Mystic Ages Publishing
2015
Complexity: 2
Okay, so my last attempt at reviewing a holiday-themed RPG didn’t turn out incredibly well, but just because one thing goes poorly doesn’t mean something similar will go similar poorly right? Alright, yes, I’m being a little sarcastic but honestly in the lawless land of web-published RPGs you can’t know how good or bad something is until you dig into it. Which is precisely what I plan to do here.
Setting: 2/3 [•]
Santa vs. Santa sets up a version of the Christmas mythos in which Santa uses not magic, but superior intellect and an army of elves. Thrown into this situation is an evil clone of Santa with his own army of evil robot elves who is dedicated to destroying Christmas. And of course to combat these evil forces Santa has a team of elf super spies. As ridiculous as this is, the game actually does a pretty good job pulling it all together into something coherent. It's not great, but it does provide an acceptable framework for Christmas-themed conflict.
Character Creation: 3/5
Players take on the role of aforementioned elven super spies. Character creation starts with the usual stuff: name, backstory, etcetera. Players first select their character’s size, which may provide a +1/−1 modifier to Strength and Nimbleness, and color, which does the same for Brains and Craftiness. Then players are then given 15 points to put into their four attributes with a maximum value of 4, which if you’re kinda okay at math you may realize works out to scores of 4, 4, 4, and 3. It is stated that attributes cannot be above 4 “unless your elf’s size or color suggest” otherwise, which honestly I’m not sure what the implication is. Does that simply mean a large elf can have a Strength of 5 with their +1 bonus, and does that also cap their Agility at 3? In short, rules should never “suggest” anything they should state it plainly so you can understand how things are supposed to work. Anyway, characters also get to choose one specialty from a list of six, and start with three cookies and a candy cane, which obviously I will need to explain later.
Overall, character creation is fairly quick and simple, but limited. Assuming things work the way I think they do there is a fair amount of customizing that can be done, I am however still a little confused by the language.
Mechanics: 2/5
Mechanics are fairly simple, checks are made by rolling a number of dice equal to the relevant attribute with success on results of 2, 4, or 5—for some reason—and the highest number of successes wins. Although it's never actually explained how to make any checks that aren’t directly opposed. Damage is… a little weird. As previously stated, characters start with three “cookies” which are literal cookies, and every time their character takes damage, they take a bite out of one of their cookies, when the cookies are gone, character dead. Similarly, players can re-roll a check by taking a bite of their candy cane—which sounds very unpleasant. While it’s thematically-appropriate, I really don’t like these kinds of non-specific measurements, how much is a bite? How big should the cookie be? Seriously, who bites a candy cane? It all sounds fun in theory—except the candy cane part—but seems like it would fall apart almost instantly.
So basically, average mechanics with a completely unnecessary food-based element which can only serve to make things more complicated.
Writing: 2/3 [•]
Aside from my previously mentioned specific issue about interpreting what the rules “suggest,” writing is overall fine. The book opens with a three-page short story which does a jook job setting up the basic concept, but other than that, nothing particularly noteworthy.
Presentation: 2/5
Overall the book is…. Okay really. Nothing really stands out as good or bad, it just kinda is. There’s a handful of clipart images throughout which, while not bad are fairly inconsistent with each other. My only real issue is the typeface, which for some reason has absurdly-large a, e, and o characters that noticeably stick out above the other lower-case letters.
Content: 2/3 [•]
Really the only content is a handful of enemies—including Buddy the Elf for some reason—and normally I’d say it was too little, but given the overall littleness of this game it feels appropriate.
Final Remarks
Santa vs. Santa is very much a “maybe play once” kina thing. The general concept is the most interesting thing, and even if you replaced the food-based mechanics with something more functional, you’d probably still be better off just using an entirely different system.
Base Points: 7
Character Creation: 3/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: 0
Setting: 0, Writing: 0, Content: 0
Overall Score: 47% (7/15 Points)
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