Review of Everspark
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Target audience for Everspark
Everspark, from the very beginning of the book, states that it is intentionally made to be accessible to kids and to help new players jump into the game and play the way that they really want without being inhibited by a ton of mechanics. It’s story-forward, focusing on the narrative and who your characters are, making it good for folks who prefer the storytelling side over planning your mechanics.
For players, they will need to be able to answer questions and write responses (or get a bit of help, or remember them) in order to fill in their character, and they will need to be able to roll 1d20 and compare the result to an outcome scale. There’s no adding modifiers, so no math for adding bonuses is required. Players should be able to engage with the game without needing a lot of math or reading skills.
On the facilitator side, the book is over 300 pages long, but it is a pretty quick read in a zine sized format, and a lot of the content is examples (which are GREAT). There’s also a condensed 30 page reference guide that helps to summarize everything. That said, I think the expectation is that the facilitator will need to be able to read for content, which is usually about ages 8+.
With regards to the content and story, you make that all your own! This is a game system that encourages you to create your adventures, so you get to moderate and decide how much combat, drama, shenanigans, and/or chaos you want to include.
Setting for Everspark
Everspark doesn’t have a setting that comes with it because it wants you to create your own, and it gives some awesome resources to do that.
There is a 120 option roll table to help come up with world generation ideas, if you’re stuck trying to come up with a world on your own, and the Q&A style character creation (more on this later) will naturally create lore for the world that your adventure takes place in. There’s also structure provided around building missions and a story sheet tool to help with tracking what’s going on around the group.
I also really liked the map building method described in the book since this is a fantastic way to have the whole group participating in the creation process and giving everyone ownership of the story from the ground up (literally).
Your character in Everspark
Your character in Everspark is anyone you want them to be!
You’ll need to choose your Ancestry, Background, and Class (referred to in the book as ABCs) to define where they come from and who they are now. Each category of character creation has tables to choose from (with options to make up your own), descriptions, where necessary, and a set of questions pertaining to that category.
The questions were the highlight here for me. They are focused on making the characters personal and creating a rich background without being too open ended (i.e. “how did you come into your current role” vs. “make a backstory”). There is also an interview section that occurs when the party first meets that further fills in your character and connects them to the rest of the group. It helps players answer questions that authors would typically outline before writing and makes a web of lore around the party.
Mechanics in Everspark
I don’t want to give away ALL of Everspark’s secrets (you need to read the book to see what N.A.C.H.O.S stands for), so I’m going to cover three core mechanical elements that give a good overview of what to expect in the game.
Basic rolls
Mechanics in Everspark focus primarily on the story while keeping the dice rolling intuitive… and building mindfulness into actions that require you to roll. Before you roll your 1d20 to check your outcome (which is the pure mechanical bit), you first need to answer a few questions to the group about what the action is, how you plan to do it, why you should do it… or why you should NOT do it. Especially in games with kids where there is a higher propensity to maybe not discuss with the group before doing a thing, making the stop-think-act process fun and part of the story without saying no can be really important to having both a good game flow and encouraging MORE creativity by sparking new ideas during the questions process.
Sparking your story
Speaking of an idea spark, one of the core mechanics in Everspark is the Spark. This is how story progression is tracked, so you don’t have to have a facilitator making a judgement on it all the time. As you conduct your adventure, you’ll draw out a star on a sticky note with each line in the star representing a progression for the particular thing that you are in the middle of or are working on. You’ll roll a 1d6 each time there is a possibility of progressing the story to see if you hit the current threshold for drawing another line to advance the story again. It’s kind of like a randomized, progressively risky or rewarding drama clock that makes it so you don’t really know when something exciting is going to suddenly take off! At the end, you have a final make-or-break roll where the Spark may come to fruition or fizzle out.
Stacking Sparks
And, you can stack Sparks too! There are a ton of great examples in the book (which… I really enjoyed going through this section; there so many wonderful prompts), one of which was for a cooking quest – your first Spark is to maybe gather ingredients; when that is done, you’ll need to complete another Spark to prepare them, and then you’ll have another Spark to cook. You could also be trying to get a treasure from a tomb where your first Spark is to reach it and a second Spark is to escape before hitting the 5th point on your star, meaning that the tunnel may collapse!
Overall thoughts on Everspark
I think Everspark is an awesome system for coming up with and playing out high energy, exciting stories that allow a level of player freedom, choice, and creativity that can sometimes be missed in more crunchy game systems. I like that it asks questions, giving power to the reader and players while still giving them tools, instead of just telling you what happens.
I also really loved the examples sprinkled throughout the book. Whether it was providing Spark starters or playfully placing a wide array of character examples amongst the system explanations, it demonstrated how diverse of a story you can make with Everspark… and it was also a perfect idea generator.
The system makes it easy to create, say, an adventure starring Link from Wind Waker (the kiddo’s current primary obsession) as he needs to repair the boat after it was attacked by a giant shadow bird controlled by Flippy from Dog Man (kiddo’s current secondary obsession). When not playing with my kid, I could also use the exact same system to run a game with my friends who want to play as a team of superheroes that travel between different realities. It’s flexible to the needs of the table, easy to teach to others, and leads to a lot of fun.
Find a copy of Everspark
You can find a copy of Everspark on itchio!
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