This was my 2nd time ever playing a TTRPG, and the first time was short and perhaps not deveped enough for me to really classify myself as having any experience playing TTRPGs. Despite this, I think Honey Heist might be the best possible game I could’ve chosen–it is simple to setup, goofy, and fun.
Honey Heist only requires the use of D6s, which was a relief for me, since I would be acting as the GM and running the game for my 2 friends who had agreed to play and didn’t quite feel ready to manage many more types of dice than that.
Here is the premise of the game:
“It’s Honeycon 2017. You are going to undertake the greatest heist the world has ever seen. Two things:
One: You have a complex plan that requires precise timing.
Two: You are a GODDAMN BEAR.”
The premise already make for a hilarious, unpredictable game, but the setting and character building might have been my favorite part of the game. There are so many hilarious option, beginning with your character’s descriptor (for example, rookie, washed-up, retired, incompetent…), then adding on the type of bear you are as well as the skill that is inherent with that, and the role you play (hacker, thief, face, etc.). I really love the honey badger as a character option, with the questionable yet likely powerful skill of carnage and the hilarity of there being one random non-bear option. Another important point of the game is that you are bears existing in a world of humans, so you are also attempting to blend in disguised as a human. This is where your “Human Believability Score”, or HBS, comes in. The clothes you end up wearing based on a few rolls of a D6 vary in how believably human your character is as a result of wearing them. For example, a tie dye trench coat will not result in a very high HBS, and neither will y-fronts as the bottom half of your character’s outfit (no surprise there).
Another element of the game setup that I really loved is the “secret” element, where a player rolls a D6 to determine a secret that only the GM will know. For this game, my friend rolled a 5, which meant “The prize is a fake!” It made being the GM even more fun, knowing this gigantic secret that might even render the bear’s entire plan pointless in the funniest way.
Here’s an amusing recount of the “complex plan” that my friends developed:
The honey badger infiltrates the CCTV room by seducing the security guard (with powder blue frilly crop top and black leather y-fronts), taking them to the back (cctv room), and attacking them to gain access to the computer and hack it.
Meanwhile, the grizzly bear creates a diversion by performing an impromptu magic show, dazzling the audience. With no CCTV footage, anyone who wasn’t there that night would NEVER believe what happened. Grizzly performs a disappearing act as the finale, swiping the black orchid honey as she disappears from the premises.
The grizzly and honey badger steal away to a secluded, fire lit room and celebrate their successful heist with a shot of black orchid honey, turning goth in a 1-minute magical girl transformation. They leave behind a life of crime after they sell the rest of the honey on the black market. Plus, it’s the perfect disguise. Who would’ve thought that the blond bombshell and cool shades stud would have gothified?
The secret: the prize is a fake!
So the Black Manuka honey was a placebo, and the bears (or really the bear and the honey badger) had the goth in them all along.
Overall, I would love to play this TTRPG again, and it also succeeded in making me interested in playing even more TTRPGs because the experience was so fun! And you can’t beat free fun (this game is free to download online)!
