Appendix NES, as in Nintendo Entertainment System, the 8-bit console that birthed a gaming generation in the 80s, is how someone apparently described Reynaldo Madrinan’s OSR adjacent original game design on RPG.net, way back in 2016. The game was a success on Kickstarter much later, and landed in glorious 470-page hardcover format early this year. It says it’s inspired by anime and classic videogames, meaning 8/16-bit Japanese roleplaying games on consoles. Final Fantasy, Zelda, and the Mana series are mentioned as inspiration, but I’m also seeing plenty of Dragon Quest here. On the anime side, Ghibli is obvious, Sword Art Online perhaps unsurprising, but also for example Berserk.
Interesting design
Being OSR adjacent, you can see a lineage back to (A)D&D, with the way the D20 works with to-hit rolls, and a focus on the adventuring party.
The rules are built for sandbox play, with detailed (but concise) rules for journeys, exploring adventure sites, negotiation, crafting, downtime, and followers. On this level, there are a lot of games like this, but few with all this included. The systems read like something that’s been tested over a long time, and everything is very logical. They avoid becoming a collection of mini games, and instead appear something that’s going to power the play and build the fiction.
But Break isn’t a retro clone at all. It’s a whole new game and new vision, a love letter to these classic videogames and anime, as the designer puts it. It doesn’t feel like part of the D&D lineage – more like an alternate world version of the same source material, related to D&D in the sense that Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are related to D&D.
Attributes (called aptitudes, here) are not rolled. Your calling (class) determines them, modified slightly by your choice of species and randomly determined quirks. I can see how this could feel very off for a lot of folks, but it’s in line with the strong dependance on archetypes in the source material. There are enough callings and species to make up a combination you like. It’s not quite the D&D attribute set, but almost – Intelligence and Wisdom have been combined into a single Insight value.
You roll both high and low. Most checks are roll under, but combat is roll over. All rolls are with a D20. While this feels initially weird, it allows for very little math at the table. You can see your aptitude scores on your sheet, and that’s the number you want to roll under. There are modifiers (+2 or +4, mostly +2), but they are very logical – in most circumstances you only get one if your background would benefit you in a roll. The downside is of course that you have to flip the modifiers around for combat. You don’t need them very much as usually you just get an edge or snag (advantage or disadvantage), allowing you another D20 to roll and picking the more or less favorable outcome.
Health economy is very tight. Characters start with two or three hearts (hit points), and unmodified doesn’t go higher than five or seven, even at later levels. Successful attacks always deal one heart, with special success taking this up to two: there is no rolling for damage. Thus you shouldn’t expect to be able to take more than a couple of hits total.
All hearts are replenished after combat. If you run out of hearts and take more damage, you need to roll on an injury table. The results can be surprisingly grisly, with lost limbs and the like. There is no outright magical healing that could undo injuries; you need to deal with the problem with time and coin.
I haven’t run the game yet outside of solo combat simulations, but this reads like a very quick and tactical combat system. My concern is that the reliance on the D20, and the relatively high target numbers you need to hit, mean that things could be very swingy, with a lot of missing. But thanks to the health economy, all hits are guaranteed to be substantial – no cases of hitting for what amounts to, say, 1/30th of a monster’s hit points, which can easily happen in a D&D game at higher levels.
The callings (classes) are standard fare, but strongly filtered by the source material. There is no “fireball wizard” – the sage comes closest, but they are very much an anime wizard. Their free combat power is a force push, not magic missile. The battle princess and especially murder princess get a lot of attention thanks to the fun naming, and they’re fun takes on paladins. Factotum is an everyday hero, someone with everyday skills taken to an almost magical level.
The species are mostly standard archetypes, but they feel fresh thanks to the anime stylings. Elves are mostly what you’d expect. Everything else is tweaked into an original direction, with underground humans, tiny folk (chibs), cat folk, giants, bio mechanoids, big green orcs, and weird gray-green dwarves. Goblins are fun. I like the inclusion of “transdimensional stray humans” – being people from our world who have somehow ended up in the fantasy world. This allows for easy recreation of a popular anime trope.
Coin economy is tight. Things generally cost a lot.
The crafting rules are comprehensive, and include a favorite of mine: crafting with monster parts. You get rules for alchemy, artificing, cooking, forging, gadgeteering, and tailoring. When about to fail in crafting, you can choose to double down and see what you end up with. There are tables for mishaps and cursed items. The difficult thing is that you only get one ability per rank (level), and the crafting disciplines take up one of your choices.
Closing thoughts prior to running the game
The book includes little in the way of instructing how it’s supposed to be played, and what types of adventures are assumed. I’m sure some of this is intentional, wanting to leave