5 Second Rule was reviewed as part of the Tiny Tome collection!  Check out the Tiny Tome page here for others in the collection and more info on the anthology.

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Age target: All Ages (counting and adding up to 18 required)

5 Second Rule is a rules lite system with all-ages friendly story suggestions.  This means that you ultimately get to make up the story and can set the themes to fit any age.  The game uses 3d6 for its rolls, so as long as your players can count and add up to 18 (or you are willing to help them), you should be all set!

Mechanics in 5 Second Rule

Power limits

The key feature of 5 Second Rule is that your powers are limited by 5 seconds in some way.  Maybe they only last for 5 seconds or they only affect the past 5 seconds, you are encouraged to get creative with your powers choices!  This limit means that you and your team need to get very creative in order to overcome obstacles and challenges, pushing each other’s creativity to the max!

Power pool

Another mechanic that I really liked was the power pool.  Every time you roll, it takes points out of your power pool, and when it gets to zero, your roll targets start getting harder and harder.  This was very cool because it stopped players from spamming their powers and also made some of the big rolls that gave you awesome successes a little more weighty because they also took more points out of the pool.  The power pool was an excellent balancing mechanic that continued to drive creativity and added an easy to track cost to using powers or making checks repeatedly. 

Overall thoughts on 5 Second Rule

5 Second Rule was a lot of fun, easy to track, and encouraged a lot of teamwork and creative problem solving!  It’s a great game for adults or kids to pick up quickly, and I hope you can check it out!

Links to 5 Second Rule!

You can find LuckyNewtGames here on twitter and a copy of the game on itch.io!

You can also find 5 Second Rule in the Tiny Tome anthology with 49 other awesome 1-page games.

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