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(+6)

Michtim is an all-ages, modern-day fantasy rpg about hamsters. It's 118 pages, and played with d6s, poker chips, and glass beads.

It's also got a surprising volume of world-building. Everything from gender to political factions to owl-domestication is spelled out in at least a little bit of text, and the setting feels as fully developed as any good children's book series.

Layout-wise, there's a few places where the book feels sparse (especially in the basic rules chapter,) but everywhere else there's tons of graphics and illustrations and the book feels packed with character and charm.

Mechanically, Michtim is an interesting creature, and if you're a designer and the setting didn't grab you, I think it's worth looking at for the mechanics alone. Essentially, your emotions are your stats. Each emotion governs particular skills, and the more naturally you resonate with that emotion, the better you are with its associated skills. Furthermore, rolling an emotion comes with a chance to temporarily boost it. So the more you engage with an emotion, the more intense it gets---at least until you take a break and cool off.

Not all emotions cover an equal number of skills, but all skills are useful. Furthermore, character creation allows you to start with only 1 point in two of your emotions if you wish---a state where you *can't* succeed rolls with those emotions unless you get a boost---so gameplay has the potential to feel pretty asymmetrical.

Combat is crunchy and tactical, and it contains movement rules, status effects, equipment benefits, and other elements that tend to fit in adventure games, but it also has a surprisingly robust meta to it. Mitchims with high Joy are good at scooting around the battlefield. Mitchims with high Love are healers. Mitchims with high Grief are tanks. Mitchims with high Fear are dodgy. Mitchims with high Anger can hit and deal damage. And every Mitchim is going to be at least decent in two of those emotions, so it's perfectly viable to have a build that flies across the battlefield, gets in your enemies' faces, and then starts crying---bogging them down and making them super uncomfortable.

On top of that, there are character classes (called Callings) that are super flexible. And I really want to emphasize that. You can equip multiple at the same time, and you can spend resources to swap them out on the fly. Each Calling is a little one-note in what it does mechanically, but because you can equip three, you effectively play with a hybrid class that manipulates the core mechanics in three out of twelve different ways.

In general, I would strongly recommend trying Michtim if you like Mouse Guard, Succulent Sorcerers, 4th ed, Mausritter, basically any children's fantasy lit, or if you're looking for a game that you can run for a young audience.

Michtim is easy to learn, and its mechanics felt both familiar and different to me. It carves out its own distinct niche without sacrificing the fun of its gameplay, and it's got a great aesthetic and a fun, well-fleshed-out setting. Overall, I think unless your criteria for a game is "has to be grimdark", you'll get something out of Michtim, and it's worth grabbing a copy.


Minor Issues:

-Page 12, Fur Coat, "during the sleep" during their sleep

-Page 24, Getting into the Mood, "Into The" missing caps

-Page 51, first para, "pull of" pull off

-Page 76, I'm not totally sure I understand how armor works. Does technical armor apply against technology?

-Page 83, there's no Joy ultimate?

-Page 111, The Veil, "stops to honor" stops honoring

(+4)

Ohhhh, thank you! I just discovered your review and your feedback. I'm sorry you had to find errors. I didn't have an editor on the team (well, I was basically doing this all by myself, that's why). And I hope I'm able to correct the issues ASAP. I can't afford Adobe CC at the moment, so I can't work with my original Michtim file; but I'm working on a fresh file created in Affinity Publisher, so I don't depend on Adobe.

Ultimates are just examples. You should create your own. That's why there's not everything available right off the bat. 

Armor works either universally or against one specific type. Weapons also always have a type. You just flatly reduce the damage taken by the armor value. Definitely something to clarify in a 2.0 if I get to make one.

The plan is to make a Revision, and get the digital option out to all previous buyers. I'm not making money that way, but I intend to make my games living games.

I also want to make apparent that you can roll Emotions for any actions that fall under that Emotion's purview. So the given actions are for combat, but you can basically create and repair objects with Joy or Love, and so on.

Thanks for the honest review, and THANKS for noticing that the game engine is *fun* regardless of the setting. I really intended it to be a functionally designed game that's enjoyable. The original plan was to transition to a Video Game, so that's part of my background on many design decisions.

Thanks!! Check out my other stuff. You can gladly take Community Copies!