Having no experience with TRPGs, I wanted to find a game that would be easy to follow and this led me to Honey Heist, where all of the characters are honey bears. The rule page is basic in the fact that you roll a D6 three times to get a bear descriptor, skill, and a role. Examples of this include incompetent or washed-up for descriptor, polar bear or panda for bear type, and hacker or brains for role. There are six options to choose from, as players roll a D6. The goal of the game is to actually play as a team as well as to pull off a honey heist at HoneyCon 2017 to steal honey and the players are both bears and criminals. The bears will also roll a D6 to choose a disguise, which includes things like a pink hat or a crown. The game was also created to fit in one to two pages so that the rules were easy to digest, which compared to other games or the TRPG that my team created, I would say that is true. The stats are just bear or criminal and it starts at 3 for both. The player rolls a D6 if you are doing a bear or criminal related action and if you roll higher than the current stat you move closer to the other one. If you get to 6 on either side, you lose the game and have gone full blown criminal and have been arrested or if you go full bear, animal control comes.
In terms of the gameplay, the game has a lot of flexibility and imagination. The descriptors that each player gets does not do much for the bears in the long run, as each character can truly make their own decisions. Also like most TRPGs, the honey master here controls most of the narrative. The game can be chosen to be in 6 different locations such as a fishing village or wilderness retreat. I think playing this stressed me out in the sense that there is a lot of acting involved with the backstory and any player can jump in at any time to carry out a criminal action. If you are playing with very involved people who get really into the bear act, it’s entertaining to watch and play. In the game I played, the honey master talked about how Beyonce was performing at HoneyCon and they had to protect her. The honey master can throw in twists to the game such as the cops are on the way or the bear has been set up. Originally since you only have 6 on each side for the stats, I believed it would be easy to lose the game, but the game can actually go on for a long time. The honey master can also throw in security features to hurt the bears such as armed guards, CCTV, and poison gas. The rule book is really just 2 pages with little direction for the honey master so the outcomes are flexible and wild.
file:///Users/anjana/Downloads/Honey%20Heist%20PDF.pdf (link to rules)
