Mar 12
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Ukraine
seen from Malaysia
seen from Singapore
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
Phoenix Kacper Abolik, 2018
40 Degree Fever
It's The End Of The World As We Know It And I Have a 40 Degree Fever, Ruritania Jones, 2020
(No relation to 40 Parsecs, another game on my review list.)
40-Degree Fever was written not only during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also while Ms. Ruritania Jones (pseudonym) was sick with COVID herself. For those of you stuck outside the metric system, 40°C is about 104°F, and let me tell you from personal experience it is no fun whatsoever.
The game is psychedelic, apocalyptic, and a little incoherent. The setting is our real world, but with odd creatures also around that look like Dr. Seuss met Dave McKean... but they don't really influence the world other than causing the occasional traffic jam. (The actual art of those appears to be done through analog photomanipulation.) It's near-future, just after Antarctica's and Greenland's glaciers have slid into the sea. Dr. Jones knows her climate science, even when she's delirious. The world is a mess politically and economically. Your characters are at the bottom of the hierarchy, trying to find water and shelter in a hostile environment when you have nothing.
As you might expect from someone in a literal fever-dream delirium, not all of the mechanics fit together properly. 40-Degree Fever's attributes are rated in dice (1d4 through 3d12), its stunts give you flat bonuses of +20 through +50, and three places in the investigation system refer to playing cards. The names for your stats are wild. Your attributes include Demon Seed and Boundlessness. There's a Truck-Kun stunt at the top of a tree that includes both Psychomobile and 8th-Dimensional Shift-Hunter. There's some potential for a system that hangs together well here, but honestly I'd strip out all the mechanics and build a new set of rules under the same names.
You can find 40-Degree Fever on new (at this time) social network Vizn. Vizn has a small but vibrant TTRPG community focused mostly on zine-length and zine-looking non-trad games.
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https://viznclothing.com/
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