Pyramid Review
Best Friends: A Role-Playing Game About Girlfriends And All Their Petty Hatreds
Published by Box Ninja
Designed by Gregor Hutton
Cover by Eric Lofgren
Illustrated by Eric Lofgren & Michael Cunliffe
50-page 1.55Mb b&w PDF; $9.95
48-page black, white, & pink softcover; $14.95Best Friends: A role-playing game about girlfriends and all their petty hatreds, like vs. Monsters, began as an entry in a competition to create an RPG within 24-hours. Each entry had to take two words from a list of four: suburb, hatred, girlfriend, and rats. The author chose girlfriend and hatred. Best Friends did not win a "Ronnie," the competition's award (named for its creator, Ron Edwards, the designer of Sorcerer and co-founder of The Forge), but the author was encouraged to develop the game further. The 24-hour version is free to download, the developed result is this game.
Better known as an artist for Contested Ground Studios' a|state RPG, Gregor Hutton has taken his chosen words and inspired by his sister and her friends, used them to create a storytelling game about a girl's Best Friends and the hatreds that they hold for each other, petty and otherwise. It requires at least three players, five being optimum, plus three tokens per participant. It can be played with or without a GM.
Creating a character is interesting in that she is not wholly created by her player, but in part by the other players. Once she has a name, her player lists why she hates her Best Friends. She hates them all because . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: February 15, 2008
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