Pyramid: Pyramid Review: Contenders: A Roleplaying Game of Blood & Sweat, Pain & Hope

Pyramid Review

Contenders: A Roleplaying Game of Blood & Sweat, Pain & Hope

Published by Prince of Darkness Games

Written by Joseph J. Prince

52-page digest-dized b&w softcover; $15

Let me begin by making a confession: I have no interest in the sport of boxing. I have never seen a movie about boxing. Not Rocky. Not Raging Bull. Which begs the question, why would I want to play an RPG in which the protagonists are boxers, let alone review it? My answer would be that I should be able to review any game, and that after reading through Contenders: A Roleplaying Game of Blood & Sweat, Pain & Hope by JJ Prince just once, I knew that I wanted to play the game.

So with one person missing from our regular Friday night gaming group, I extracted Contenders from a gaming pile and after a second read through, I wrote out some character sheets, and found an ordinary deck of cards. Once everyone arrived, I explained what I was planning to run. Normally in such situations I get out a board game so all but one of the group were reticent to try Contenders.

In Contenders, each player takes the role of a boxer trying to climb out of the gutter and into the big leagues by fighting in the ring. If his HOPE is strong enough, a fighter can make it, but PAIN and despair, both of which drives him to fight harder, might drag him back into the gutter. He draws HOPE from those he knows, his CONNECTIONS, and from winning fights, but gains PAIN from losing fights and when his CONNECTIONS . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.

Article publication date: February 16, 2007

Copyright © 2007 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.