Dads and Decks

Dads & Decks is Lasers & Feelings engine game about being a bunch of dads trying to fix a mundane problem with a deck.

The PDF is 3 pages, with extremely clean, concise layout. There isn't a lot of art, but everything fits the vibe perfectly. Purely from a visual standpoint, this is an extremely cohesive game.

While this is a joke game, it's definitely not an *unplayable* joke game. The Lasers & Feelings engine means the mechanics are pretty effortless to pick up, and the stakes are clear (if low,) but what surprised me is how much heart the game has.

It really is about just hanging out with other dads, reassuring each other as you repeatedly bounce off of solving a simple deck related problem.

Rolls use either your dad stat (reassuring presence) or your deck stat (technical knowhow,) and failure means things like tweaking your back or losing your certainty that you know how to fix a deck. You can recover from those conditions by pep-talks with the other dads, so the whole game has a kind of casual flow where there's always someone trying to fix the deck and someone recovering from failing to fix the deck and everyone else is rubbernecking and chatting and 'helping.'

It's wholesome.

The GM is called the Dad Master, and there's a whole page of support for GMing the game and creating scenarios. Some of the sample scenarios are more fanciful than others (there's one where you fight santa claus), but they're all compelling in their own way and fit into the framework of the story.

Overall, this is a stellar game. From concept to execution, it's a great casual comedy rpg, and if any of its humor lands with you, you should strongly consider it for a game night.

Minor Issues:

-Page 2, under the Dad heading it says the stat represents your "dad attitude" instead of your "dadittude".