The crowdfunding campaign for Magical Kitties Save the Day, the new roleplaying game from Atlas Games designed by Matthew J. Hanson, goes live on Kickstarter tomorrow! [EDIT: Here’s the link.] I was lucky enough to playtest Magical Kitties, and it’s every bit as fun as it sounds. (You don’t think Magical Kitties Save the Day sounds fun? What’s wrong with you?)
In MKStD, players take the roles of cats who use their magical powers to protect humans from aliens, witches, and other forces of evil. It’s a great introductory game for kids or adults unfamiliar with roleplaying, but even the most experienced gamer should have a blast with this fun, little game.
What Makes Magical Kitties So Great? (And What Does This Have to Do with Dwarves, Anyway?)
MKStD works for the same reason dwarves in D&D work: somewhere, deep down in your nerd DNA, you just know how to play a dwarf. Dwarfs are tough and dour and stubborn as stone. Dwarves see in the dark. They drink ale and swing battleaxes and hate orcs. While the mechanics of dwarves may differ depending on what version of the game you’re playing, that’s secondary to our common understanding of what “dwarfiness” means.
D&D is full of these touchstones. Elves live in forests and are good with bows. Rogues (or thieves, specialists, or whatever you call them) are sneaky. Barbarians rage. Magic missiles don’t do a lot of damage, but they always, always hit.
Magical Kitties works the same way, because everyone knows what kitties do. They’re curious! They’re cute! They chase mice and bat balls of yarn. They purr and spit and mew and yowl. Whether you’re a veteran gamer or you’ve never played an RPG before, when you sit down to play Magical Kitties, you “get” what you’re supposed to do within the first five minutes. And when you describe what your kitty does, everyone at the table nods and grins, because of course that’s what you do. You’re a kitty!
Not every RPG does this. In a sci-fi game, for example, it’s tougher to find that shared imaginative space. Are there robots in this universe? Psychic powers? Is this a gritty horror story in space or a whimsical science fantasy? Are we supposed to shoot the aliens or make friends with them? It might take several sessions before you answer these questions. Heck, you might never answer them at all.
But I can imagine playing MKStD at a con and everyone instantly grokking it. In Magical Kitties, right away you have a clear picture in mind of who your kitty is and how they’ll react when, say, the grays fly into town and start abducting humans. What’s more, the person sitting across from you also has an idea in their head about their kitty, because how kitties work is something both of you agree on, even if you’ve never met before.
And that’s magical.
NIZNOC SPEAKS!