Don't Roll a One

I would totally play T4H again, although I would try to cap the table at 4 players.

I wrote this in last year’s recap/review of my Trouble For Hire actual play. This time I was able to get 4 players together to put that theory to the test!

The Good

The good was generally still good! I am lucky not to know what a bad table looks like for this game, because everyone nailed it.

This time around, the Themes (Fate Aspect-like phrases that reward metacurrency) felt more important than they did with our big 6-player group. This could’ve been because there wasn’t as much RPM (the aforementioned metacurrency) available or because the smaller group let everyone focus a little more instead of juggling roles, special moves, themes, and tracking currency across a large group. Those themes helped prevent aimless narrative wandering.

I also loved how we focused on a few NPCs fairly naturally, which led to a great race and some great character moments.

The Bad

The bad was still bad? Previously, I thought maybe our large group threw the RPM economy out of whack but even with the suggested group size of four players, we all had plenty of RPM by the halfway point and there was no sign we’d be slowing down.

This might be secretly a good thing – there’s not an interesting gameplay situation from running out of RPM. You just can’t do much and that sucks. Luckily we didn’t run out, which led to some post-game discussion where we questioned the need for so many subsystems. More on that soon.

The Ugly

Near the end, our four-player group ran into the same trouble my first game had, where we found we could burn down the progress tracker so fast that everyone was swapping roles too fast to really get a feel for any of them.

At the start, however, we ran into the opposite problem. Every T4H adventure has a progress tracker – when the group collectively spends 10 RPM, you switch roles (and usually end whatever scene you’re doing). We’d spent 9/10 RPM for a scene, we’d pretty much resolved things, and while changing over would have felt natural, we squeezed in another challenge and went halfway through the next track. Nothing broke but in hindsight it would’ve been fine to swap when it felt right, which again… why have the turn tracker? It’s not really tracking scenes so much as it is an attempt to set that timer so your brother gets a chance on the Playstation.

I think my few final quibbles are due to a combination of the scenario (I replayed the Hollyhock 1500, a straightforward road race from Nevada to Kansas) and having fewer roles in play at any given time. A road race is nice and simple, and allows room for a lot of wacky NPCs, but we found our challenges started to feel repetitive because of the pressure to stay behind the wheel. A different adventure could’ve naturally led to a wider variety of challenges.

Part of the reason for those repetitive challenges were because when you’re in a road race with a bunch of wacky NPCs, it feels weird if nobody takes the roles where they control the villains! We ended up feeling forced into certain roles because they fit what was going on better.

Trouble For Hire: Tokyo Drift

Trouble For Hire doesn’t need to be fixed, though. I think if there’s a third game I’d just play it as fast and loose as the game itself is written. Pick roles that don’t feel like they’re that important and make ’em work anyway. Finish a challenge with a few RPM left on the progress tracker? Fuck it, swap roles. Everyone having a great time like they are? Fuck it, keep your roles! I think Trouble For Hire is one of those games where the spirit of the rules is more important than the letter of the rules.