Review of What I did on my Summer Holidays
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Age target for “What I did on my Summer Holidays” TTRPG
What I did on my Summer Holidays is specifically part of the Ten One Page Roleplaying Game (for Younger Players) bundle, so it’s made FOR kids and youth. I’d say it would be appropriate for all-ages with the story being very G or PG rated and mechanics being easily understood with basic number recognition (i.e. recognizing numbers up to 6, no addition required).
Setting for “What I did on my Summer Holidays” TTRPG
What I did on my Summer Holidays is set in a somewhat magical vacation town with you, a magical youth and or associate of said magical youth, trying to spice up the long weeks spent entertaining yourselves.
You can generate plots from a short list where you combine two prompts (to get A LOT of variation in quests from a short list), and the rest is to your imagination!
For my playcheck, I rolled “learn the secrets of the seagull wizards” and “learn what the magic whistle does and why the police want it”. This lead to a whole quest of us finding out that the whistle can change the weather, the police being under the control of the seagull wizards to deliver them the whistle and doughnuts, and the seagull wizards wanting to keep the weather at the perfect beach temperature to draw in the crowds and have more food for their seagull minions to steal! It was a silly plot that was a lot of fun to play out, involving some quite hillarious and challenging moments like trying to catch a seagull for interrogation and accidentally causing a mid-summer freeze!
Your character in “What I did on my Summer Holidays” TTRPG
Your character in What I did on my Summer Holidays is a pre-made character from the game; you can choose from a young witch, a goblin, a very royal cat, and a fuzzy monster. Each character has their own unique abilities or traits, magic, and antagonist who will try to mess with the characters on occasion.
If you’ve read some of my other reviews, you can probably guess we picked the cat as one of our characters. Our other was the fuzzy monster (who is invisible to grown-ups). This played out as our young witch companion was home sick, so we had to go out and have fun for her and return with a cool story. We had a great time with Prince Cattington ridinding around on Mr. Fuzzle’s shoulders (remember… Mr. Fuzzles is invisible to grown ups). Their abilities (charming people and lifting heavy things) played off of each other in some fun ways while only needing a very short list of abilities to work from.
Mechanics for “What I did on my Summer Holidays” TTRPG
What I did on my Summer Holidays uses a rules-lite, 2d6 based system where you compare your resulting roll to a target to determine if you have a total success, success + complication, or a failure (complication only).
In addition to the 2d6 system base, you also have some special rules if your traits come into play. If you use your traits as a strength (i.e. being book-smart in a discussion with a historian), you get to roll an extra die and drop the lowest. However, if one of your traits would hinder you (i.e. Mr. Fuzzles is just straight up too big to fit in somewhere… but he’s going to try!), you roll an extra die and drop the highest. I really liked this addition to the base because it requires players to consider their character with different moves AND emphasizes teamwork. Mr. Fuzzles is GREAT at shoving aside trash in an alleyway to clear a path or digging out a giant pit trap, but we’re going to need to rely on Prince Cattington to fit through the small basement window because Mr. Fuzzles is going to have a pretty challenging penalty.
ALSO…. in your roll, if you get a specific set of numbers… you may also summon your antagonist. Each character has a unique antagonist that will show up during specific rolls, and they will try to mess with you. This person can be someone like mean bully goblins for our little goblin friend character, or it could be the young witch’s grandma who’s in charge of her for the summer and has been wondering where the group snuck off to. It’s a fun and simple way of continuing to push the story and add personal story elements while creating enjoyable (and often funny) chaotic moments without requiring a big plan on the facilitator’s part.
Overall thoughts on “What I did on my Summer Holidays” TTRPG
I thought that What I did on my Summer Holidays was fun, short, easy to learn adventure and system that let us extend some of our summer vacation vibes into our tabletop games. We played it as our characters going back to school and recounting the story to their friends (since we just ended summer break), and we had a great time with it.
There was a good balance between providing a set up and allowing the players to create the rest of the scene, and the mechanics are perfect for introducing new or young players to TTRPGs while also keeping veteran players interested (i.e. the rules were easy to understand, but they also pushed for creativity and planning, so they weren’t TOO simple either). Overall, I’d recommend checking the game out, and I hope you have a fun time with it like we did!
Find a copy of “What I did on my Summer Holidays” TTRPG
You can find a copy of What I did on my Summer Holidays in the One Page Roleplaying Games (for Younger Players) bundle on the creator website, OR as just the individual game through DriveThruRPG and itchio.
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