Strategicon 2019 Play Report: Return to Mushroom K ingdom

#1

Greetings Runehammerians! I come to you today after having spent the weekend running ICRPG at the Strategicon convention in Los Angeles. The game I ran was based on the wonderful Super Mario Bros hack that @JDStirling created and posted a few months ago, and I return once more to add to that with a handful of resources I created for those games.

I’ve created a folder on Google Drive that contains all of the material I used to run the game. This includes maps, character sheets, loot cards, tokens, and a slightly modified rule set.

I told everyone that played in my games that I would post the after-action report with all of the resources here, so if any of you fine folk that played the Return the Mushroom Kingdom make your way to the forums and find this post, please share any pictures you took. It was a pleasure running for y’all.

Lastly, some pictures from the games themselves:

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Return of the Mario Bros Hack!
#2

:zipper_mouth_face: So, how did it pan out? Give me a couple morsels!

#3

It went great! I ran for 3 groups, and the game evolved slightly over the course of those three games. Mostly I removed some of the boards so things went faster, and emphasized certain mechanics early on (why you might take MAGIC as a stat over straight POWER, that kind of stuff).

The props were a huge hit; I spent a ton of time printing and laminating pages so everyone would get that real sidescroller feel, and it totally worked. Seeing people light up when they realized that mechanics and rules from the NES game were mechanically represented in this game, and then learning how to use/exploit those was probably the best part. For example, realizing that standing on top of pipes would prevent piranha plants from rising from them, that the underworld level had a warp zone at the end if you got up to the roof.

The loot is probably the highly of the game. The process of acquiring, using, losing and then acquiring power ups and equipment was the real fun, I think. If you get hit and lose your power up, who cares, you’ll get another cool one. There’s so much loot packed into the tables (thanks to Joe’s hard work on this) that you can go an entire game and not see all of it.

#4

Sounds fun, I like how your sheets came out very vibrant blacks, thanks for sharing! :+1:

#5

Great job, the laminated boards and assets worked out well. Looks like a lot of fun.

#6

OH MY GODS THAT LOOKS AMAZING!!! :heart::heart::heart:

Excellent stuff, my dude!

#7

Dude! That’s insanity. Very impressed. :herocoin:

#8

Thanks George! I was a player in one of those games and had a blast! I told a bunch of people about it and shared some of the (admittedly bad) pictures I took.