13 Thieves is a solo rpg about being the newly promoted leader of a prominent gang on the brink of destruction.
It's 17 pages, with background art that isn't super intrusive but ties in nicely into the themes and setting.
13 Thieves *is* a little effort intensive to set up, as you randomly generate a lot of information right off the jump. The city's gangs are made up of members, hold territory, have unique strengths, etc, and there's other moving parts as well.
Once things get rolling, though, 13 Thieves turns into a loose but engaging territory control game. To conduct successful criminal operations, you need to appoint members of your gang to perform broad tasks, then count up the in-universe reasons why that task should succeed. If those reasons outnumber the reasons it should fail, you make an easy roll. If not, you make a difficult one.
A lot of the game's outcomes are determined by you, so in a sense this is a self-GM'd game. However, I don't think this is going to create any cognitive weirdness or a sense of unfairness. The game's noir tone kind of ensures that you're playing towards the best possible drama---not necessarily victory. Fairness is incentivized purely through the game's atmosphere.
Overall, if you like solo games with good atmosphere, meaningful drama, and palpable stakes, I think 13 Thieves is worth a look. It *does* require you to make open-ended choices about how certain actions resolve, but whether you succeed or fail is always clear, and it's up to you how harsh of a self-GM you want to be. Plus, I think it'll always generate a good story.
Minor Issues:
-Page 3, the text feels like it doesn't have enough contrast with the background
-Page 12 + 13 + 16, the text feels like it doesn't have enough contrast with the background, and also it's at a lower resolution
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13 Thieves is a solo rpg about being the newly promoted leader of a prominent gang on the brink of destruction.
It's 17 pages, with background art that isn't super intrusive but ties in nicely into the themes and setting.
13 Thieves *is* a little effort intensive to set up, as you randomly generate a lot of information right off the jump. The city's gangs are made up of members, hold territory, have unique strengths, etc, and there's other moving parts as well.
Once things get rolling, though, 13 Thieves turns into a loose but engaging territory control game. To conduct successful criminal operations, you need to appoint members of your gang to perform broad tasks, then count up the in-universe reasons why that task should succeed. If those reasons outnumber the reasons it should fail, you make an easy roll. If not, you make a difficult one.
A lot of the game's outcomes are determined by you, so in a sense this is a self-GM'd game. However, I don't think this is going to create any cognitive weirdness or a sense of unfairness. The game's noir tone kind of ensures that you're playing towards the best possible drama---not necessarily victory. Fairness is incentivized purely through the game's atmosphere.
Overall, if you like solo games with good atmosphere, meaningful drama, and palpable stakes, I think 13 Thieves is worth a look. It *does* require you to make open-ended choices about how certain actions resolve, but whether you succeed or fail is always clear, and it's up to you how harsh of a self-GM you want to be. Plus, I think it'll always generate a good story.
Minor Issues:
-Page 3, the text feels like it doesn't have enough contrast with the background
-Page 12 + 13 + 16, the text feels like it doesn't have enough contrast with the background, and also it's at a lower resolution
Thank you for such a nice review!
I cannot wait to play this game. Looks promising :)
5/5 Stars.
Hope you enjoy it!