Ran this for a group of teens I play RPGs with, and it went down a treat! One of those deceptively-simple games that delivers a set-up so neatly in such economy of language (even though our story ended up being about, in their words, "New Sealand, an ocean world mostly taken over by the Welsh with few humans left"*) that you think you'll be left twiddling your thumbs by the session's second half, but it actually fits beautifully into a 3hr timeslot of people shouting ideas over one another.
President Kaiju's mechanics are actually perfectly tuned for this exact scenario:– the 'break-out' teams are great for focusing energy on the game while at the same time fostering some competitive friction - the resolution dice can be handed out to players to give them an immediate reward for having solved each phase's 'riddle' - and the match-up between the labels & the President's Choice is so crystal clear that you can reel players at any level of participation into nail-biting suspense about the outcome.
I made a few additions to the rules – mainly because I knew how my group likes to engage with character drama (like I said, I really admire how tangible the original rules are & I think it was the right move not to clutter them with this stuff) – but I thought I'd share them here in case anyone is interested:
- First, I had them establish entertainer/caterer characters by detailing looks, roles in their respective teams, whether they were Welsh, etc.
- Then each player got to pick one character to be their Friend (who they want to see succeed & not get eaten by a kaiju) and one to be their Enemy (who they want to trip up right into the President's jaws).
- What do you know, they ended the game with at least 1 die each for that final resolution roll! How crazy!
- I increased the stakes there a little bit by allowing them to poison the chargrilled human-burger (🙃) in the meal phase, so that they were actually rolling to kill the President. Or half of them were – we ended up with two competing dice pools as half the group split to defend their great kaiju-god.
- Then I told them they could barter their dice before the roll. Each player could burn a die to kill their Enemy, or burn it to prevent their Friend from being killed. Dice belonging to the departed would be inherited by their killer, to dedicate to whichever cause they pleased.
Naturally, things descended into chaos from there! I think this approach did de-emphasise how inevitable the President's rage feels, which is a big concern in the rules as written. On the other hand, it sure did encourage a lot of back-door, back-stabbing politicking which I felt was definitely in the spirit of this game's cartoon logic!
This is one of the most successful one-shots I've ever run, probably because of how easy it is to get the players on board off the bat. Not just with tone & premise, which are pretty much established once you finish reading the title, but by how it takes roughly as long again to get the group on the same page as you-the-facilitator about the rules; makes sense given it's a 1-page RPG, I guess. This gives it a remarkable accessibility for all kinds of players who may usually struggle to engage fully with a game: first-time players, young children, shy people, those who have trouble grasping complex rules or paying attention to long explanations.
It works so well with these players because it's really almost closer to a party game, and yet there's an elasticity allowing the world to expand around the table's imagination that you really only get from role-playing games. What a wonderful balance to strike!
* I think this originated with a discussion about whales?