules annoy you and/or don't fit your style of play, this is the place to introduce sliding scales for things like violence-nonviolence, danger-safety, etc. as well as discussions about how people want to spend their time and thus which parts they want to leave abstracted or skim over vs. where they may want to add more depth. There's also a bit more attention to techniques of collaborative world building. It would've been nice to see more of that in the handbook instead of several pages of safety blather that would better have fit in one sidebar like in most games.
Levels of Threats has an excellent layout of Personal or Interpersonal Conflicts, Whole-School Conflicts, and Worldwide Conflicts -- and how they can connect with each other. This is a great place to talk about what kind of conflicts the players want to face. A single game will match easier to smaller-scale ones, but you can cram in something bigger if you cut enough corners. For a campaign, it's often best to start small and then escalate.
The Chosen One recommends against using one of the most popular tropes in the genre. Before possibly throwing out the baby with the bathwater, ask your players. If only one person wants to be the Chosen One, and the others prefer different roles, you can go with it. Just make sure you define each character's crucial contributions to saving the day so everyone gets good play time. The book does mention having a chosen team instead of individual as an option.
Narrative Control in Kids on Brooms has some more discussion about collaborative world building, how to share the process of developing the action. It's not as detailed as the world building part but it's a good start.
Encouraging Good Behavior has more about school rules, the Council for the Ethical Use of Magic, and the author telling the reader what kind of game to play. If you want to nerf the level of mayhem in your game, this may be useful. If it doesn't appeal, you can just skip it. Elsewhere I have seen better suggestions -- and in a few cases, some truly brilliant mechanics -- for supporting and rewarding prosocial behavior in gamers. Remember: nagging doesn't work, modeling does.
Tone and Pace explains how to manage game flow.
Failing a Stat check offers ideas on how to make this useful to the narrative.
Changing the Rules is your permission slip to tinker as desired! Ignore things you don't like. Add things where you want more depth. Just understand that the mechanics as presented have been playtested and found to work with the designer's group of guinea pigs. If you make mechanical, rather than tonal or cultural, changes to the game then you may destabilize something else and run into difficulties because of that. Frex, leaving out the Council for the Ethical Use of Magic is a cultural change that will likely make your game more aggressive but won't mess with the dice. Going multiple rounds in combat instead of a single die roll is a mechanical change in how conflicts are resolved that may have wider-reaching effects.
Creating New Classes is just a couple of paragraphs about introducing new subjects in school, something players are encouraged to do. More framing here would've been helpful, but you can probably figure it out on your own using the standard ones as examples.
Taking Marks Between Sessions explains how to advance character skills with individual types of magic. It's not the clearest description. The Class Schedule sheet includes a mark tracker for this purpose. When you print out the character sheets, use that as the back.
Appendix A: Tropes includes 19 character types you can play with their stats, ages, likely Strengths and Flaws, and two questions. There are tropes that belong only to Faculty or Upperclassmen, but not only to Underclassmen so that might be something to explore (e.g. Junior Genius, Persistent Tagalong, Badass Waif). Many tropes can belong to 2-3 ages.
Appendix B: Flaws is just a list of words. If you want more beef here, see The Negative Trait Thesaurus. Flaws have no mechanic effect in this game. To add one, consider making characters roll if they want to resist indulging their Flaw when it would be detrimental to them.
Appendix C: Strengths has a list of names and the mechanical effect. You can use this to think up additional Strengths to use. Many would transpose well to other games.
Appendix D: Relationship Questions includes 20 each for Character You Know -- Positive, Character You Know -- Negative, and Character You Don't Know. These are very powerful tools for characterization and party connection. Many will work in other games. You can easily use these as inspiration to come up with more. Not mentioned in book, you can also use them to define new characters, such as a substitute teacher who shows up without warning. Pull a couple from the Positive list to create an ally or from the Negative list to create an antagonist.
The last page is the blank Character Sheet -- or more realistically, the front half of it. The Class Schedule is also essential and should go on the back of the page.
One thing I've noticed in other reviews of this game is that a lot of people seem to buy a rules-light game and then complain because it is a rules-light game. So start by considering the spectrum of light, medium, and heavy rules. On the light end, we have games that are cheap (you only need to buy 1 book), relatively simple, quick and easy to set up, and usually not too difficult to play. In the middle we have games that are affordable (1-2 good-sized books), with a good balance of structure and streamlining, typically challenging but not exertive to play. For an example, see my all-time-favorite game engine, the PDQ Core Rules. On the heavy end, we have games that are expensive (lots of books, also miniatures and other additions), with intricate rules for everything you might want to do, often tedious to set up but can be breathtaking with a table full of stuff, and frequently quite hard to play because you have to track so many things. If you buy a rules-light game, you can use the abstract or simple rules for things you don't care much about, and where necessary, splice in something a bit more robust for your favorite parts. The appeal of this is that you don't have to rip out big hunks from a massively interdependent game engine and hope you haven't cut the gas line. Even if you do want to take out things from a rules-light game, they are less likely to be linked to 20 other things and can be removed with little difficulty. Just don't expect a ton of detail -- and it's likely there will be plenty of places where you and the game designer differed on where "more detail" should have gone. In this regard, a rules-light game often serves as a starting point.
One approach for a rules-light game is to offer just the engine. For an example, see my all-time-favorite game engine, the PDQ Core Rules. You can then use that to play any kind of game. The publisher might also offer various longer versions with more details for different genres. This is the ultimate tool for gamers who love flexibility. However, you have to understand that the rules won't settle arguments for you; the rules-heavy end of the spectrum caters to people who need things made clear. With Kids on Brooms, you have a great setup for world building and character development, a great stat system, and thumbnail rules for things like spell design and combat.
Alternatively, a rules-light game may give a subset of a world that inclines wholly or at least strongly to one specific style of play, or even one adventure. Frex, Zoic sets you up to play a bonded pair of human and dinosaur desperately trying to gather enough resources to escape your island before the volcano blows. However, you can take the basic components of that and extrapolate to other adventures, such as "kill the apex predator threatening the village" or "settle on a new island." So too with Kids on Brooms, you can play the game exactly as written, reduce the violence for a teen politicking game, increase it for a more combative game, or even put the focus on Faculty trying to ward the school so the kids don't blow themselves up by accident. Think of a rules-light game as a starting point.
Things I liked the most...
* Kids on Brooms has a lot of gorgeous art that really fits the mood of the game. There are plenty of full-page and half-page pictures, full-color throughout. It's just a pretty book to look at, which is very uncommon for a game this small. You could even use some of these as inspiration or illustrations in your game.
* The use of different polyhedral dice to define stat capabilities is elegant. It's easy to understand, fast to deploy, and powerful in play. If you want to throw all the dice, this is a major selling point over games with fiddly dice math or just one kind of die. Also, you get to use ALL your stats for ALL the things; you aren't locked into using a Magic stat for all your magic or even a Fight stat for all your conflicts. That's far more flexibility than most games support regarding stats and what your character can do.
* The collaborative world building concept, its versatile tools, and characterization with connections all make for a highly interactive experience. Once you've seen a good solid example like this, you can riff that through many other games.
* The tremendously flexible magic system lets you do pretty much anything you can imagine and convince the game master to allow. If you are tired of highly limited magical systems in other games, this one gives you a basic framework for freestyle magic.
Kids on Brooms is good for...
* People with a limited gaming budget and/or space. It's one small book with a $24.99 cover price, and it gives you a solid core for playing "magical school" type scenarios.
* Dice lovers. You know you want to bring out that tube of sparkly ones.
* Playing a demo, pickup, or other one-shot game. Most gamers will know the "magical school" trope well enough to play it without needing a lot of details. Some of the rules that would be aggravating in a campaign will work well to keep a lid on things within a game lasting at most a few hours.
* Loose parts. For experienced gamers, you can cherry-pick bits that you really like and splice them into your other games. There are some very useful tools here. Also it's just fun to argue with, like I've spread out in this review.
For what I paid for it, I feel like I got my money's worth.
This is a collaborative role-playing game about portraying a student at a magical school, with a rules-light, narrative-first storytelling game.
Read my review of Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4.
Information for the Game Master
This starts with a big spiel about safety, of which the useful bit is that toolkit on page 68. Tools include script change (rewinid, pause, fast-forward) and Lines & Veils.
Starting to Craft the Story touches on some plot dynamics and goes into more detail about world building as a group. If any of the game's rules annoy you and/or don't fit your style of play, this is the place to introduce sliding scales for things like violence-nonviolence, danger-safety, etc. as well as discussions about how people want to spend their time and thus which parts they want to leave abstracted or skim over vs. where they may want to add more depth. There's also a bit more attention to techniques of collaborative world building. It would've been nice to see more of that in the handbook instead of several pages of safety blather that would better have fit in one sidebar like in most games.
Levels of Threats has an excellent layout of Personal or Interpersonal Conflicts, Whole-School Conflicts, and Worldwide Conflicts -- and how they can connect with each other. This is a great place to talk about what kind of conflicts the players want to face. A single game will match easier to smaller-scale ones, but you can cram in something bigger if you cut enough corners. For a campaign, it's often best to start small and then escalate.
The Chosen One recommends against using one of the most popular tropes in the genre. Before possibly throwing out the baby with the bathwater, ask your players. If only one person wants to be the Chosen One, and the others prefer different roles, you can go with it. Just make sure you define each character's crucial contributions to saving the day so everyone gets good play time. The book does mention having a chosen team instead of individual as an option.
Narrative Control in Kids on Brooms has some more discussion about collaborative world building, how to share the process of developing the action. It's not as detailed as the world building part but it's a good start.
Encouraging Good Behavior has more about school rules, the Council for the Ethical Use of Magic, and the author telling the reader what kind of game to play. If you want to nerf the level of mayhem in your game, this may be useful. If it doesn't appeal, you can just skip it. Elsewhere I have seen better suggestions -- and in a few cases, some truly brilliant mechanics -- for supporting and rewarding prosocial behavior in gamers. Remember: nagging doesn't work, modeling does.
Tone and Pace explains how to manage game flow.
Failing a Stat check offers ideas on how to make this useful to the narrative.
Changing the Rules is your permission slip to tinker as desired! Ignore things you don't like. Add things where you want more depth. Just understand that the mechanics as presented have been playtested and found to work with the designer's group of guinea pigs. If you make mechanical, rather than tonal or cultural, changes to the game then you may destabilize something else and run into difficulties because of that. Frex, leaving out the Council for the Ethical Use of Magic is a cultural change that will likely make your game more aggressive but won't mess with the dice. Going multiple rounds in combat instead of a single die roll is a mechanical change in how conflicts are resolved that may have wider-reaching effects.
Creating New Classes is just a couple of paragraphs about introducing new subjects in school, something players are encouraged to do. More framing here would've been helpful, but you can probably figure it out on your own using the standard ones as examples.
Taking Marks Between Sessions explains how to advance character skills with individual types of magic. It's not the clearest description. The Class Schedule sheet includes a mark tracker for this purpose. When you print out the character sheets, use that as the back.
Appendix A: Tropes includes 19 character types you can play with their stats, ages, likely Strengths and Flaws, and two questions. There are tropes that belong only to Faculty or Upperclassmen, but not only to Underclassmen so that might be something to explore (e.g. Junior Genius, Persistent Tagalong, Badass Waif). Many tropes can belong to 2-3 ages.
Appendix B: Flaws is just a list of words. If you want more beef here, see The Negative Trait Thesaurus. Flaws have no mechanic effect in this game. To add one, consider making characters roll if they want to resist indulging their Flaw when it would be detrimental to them.
Appendix C: Strengths has a list of names and the mechanical effect. You can use this to think up additional Strengths to use. Many would transpose well to other games.
Appendix D: Relationship Questions includes 20 each for Character You Know -- Positive, Character You Know -- Negative, and Character You Don't Know. These are very powerful tools for characterization and party connection. Many will work in other games. You can easily use these as inspiration to come up with more. Not mentioned in book, you can also use them to define new characters, such as a substitute teacher who shows up without warning. Pull a couple from the Positive list to create an ally or from the Negative list to create an antagonist.
The last page is the blank Character Sheet -- or more realistically, the front half of it. The Class Schedule is also essential and should go on the back of the page.
One thing I've noticed in other reviews of this game is that a lot of people seem to buy a rules-light game and then complain because it is a rules-light game. So start by considering the spectrum of light, medium, and heavy rules. On the light end, we have games that are cheap (you only need to buy 1 book), relatively simple, quick and easy to set up, and usually not too difficult to play. In the middle we have games that are affordable (1-2 good-sized books), with a good balance of structure and streamlining, typically challenging but not exertive to play. For an example, see my all-time-favorite game engine, the PDQ Core Rules. On the heavy end, we have games that are expensive (lots of books, also miniatures and other additions), with intricate rules for everything you might want to do, often tedious to set up but can be breathtaking with a table full of stuff, and frequently quite hard to play because you have to track so many things. If you buy a rules-light game, you can use the abstract or simple rules for things you don't care much about, and where necessary, splice in something a bit more robust for your favorite parts. The appeal of this is that you don't have to rip out big hunks from a massively interdependent game engine and hope you haven't cut the gas line. Even if you do want to take out things from a rules-light game, they are less likely to be linked to 20 other things and can be removed with little difficulty. Just don't expect a ton of detail -- and it's likely there will be plenty of places where you and the game designer differed on where "more detail" should have gone. In this regard, a rules-light game often serves as a starting point.
One approach for a rules-light game is to offer just the engine. For an example, see my all-time-favorite game engine, the PDQ Core Rules. You can then use that to play any kind of game. The publisher might also offer various longer versions with more details for different genres. This is the ultimate tool for gamers who love flexibility. However, you have to understand that the rules won't settle arguments for you; the rules-heavy end of the spectrum caters to people who need things made clear. With Kids on Brooms, you have a great setup for world building and character development, a great stat system, and thumbnail rules for things like spell design and combat.
Alternatively, a rules-light game may give a subset of a world that inclines wholly or at least strongly to one specific style of play, or even one adventure. Frex, Zoic sets you up to play a bonded pair of human and dinosaur desperately trying to gather enough resources to escape your island before the volcano blows. However, you can take the basic components of that and extrapolate to other adventures, such as "kill the apex predator threatening the village" or "settle on a new island." So too with Kids on Brooms, you can play the game exactly as written, reduce the violence for a teen politicking game, increase it for a more combative game, or even put the focus on Faculty trying to ward the school so the kids don't blow themselves up by accident. Think of a rules-light game as a starting point.
Things I liked the most...
* Kids on Brooms has a lot of gorgeous art that really fits the mood of the game. There are plenty of full-page and half-page pictures, full-color throughout. It's just a pretty book to look at, which is very uncommon for a game this small. You could even use some of these as inspiration or illustrations in your game.
* The use of different polyhedral dice to define stat capabilities is elegant. It's easy to understand, fast to deploy, and powerful in play. If you want to throw all the dice, this is a major selling point over games with fiddly dice math or just one kind of die. Also, you get to use ALL your stats for ALL the things; you aren't locked into using a Magic stat for all your magic or even a Fight stat for all your conflicts. That's far more flexibility than most games support regarding stats and what your character can do.
* The collaborative world building concept, its versatile tools, and characterization with connections all make for a highly interactive experience. Once you've seen a good solid example like this, you can riff that through many other games.
* The tremendously flexible magic system lets you do pretty much anything you can imagine and convince the game master to allow. If you are tired of highly limited magical systems in other games, this one gives you a basic framework for freestyle magic.
Kids on Brooms is good for...
* People with a limited gaming budget and/or space. It's one small book with a $24.99 cover price, and it gives you a solid core for playing "magical school" type scenarios.
* Dice lovers. You know you want to bring out that tube of sparkly ones.
* Playing a demo, pickup, or other one-shot game. Most gamers will know the "magical school" trope well enough to play it without needing a lot of details. Some of the rules that would be aggravating in a campaign will work well to keep a lid on things within a game lasting at most a few hours.
* Loose parts. For experienced gamers, you can cherry-pick bits that you really like and splice them into your other games. There are some very useful tools here. Also it's just fun to argue with, like I've spread out in this review.
For what I paid for it, I feel like I got my money's worth.
