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Tabletop Roleplaying Games have regained a marquee place in geek culture over the past decade, due as before to the meteoric rise of Dungeons & Dragons back into prominence. Just like back in the day this has prompted a ton of other roleplaying games to release, from questionable to comedic to one-off jokes and entire elaborate game lines. Now, one tabletop developer is going to kickstart a roleplaying game based on the tiny blue Belgian gnome universe of The Smurfs.
“So, what in the smurf is a tabletop roleplaying game? You, the Player, get to take on the role of a Smurf in an immersive story. As a Smurf you will go on adventures, solve mysteries, and help those in need. Your Smurf can be a well-known Smurf or a unique Smurf of your own creation. In addition, a Storyteller takes on the role of describing the world and its challenges to you,” reads the official description.
Is The Smufs still relevant to pop culture? Do kids still care about The Smurfs? They must, because that’s who this should be for. I really hope they do, because someone’s parent is going to buy this to play with them which will either go fantastically or very poorly. Pardon my skepticism, though, because this seems like a real weird call but also Wikipedia says that The Smurfs is probably one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. That and tabletop RPGs for kids do a bit better than you might expect: So, you know, I’m ready to be wrong.
There’s also the fact that unexpected tabletop RPG adaptations have done really interesting game design work in the past. The Looney Tunes and Rocky and Bullwinkle tabletop RPGs are both relatively famous among TTRPG designers for their innovative mechanics that wouldn’t reappear in other games for decades.
There’s a preview version of the game, a quickstart guide, that you can check out online as a PDF. There’s also a Facebook group for sharing your feedback.
You can find The Smurfs: Roleplaying Game on Kickstarter, where it will launch on October 22 with a free Smurfs board game as a promotion for backing in the first 24 hours.. You can find creators Maestro Media on their website, where they describe their core values as Avant-Garde, Harmonious, Eclectic, and Masterful.
About a month ago there was a preview event for this at Gen Con, the big ol giant tabletop convention, where some Smurf-type enthusiasts who are also live roleplaying people took a shot at the game. You can watch that on YouTube or below.
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Kurt Indovina
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