Ratpack

A Game of Suburban Survival

Modern (animal)
Self Published
2005
Complexity: 2

Introduction
Well I’ve already covered games where you play as crawdads and vegetables, so why not rats? Ratpack is—as one may assume—a game about packs of rats, just going about doing rat stuff like finding food, avoiding predators, and having adventures—rats have adventures all the time, it’s a scientific fact. It’s also written by Jared A. Sorensen, making this unintentionally my first review of a game by a previously-reviewed creator.


Setting: 2/3 [•]
Ratpack is set in and around “your average American suburban home,” which I guess doesn’t really require that much further description, but I still would have liked more background on the sorts of habits and dangers that rats might encounter. The game is also specifically designed to playable in either a light-hearted “toon” style, or a more serious “grim” style, which is a good way to broaden the appeal for people who may like different game styles.

Character Creation: 2/5
Player’s create their rats by first selecting a background and habitat which grant a overall bonus to rolls made either outside or inside, a bonus to one specific task, and a penalty to another. Next they select a personality which determines their “rattributes.” Yes, they are actually called “rattributes,” I just felt that bore repeating because I appreciate a good pun. Rattributes are static for each personality, and there are no further options beyond this point. Unfortunately this does mean that there are a total of 24 possible characters that can be created.

Mechanics: 3/5
Each of the 9 rattribute is given a dice value d4–d10, when a test is called for the player rolls the die for the relevant rattribute—plus any relevant modifiers from their background and habitat—and compares the result to a success table. Damage can lead to a penalty to rolls and rattributes, or as usual, death. These penalties are reduced when playing is a “toon” style game. There’s also an interesting “Argument” mechanic, by which players can argue about which course of action they should take, with characters getting higher bonuses for arguing plans that play to their personality type. Winning arguments grants a bonus while carrying out the plan, while losing incurs a penalty.

Writing and Presentation: 2/5
Rules are for the most part clearly written and free of errors, although some things required clarification from later sections. The book is put together in a landscape format, which was a thing people started doing in the early 2000s—as digital products would generally be read on a monitor—which unfortunately never caught on—possibly do to the advent of vertically-oriented mobile devices. The overall layout is simple, but well done—especially for a self-published title.
But oh boy, now I finally get to be mean. The art in this book is horribly inconsistent, consisting mainly of random black and white illustrations and colored clip art—think early 00’s clip art, that’s what I’m talking about. One of the personality types even uses a photo of a rat, while the others are illustrations. Additionally, there are several images that just seem like they’re there to fill a blank spot on the page—why is there a blue ribbon on the mechanics page, is it supposed to symbolize success? I don’t know, it’s just there and I don’t like it. And the overall competent layout just makes the art look that much worse by comparison, it’s like a sleek professional website covered in sparkly GIFs and scrolling text.

Content: 2/3 [•]
This book more-or-less includes what you need, there’s a very small selection of creatures you may encounter—such as humans—plus some general guidelines for creating missions and a few sample missions. Additionally, character sheets are provided for each personality type, which saves players the trouble of filling in their rattributes since they’re always the same for each personality.

Summary
Ratpack more-or-less meets expectations, there’s not a lot there, but you really shouldn’t be expecting all that much from it. It seems fully capable of delivering the experience it promises, I’m just not sure that experience is worthwhile.

Base Points: 7
Character Creation: 2/5, Mechanics: 3/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: −2
Setting: +0, Writing: +0, Content: +0

Overall Score 47% (7/15 Points)
Okay as long as you don’t expect too much out of it.