Review: Spirit of 77

Here is one we picked up at the Salt Lake Gaming Con, the Spirit of 77 roleplaying game. This looks fun, and the game looks great - it is chock full of art and campy artwork ripped straight form the 1970s. If you have ever dreamed of playing a character ripped straight from the television or silver screen from the 1970s, this is your game.

The white-covered book is the main rulebook, and we picked up the module/expansion book that looks something like an Atari 2600 game box. Both are beautiful books, and they fit the style and tone of the era perfectly. This is also a somewhat campy and humorous game, as the tone is lighthearted and can get quite silly as all the tropes and funny stereotypes of the 1970s come blazing to the tabletop in their campy and full glory.

The production values are very high here, with fake advertisements from TV Guide type magazines, comic books, and other print media of the time inserted into the game in their funkadelic and period perfect style. It looks great, and all this extra fluff sets the mood perfectly. There are some younger players who will probably miss a lot of the humor and point here, as you kinda have to either have lived through this time or be a huge fan of the television and movies to understand the vibe and groove of this era. Or you could watch Tarantino flicks and pick up on all this quick.

The system is a simple 10+ on 2d6 system for full success, 7-9 for partial, and 6 or less for failure. Ability scores are -1 to +3 and directly add to the roll. Each character has a class, such as gang member, private eye, or good old boy (car driver) and each of these classes gives a player a choice of different special abilities and class bonuses. To make each character unique, a "story" is added to each character, and further expands the character's abilities, relationships, and role within the game.

The advantage and disadvantaged roll system is a thing of beauty, and I like it better than D&D 5's two d20 roll system. Here, if you have the advantage, roll 3d6 and drop the lowest. For disadvantage, 3d6 and drop the highest. A bell curve 3d6 roll plus or minus the highest or lowest to create a weighted 2d6 roll? Very nice.

The system works well and is straightforward, which fits the whole vibe of a party game and also a game mechanic that would feel like it comes from the 1970s. It's important because mechanically you don't want something complicated and obscure here, nor do you want something like an attention-hungry d20 system. This is a fast and fun game, and the rules reflect that.

Character Creation

It took a while to figure out character creation, even with  pre-printed roles and stories from the PDF downloads from the game's website. Maybe we are dense squares and nerds from the 1980s, but we found ourselves sorting through sheets, figuring out the difference between roles and stories, and then piecing all the parts together. Maybe it is having the character creation summary on page 65, after a long section of combat, rules, and other sections and we got lost a little in the book.

After we figured one character out though, we got it, and the rest of them went smoothly.

Charts vs. Rules of Thumb

We had an issue with the classes and stories. For our playtest, we did a Scooby-Doo style play through, and spun up the characters one would expect in such a game. We had a sporty type guy, a hippie mechanic with an animal sidekick, a sleuth, and a pretty gal. The rules worked well, but we found the game's in-line charts slowed play up a bit much for our liking. We would either be referencing a player's on-sheet charts, the book's charts, or the player handout charts constantly to make sure we were doing things right (the first time through). I am sure we could get used to this, but coming from games like Savage Worlds where the success mechanic is elegant and built-in to the dicing system, it felt like a bit of a strange choice for us.

Yes, in Savage Worlds, what happens on a raise (greater success) is up to the referee, so I can see how Spirit of 77's charts need to be a bit more explicit in their flavor and "what happens" to better fit the time and period of the game. But in a game like Savage Worlds, if you define the higher levels of success along the funkadelic and campy 1970's flavor, you can get away with not having a chart to determine the results of a roll. In Spirit of 77, a 10+ roll will get you three pieces of information when scoping out a crime scene - the chart says so. In Savage Worlds, a success plus two raises will get you the same thing (or whatever the referee decides), no chart needed, and I just rule that because success gets you a major fact, plus each raise would get you another.

To be fair, there is a "generic rule" of 10+ (3 good things or total success), 7-9 (one good thing and a setback), and 6- (fail) you can apply to any situation, and we found it best to not spend time looking up charts and just use that rule of thumb.

The combat and "basic action" charts you can't really get away from, so I ended up printing out multiple copies for the players (again from the website's PDF downloads) and handing those out to everybody. By the time we were done, each player had four sheets of paper (role, story, and 2 reference sheets) and it felt like a lot of paper sheets per player.

Let the Best Guy Do It!

Another thing we noticed is one of the major problems of class-based systems. Players let "the best at it" do what they do best. The group's sleuth was five times better at searching rooms than any other character in the party, so every other player at the table let that player's character do all the sleuthing. Same with the mechanic fixing things. Same with the tough guy beating things up. Same with the pretty girl talking to people. What each character did best became mostly "all that they did" at the table, and everyone fell into their "best at" roll almost exclusively.

This happens with other games, as the rogue is the "picking locks" guy who has all the fun in stealth mode in our D&D games, but it felt particularly acute here.

We kind of like systems that force people out of their boxes, and also let players try things their characters aren't the best at. Our group's sporty guy should be searching. interacting with NPCs, and even trying mechanical repairs at times. While in this game he could, the character who was the "best at it" was so much better there wasn't really an incentive to try.

Again, in a Savage Worlds game, all of the characters in our Scooby Doo group could have some sleuthing powers, since hey, they are Mystery Incorporated, and this is their life. The best at sleuthing would be a d10 or a d12 at it, and while really good, other characters with d6 or d8 investigative powers could feel like their skills could be worthwhile and add to the fun. Also, if a member of the group with a lowly d4 skill works at it, they could eventually get a d12 skill and shine after a lot of hard work - and be just as good as the team's investigator.

Here, there's little reason to not use the investigator, as all the best information will come from this character. Again, this happens in other games, and so it is really a larger issue for penm-and-paper gaming (which this game highlights).

Great for New Players and Quick Groups

While we had a couple issues with feeling limited by tightly defined classes and "best at" roles, we could see how these features actually would make it easier for new players or groups of strangers to get along and play. When you are with a new group of people or players who aren't familiar with roleplaying, having strongly defined roles makes things easier. If you are the best "tough guy" you are going to shine, feel good about taking on challenges, and other players will look to your character to solve "tough guy" problems. You are guaranteed a starring role when a problem comes up that "tough guys" can solve, and the referee can create "tough guy" challenges just for you, just like he or she can "charming gal" or "investigator" parts of the game. A good referee looks at the roles chosen around the table, and shapes the adventure for those roles so everyone feels their character had a part to play.

In a way, this is why D&D has strong classes as well. It is easier to get into a role, gives a player at a table a narrowly defined but useful job, gives a referee a yardstick role to create challenges from, and streamlines what everyone should be doing. Strong roles are great for new players and groups that are just getting started playing together.

We feel class-based play with strictly-defined roles is a bit too limiting for us. We like designing a character that can do well at the things we choose for them is important, but equally important is an advancement track that allows a player to take a character in any direction. We don't want characters to be stuck on class progression paths, nor feel so locked into a role they can't change and grow into a new role. If our investigator wants to become a fighter pilot, spend those XP and work on those fighter pilot skills for a while. We feel you can't do that in a d20 system, and multiclassing doesn't really work well for this sort of advancement since you are "eating up" your twenty or so levels in a path that feels like a distraction from your favored class and your will be "done" some day (and unable to become the most powerful mage because you took a couple levels of fighter pilot).

In Spirit of 77, there are five levels, and you just get better at what you do. You can swap classes at level five, but lose your original class' moves. You still stick to one role and get other class' powers as an option, which partially solves the issue of branching out, so it is a bit more flexible in that regard.

But Did We Have Fun?

Yes, we did. This is a fun game with a lot of cool style and 1970's vibe, and I would totally run this at a con or social setting with a new group of players. It plays fast, encourages genre play, and it keeps players in that 1970's groove. We had a couple issues with progression and class roles, but those feel like more of how the game is focused for "focused social play" rather than something worth griping about. Would we use this as a long-term system for campaign play? I can't say we would, since the game's "good for fast and loose" play systems do not feel like a good fit for how we like our characters to progress and expand powers and abilities.

Everything ran fast and fun, but our main issue were the constant chart references. I am sure these would become old-hat after a while, but a part of me would love a "universal resolution table" to do away with a lot of these specialized 6-, 7-9 and 10+ charts. While there is a universal rule for 6-, 7-9, and 10+ that handles general rolls, the special moves and their references made the game a little bit heavy for us when we played and then we went with the simplified generic system we interpreted.

Worthy, but not without quirks, but you know what? That describes the 1970's in a way as well. This one is worth picking up just for the source material, inspiration, and "new game" fun with pickup groups. It is a very social and hilarious game with a lot of flavor and style, and also a blast to play.

Versus Other Games?

If it comes down to the question play this genre with any other game, I would prefer this game over more generic systems, even with some of the ease-of-use issues. The flavor and theming is strong, and it gets players in the right mood quickly. The classes and mechanics reinforce the campy and crazy action of the 1970s very well; where I feel a more mainstream game (d20, GURPS, etc) may tempt players back into their comfort zones with those systems to 'play it safe' and 'power game.'

This versus Savage Worlds or FATE? It depends on the players really and if they are fans. I could see those doing this genre well, but not doing as good of a job keeping the players in those classic 1970s roles and zany situations. If you are sitting down with a group the first time and want to play something like this, play this and avoid the distractions of converting both the mechanics and theme. With fans of Savage Worlds or FATE? A tougher sell honestly, but keeping an open mind and experiencing new things are what made this decade so cool, man.

This game puts you in the 1970's mode and keeps you there, so that is a huge plus when playing with others. A lot of games "say" they can simulate an era like this, but when it comes down to it, you are still playing the basic game while playing lip-service to the era and the tropes. With a group of players, it is better to have them focused on era-specific roles and quirks than it is a generic rules set, because it keeps the party and flavor going. For this, specific and narrowly defined rules work, and keep the mood of the game focused on the source material.

Check it out and get your groove on.