Polgarus Games
2006
Introduction
If there’s one thing that grabs my attention when it comes to a role-playing game, it’s putting players into non-traditional roles—as evidenced by my glowing review of Creeks and Crawdads. Sure playing a musclebound barbarian or a suave space pirate is fun, but it doesn’t really pose much of a challenge to one’s creativity. But you know what does pose such a challenge? Playing as sentient vegetables, and as you may have already figured out, that is exactly what The Veggie Patch offers.
Setting: 3/3 [+]
The Veggie Patch is set in, well, The Veggie Patch, a vegetable garden where a mysterious even known as “the change” imbued all the plants—excluding grass—with sentience and mobility. Now you may be wondering if the author provided an entire history and societal structure for these sentient vegetables—and technically some fruits—and the answer to that question is no. They actually provide a full history and society for two separate groups of sentient vegetables—in separate gardens—and the weed tribes residing in the wilds. I suppose the point I’m trying to make here is that this setting is very well fleshed out. Players find themselves primarily in The Patch going about their vegetable-related business in relative safety. However those who venture outside the garden hedge—which is also sentient—may find themselves dealing with the totalitarian Brassica from the neighboring garden or the savage weeds dwelling in the wilds—or of they’re particularly unlucky, a rabbit. Everything from the general personalities of various plant types, to social order and resource distribution, to the legal and illegal drug trade is covered. Honestly, they probably could have had half as much detail on the setting without seeming like anything was missing. In addition to the “in game” setting, a full explanation of the change is provided with details of specific effects, ranges, etc, just because the thought you might need that information.
Character Creation: 2/5
The first step in character creation is selecting a vegetable from a choice of fifteen options from asparagus to zucchini. Each veggie type has base attribute values plus specified movement and attack types. Players are given 5 additional points to assign to their attributes or health—which has a static starting value for all characters—and are more-or-less done. Unfortunately, despite having fifteen veggies to choose from there is little variation—especially if using alternate rules allowing for complete redistribution of attribute points. There’s no mechanical difference between movement types and half of the attack types, meaning that there’s ten veggies who mechanically vary in no way other than base attributes—plus the lettuce and potato, and leek and zucchini even have identical attributes. The onion is the only veggie type that has a unique ability, and yes I do realize how ridiculous this rant of the lack of variation among fictional sentient vegetable types sounds. There are rules for creating or modifying or creating your own vegetables, so if you really wanted to you could go about having more distinct characters.
Mechanics: 3/5
Ganeplay basically comes down to rolling 2d6, adding an attribute, and comparing to a difficulty ranging from 9–21. Opposed checks are made the same, with ties going to the character with the higher attribute. Combat works the same, albeit rolling against the target’s defense with damage being calculated as the amount by which the attacker’s roll beat the defense up to a maximum equal to the attacker’s Strength score, plus any damage modifiers from weapons. Additionally, there are a number of special attacks that can be done, which adds some variety. One noteworthy aspect is the eating mechanic, veggies must consume an amount of compost each day equal to their Strength score to remain healthy, with additional compost consumed going towards healing damage. Eating too little or too much can adversely affect a character—yes, your sentient vegetable can get so fat that it affects their stats—and compost also serves as the game’s primary currency, making its management and use a nice little bit of added depth.
Writing and Layout: 3/5
The book is not written in an overtly humorous manner with only occasional jokes or references to not taking the game seriously—unfortunately several attempts at humor are followed with exclamation points, which is the punctuation equivalent of a laugh track. Overall everything is presented clearly and laid out in a sensible order, and easy to find what you need. But since I am compelled by a voodoo curse to nitpick layout and design decisions, there was an odd choice made to place illustrations for veggie types next to their description, which condenses the text into a unappealing half-column and also has no spacing between text and image. This really bugs me because the illustrations could have been put next to the stats instead which would have looked much nicer. Also the tables are kinda ugly.
Each veggie type—including the brassica—is accompanied by an illustration. The illustrations are… let’s just say “simplistically rendered but technically accurate.” I do appreciate the decision to base the depictions on the entire plant rather than just the parts people are accustomed to seeing—like certain religiously-themed vegetable-based media franchises. But aside from a couple really nice maps, that’s all the art in the book, there aren’t even illustrations for the weeds.
Content: 3/3 [+]
This book is loaded with content, far more than you’d expect from a silly little sentient vegetable game. In addition to the fifteen veggie types, stats are provided for five brassica, seven types of weed, and six animals. Personally I would have liked to see the selection of animals based more on agricultural pests, wolves are scary to humans, but a goat would be an unstoppable terror to veggiekind. It also would have been a great opportunity to place the battles with giant snails and rabbits seen in medieval manuscripts within a relevant context, although i do realize that that is a fairly esoteric connection to make. Aside from various plants and animals there is a modest selection of equipment, suggestions for putting the game in alternate settings, and twenty-one adventure ideas. Basically they give you everything you need and a little more—unless you’re a nitpicking weirdo who wants obscure references to medieval manuscript trivia. I do however have one valid complaint, there is a reference to strange plants in the pond and it is never elaborated upon. So I took the liberty of illustrating and stating one up, because of course I did.
Summary
I don’t know what you want from a game about sentient vegetables, but whatever it is The Veggie Patch probably has it. It’s simple enough to pick up quickly, but has enough depth that you won't run out of things to do.
Base Points: 8
Character Creation: 2/5, Mechanics: 3/5, Presentation: 3/5
Adjustments: +2
Setting: +1, Writing: +0, Content: +1
Overall Score 67% (10/15 Points)
Probably the best game about sentient vegetables.
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