Faery’s Tale Review
By Ian Strelec, Staff Reviewer
Initiative Round
Faery’s Tale can be quickly summed up as an extremely basic roleplaying game, though admittedly there is more to it than that alone.
Of the 62 pages of this short booklet, the first 18 are devoted entirely to lore on fairies. Afterwards, it moves into character creation. You first pick a Pattern, which is a Pixie, Brownie, Sprite, or Pooka. These are your essential races. Then you get 3 points to spread out among their base attributes, Body, Mind, and Spirit. Each Pattern has a different spread of 6 points among these attributes. You then get a limited pool to use to buy titles, gifts, or boons. Titles would be like Knight or Lord, gifts are special abilities, and boons are favors owed you.
The rules progress in the following chapter, explaining challenges. The entire game is played with 6-sided dice, basing success or failure on whether or not you roll an even number on the die. For instance, the Narrator (DM, for you roleplayers) will assign a difficulty of 0-6. He then compares that to your characters relevant attribute, and asks for a roll of a number of dice equal to that attribute. Every time you get an even number, it is considered a success, and if your total number of successes beats the Difficulty, you succeed. A roll of 6 allows you to roll a bonus die, on top of being considered a success. Combat works much the same way, with participants rolling a number of dice equal to their body score. If the attacker has more successes, the attacker hits, and vice versa.
The book also includes a short listing of the statistics of a number of creatures and such, as well as several stories of fey creatures and ideas for adventures.
Critical Hit
The game is creative, I’ll give it that. As a streamlined and extremely easy RPG, it also works well. The art, while in black and white, is also interesting and well done. That’s about all I have to say in a positive way about it, though.
Critical Fumble
Regardless of what the opening says to you, ignore it. This book is not meant for kids over 12. And frankly, I don’t see many boys at all enjoying it. It’s a book about inch-high fairies, what can you expect?
Also, streamlining is one thing, but there’s only so much you can do with a character sheet that can easily be stuck three to a page. I don’t see this game having a great deal of lasting value, due to lack of methods for character advancement and simple limited interest, due to not having much difference between characters and options for making them interesting.
There’s also no Table of Contents. What kind of roleplaying book doesn’t have a table of contents??
Coup de Grace
A streamlined roleplaying game contained entirely within 62 pages of text, this game was not designed for kids over 12 or people with a Y chromosome. It might be entertaining for a game or two, but it seems like the limited character design option and subject material won’t offer a great deal in the way of lasting value. The $15 price tag isn’t exactly appealing either, considering the small size of the book.
Final Grade: C-
