Electric Schemes

Modern
Just Crunch Games
2018
Complexity: 1

Electric Schemes is a “micro-RPG of pre-teen mysteries and bikes” and is in fact a game, of sorts. It definitely presents itself as a game, that is one thing I am fairly sure of.
Character Creation: 2/5
Characters have three attributes: Body, Mind, and Heart. Players choose one as the character’s strength and another as their weakness… or not, the rules literally say you can just, not. Players then choose a character archetype and choose two “specials” from that archetype’s list… presumably, it is never actually stated in the rules, but the leveling up section says you get a new special, and the character creation section says you start at level 2, so presumably you start with two specials. Characters also gain a “pride and joy,” a thing happen to have that can give them an advantage once per session.
Aside from being poorly—and incompletely—written, there’s nothing really wrong here. There’s also nothing really great. It’s supposed to be quick and easy, and it is, but not much more.

Mechanics: 2/5
The rules—as I understand them—are as such. When characters attempt to do something with uncertain results they roll 2d6, with success on any result of 5 or 6. Players get +1 die on  the roll if they have some kind of advantage, use their strength, or use their “pride and joy,” and -1 die if using their weakness or when acting with some other kind of disadvantage. When two characters oppose each other their attributes are compared, with strengths beating unmarked and unmarked beating weaknesses. Ties go to a character who can use one of their specials, or are settled by dice roll. The only other use of the specials seems to be allowing a character to automatically succeed in related situations where they’d normally need to roll.
Once again, it’s very minimal, but intentionally so.However pretty much everything is only barely explained, and in some cases more so just implied.

Writing and Presentation: 1/5
As you may have gathered by this point, this game isn’t written incredibly well. Honestly, referring to the writing as “minimal” would be a bit generous, there rules are fairly under-explained and require a bit of supposition on behalf of the reader. Really nothing is well explained, least of all the actual theme of the game.

Electric Schemes is presented is a “pocket mod” which is good if you're printing it out and folding it into a little booklet. However, if you’re just trying to read it on your computer box it’s a little inconvenient having half the pages upside-down. That aside, it tends to feel like the already minimal rules were just chopped down to fit in the small format without much concern for the overall flow or functionality of the text.

Final Remarks
This is not a good game. Honestly it felt like more like a supplement, as if you were supposed to already know the rules. Overall it just felt very quickly thrown together, and I can’t really say why it exists.

Score Summary
Setting: N/A, Character Creation: 2/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Writing: 1/5, Presentation: 2/5, Content: N/A

Base Points: 6
Character Creation: 2/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: −1
Setting: N/A, Writing: −1, Content: N/A

Overall Score: 33% (5/15 Points)