Crow’s Corner

Table-Tested Review of “ROCKPOOL”

In ROCKPOOL you play tiny rockpool creatures, always in danger to be swept away by the tide. It’s a charming little game about charming little creatures with charming little big dreams.

Some quick facts about the game.

printout of the pdf and some supplies

The Vibe

It’s a game about dreams and ambitions, things that matter greatly to your characters, in an unknowable world much bigger than them. It’s about their mortality and how fast things can change. About their life and how to make it one well lived.

There can also be comedy and silliness, if your group embraces that tone. In my experience this happens a lot in all types of games and it worked well in ours. Striking a balance between those jokes and preserving some seriousness makes for a great ROCKPOOL game.

The Characters and Mechanics

Every character has an aim. There are 1d10 wonderful suggestions (e.g. ”You wish to fight an anemone and win” or “You wish to hoard shiny rocks”) or you can make up your own. Completing your aim means you can shift your stats. I’m always a fan of in-session character progression.

Speaking of stats - these are really neat. Every character has three stats (Tidefast, Shelltwirled and Spinethrown) and these can shift in either direction between 3 and 11. Having a high stat means you’re good at one thing but bad at another and when rolling dice (2d6) you either need to roll above or below (and in most cases meeting the target number is also enough), depending on the task. It took a while for us to wrap our head around it, but it’s a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.

The life of a rockpool creature is short - when you get hit by something you are in danger of your shell being broken. Once it’s broken you need to find a new one and are only one more hit away from dying until you can replace it. And yet another way to lose your character is the tide - in regular intervals the tide threatens to sweep your character out to sea, never to be seen again.

There are rules for crafting items which can help you succeed on your rolls. Items also increase your chance of surviving the tide, by letting them go.

Double 1s and double 6s trigger one of d66 occurrences, which can greatly shape the tone of a game. These can be new threats, an unexpected tide, a song that’s calling you from the deep or more.

In the pdf you’ll find a collection of 14 creatures to drop into your game. These range from simple short encounters (like a Periwinkle sea snail) to big threats that will take up most of your session to work towards (like summoning Naneria, the smallest of the daughters of Nereus).

Combat is resolved in rounds (there is no clear way to resolve initiative as of now, but by recommendation of the author we went with lowest Tidefast first). Mechanics for GM-controlled creatures are similar to the mechanics of players, with some small differences. NPC creatures usually also have a special rule/ability and might have varying amounts of hits they can sustain. Combat is short and brutal and leaves enough room for narrative descriptions.

Conclusion

It’s a game about lovable little creatures you just have to root for and I greatly enjoyed running ROCKPOOL as a Sunday brunch game of ~2.5 hours. By integrating the characters’ aims, the session practically writes itself and the random occurences and the tide keep the game moving well.

Other Reviews

This review is part of a Review Round Robin with some friends and their games, so you can catch some more of their reviews here:

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