First Impressions - Outgunned Cinematic Action Roleplaying Game

Outgunned - striking artwork, beautifully put together.

Outgunned, a cinematic action role playing game produced by Two Little Mice, was very much an impulse back for me on Kickstarter. It promised a fast, effective game engine for creating action movie style games ranging from heists to saving the day. In some ways, it reminds me of the pitch for the Savage Worlds RPG, but without all the cruft around the core game system. The question is whether it delivers?

TL;DR: Beautifully illustrated, cleanly laid out and typo free, Outgunned looks and feels like a fresh and fun game with simple and effective mechanics. It's giving me the GM-tingles, and that's always a good sign.

The game is presented as a very attractive 224-page red-coloured, digest-sized hardback book with a striking image of a woman in broken sunglasses surrounded by a huge number of guns. She's a slight smile, which gives you the impression that she has it all under control. That brings me to the art in the book. Pretty much all of it has been produced by a single artist, Daniela Giubellini, and it is absolutely gorgeous. The artwork and layout work together to deliver an extremely polished book which is a delight on the eyes. The editing is also tight, and despite being translated from Italian, the game reads very well and lacks typos. The book also has a red bookmark ribbon.

The game is pitched between the 1980s and early 2000s, "Where everything you remember is the same but way cooler". It does suggest ditching smartphones and social media but I'm pretty certain that you could make them work if you wanted to. It's more a stylistic thing than an absolute need. The game is designed for shot cinematic style campaigns (say five to eight sessions) but should also work well as a one-shot.

Core themes for Outgunned are: 

• Doing the right thing
• Alone against all
• Spirit of sacrifice
• Revenge and forgiveness
• Friends as your real family
• The broken system

The best practices advised for playing and directing (yes, you're a Director, not a GM, to stay with the cinematic vibe) are to share the responsibility for creation, live in the moment and improvise, and leave room for others (so you share the screen time). The advice for capturing the drama picks up on three key elements; the action must never stop, you don't know everything about what is happening and it should feel like you're at the movies. This isn't about gritty realism.

The game uses ordinary D6s (although there are special symbol versions you can buy) and you'll be looking to collect sets of the same number, a bit like Yahtzee. More on this later.

Character generation is pretty simple, built around chasing a role and a trope to go with it. Roles define the kind of character you want to play and how you will approach a mission. The roles included in the book are:

• The Commando
  
• The Fighter
  
• The Ace (top pilot, driver etc)
  
• The Agent
  
• The Face
  
• The Nobody (someone normal)
  
• The Brain
  
• The Sleuth
  
• The Criminal
  
• The Spy

Each role has an evocative image and a list of examples drawn from the movies. They have example job types described and give a choice of catchphrases and flaws. The job type can give you a benefit when looking for information or contacts. Catchphrases give an insight on how you want to play your hero; they also influence when the Director gives the character a 'Spotlight', a meta-currency that allows them to do cool things. If you bring your Flaw into play, you will get a -1 Dice on your roll but it's likely to  also gain you a point of Spotlight. 

Your role also raises one of your Attributes by a single point (they all start at a base of 2 dice) and gives you ten skill points in pre-selected skills.

Characters have five different attributes; Brawn, Nerves, Smooth, Focus and Crime. These act as domains that skills sit under. 

• Brawn covers physical activities, kind of like Strength and Constitution in a traditional D&D-style game. 
• Nerves picks up keeping your cool, shooting, driving and survival.
• Smooth is the domain of flirting, leadership, style and speeches. 
• Focus covers detecting and fixing things, including healing, and also covers general knowledge.
• Crime brings awareness, dexterity, stealth and streetwise into the mix.

Skills all start by providing a single dice, which means you'll likely have 3 dice as your minimal pool for any roll as the pool is created from the sum of the attribute and skill at play. 

Your role also gives you two Feats, and some starting gear. Feats allow you to do cool things; as a minimum, they'll give you something like a free re-roll or extra resources, but they can also allow you to do extra cool things if you spend Adrenaline (an in-game currency). Some Feats require you to spend an action or take a full turn to activate them. 

Some examples; if you choose Archer, you always get a free re-roll when you do anything with a bow because you're a modern-day Robin Hood. The Cash Flow feat gives you 3 starting cash and an extra 1 cash every session, as money is no issue for you. A more focused feat would be something like Car Jump. That requires you to spend Adrenaline, but means you can jump your vehicle into the air to pass a barrier or gain an advantage in a chase, at the cost of some damage to your ride.

Once you've picked your role, you need to decide whether you're young, adult or old. Adult is the default, and doesn't change anything you do in character generation. Young characters get 1 normal Feat for their role but also the special Feat "Too young to Die". They also get 2 Adrenaline to represent their enthusiasm and energy. Old characters get an extra feat, but are more likely to fail a 'death roulette' roll as they have 2 lethal bullets rather than 1 at the start of the game. This means they're more likely to fail a death save and die. However, they also get one Experience. This is an achievement, scar or a bond or reputation. These can give you advantage or disadvantage in a situation, perhaps one more or less dice or even an automatic success.

The last step is to choose a Trope for their character. This is their archetype, a snapshot of their character and mannerisms. There are eighteen to choose from including 'Bad to the Bone", "Good Samaritan", "Last Boy/Girl Scout","Lone Wolf", "Party Killer" and "Trusty Sidekick". Tropes give an extra attribute point, a Feat and another 8 skill points More importantly, they're a signpost for how you want to play the character. You round out the character with 2 skill points to assign to whichever skills you see fit. 

There are a few other things on the character sheet to keep track of:

• Grit - this represents your ability to shake off damage. You get 12 points to start with. It is recorded on a track with two special boxes marked.
• Conditions - There's a space to record conditions, which can affect you when bad things happen. 
• Adrenaline - You also start with a single point of Adrenaline, but you can have as many as six points. They can be spent to activate feats or it can be spent to give +1 to a roll.
• Spotlight -  Likewise, you start with one spotlight point, an even more powerful resource than Adrenaline, and harder to regenerate. You can have a maximum of 3 Spotlight points.

The core game mechanics are simple. You roll a pool of dice and try and get combinations of the same number or symbol, in a style similar to Yahtzee. The number of dice in a combination indicate the level of success that your character has achieved. The game is player-facing, so the Director doesn't roll. However, dice rolls should only be made when there's something at stake or something could go wrong. Otherwise, you're a hero, you're competent and you shouldn't need to make a roll.

You start your dice pool by pairing an attribute and a skill. Although skills are grouped under attributes, sometimes it can be appropriate to use them with a different attribute. Adrenaline, Gear and Conditions can adjust the number of dice that you have in the pool. The pool will range from two dice minimum to nine dice maximum.

Helping someone either gives them an extra dice, an automatic success or enables them to make a roll when it otherwise wouldn't be possible.

There are two types of roll; an Action roll or a Reaction roll. Action rolls give you the freedom to choose the skill and attribute involved for your character. Reaction rolls are dictated by the Director; they'll tell you which pair to use, and mean you're trying to avoid something bad. 

There are four levels of difficulty for rolls, each of which requires an increasingly large combination of dice. Usually, you will need to make a critical difficulty roll.

• Basic - 2 dice combination needed
• Critical - 3 dice combination needed 
• Extreme- 4 dice combination needed
• Impossible - 5 dice combination needed

If you get a 6 dice combination, you get a Jackpot and can become director for a turn. 

A combination is a set of identical results on the dice you've rolled. The game does have some pretty symbol dice available, but you can just use normal dice. For example, if you rolled 6D6 and got 2,2,2, 4,4,6 then you've a basic success (4,4) and a critical success (2,2,2). The actual numbers on the dice don't matter unless you're taking a gamble on a roll. 

Complex or dangerous rolls may have double difficulty. This means you need to get two combinations at  the required level of success. Typically, there will be two consequences to consider in such cases. Higher level successes usually mean you've excelled at the task and get something extra. Lower level successes mitigate your failure. Extra successes can be used to take extra actions, or to help a friend out. Three smaller successes can be traded for a greater success and vice versa.

If you've scored at least one base success, you can re-roll all the dice that didn't make a combination. Provided your roll is better than your initial roll (say you got another 2 or a 4 on the dice that wasn't part of the combinations rolled on the example earlier), then the new result stands. However, if it isn't better then you lose one of your existing successes (you choose which). A free re-roll granted by a Feat is slightly different; you never lose successes and you can make a re-roll even if you don't have an initial success.

If you still haven't got what you need after re-rolling, you can always go "all in". Once again, you re-roll any dice that aren't in a combination. However, if you don't get a better result, you lose all previous successes. The game gives a strong steer to use re-rolls when needed and not to be afraid of them.

You may have to rely on spending a Spotlight to save the situation if you haven't made a big enough combination after all those re-rolls. Spotlight points can grant an automatic extreme success, save a friend who fails at the death roulette (or save a ride when it would be destroyed) , remove a condition or do something else cool you agree with the Director. You flip a coin to retain the spotlight point when you use it, unless it's to save the life of a friend. In that case, they get the Spotlight, not you, if you win the coin flip; they clearly need it more than you. If you have six Adrenaline points, you can exchange them for a Spotlight point, so long as that doesn't take you above three spotlights. Spotlights  

 

If your roll fails and you don't use Spotlight to save the day, Outgunned encourages the Director and players to see it as a bump in the road rather than an absolute show stopper. Consequences can be mitigated if lower successes are rolled, and other ways of failing forward are suggested. 

For example, "rolling with the punches" to have a consequence which may bite later on rather than immediately. Alternatively, "paying the price" means you succeed, but it costs you cash or gear. "Taking the hard road" would see a character fail but gain an insight how to achieve the same result in a more risky way. Finally, you could end up "facing danger" and having to make dangerous rolls that can cause harm to your character.

Dangerous Rolls cause you to lose grit if you fail them. This is a fixed amount based upon the difficulty of the roll. Failing a Basic difficulty roll will cost a single grit, critical 3 points, Extreme 9 nine points and failing an Impossible difficulty roll will cost all of your grit. You can mitigate damage using lower success rolls to reduce grit loss, except when making an impossible level roll.

If a roll - dangerous or not - is very risky then it can be classed as a gamble which can cause you to lose extra grit on a failure. Gambles happen when you take a significant risk (like driving at high speed), do something crazy or if you go all out. Going 'all out' at something gives you + 1 dice in your pool, but leaves you open to consequences by turning the roll into a gamble. Every snake eye (1) you roll for a gamble costs you a grit. You lose grit even when the snake eyes are part of a combination! 

Grit is recorded on a track which has two special boxes. The Bad Box gives you a condition if it's checked. The last box - the Hot Box - gives you two Adrenaline. Once Grit hits zero, your character can be killed and the death roulette comes into play.

You recover grit in a variety of ways - sleeping overnight, catching a significant break or the end of a session will restore all grit. Conditions can be removed during a time out (a specific scene the Director will call out) but may need the help of another character to do so. There are also suggestions for other ways to remove them, all of which will need some time and a specific activity.

Conditions negatively affect an attribute. The fourth condition taken is "Broken". You gain conditions from failure, from the bad box and when narratively appropriate as a consequence. Each condition reduces a single attribute's dice by 1, with Broken affecting all attributes. 

Once you've lost all grit, you roll on the death roulette if you take any more damage. Initially, you have a 1-in-6 chance of being left for dead (unless you're an older character, as they start with a 2-in-6 chance). If you succeed, you add another bullet to your death roulette. If you fail, you get left for dead. In this case everyone thinks you're died, but the scope remains to write you back into the film or series as you were a popular character, yes? Alternatively, a colleague can spend a Spotlight to save you. 

Combat runs as a set of alternating turns. On the Action Turn, Heroes are free to take whatever action they want, along with a quick action (eg reloading). The Reaction turn sees the Heroes defending against enemy action. The Director will indicate who gets to go first, or flip a dice.

Enemies are split into three types - Goons, Bad Guys and Bosses. Goons are pretty simple to defeat, as they will mostly need basic successes to damage and defend against. Bad Guys tend to need critical successes and Bosses are worse. Outgunned gives you 5 versions of templates for each kind of enemy, each rising in difficulty. Some will need more successes or higher numbers of successes to defeat. They all have variable levels of Grit to overcome. The Grit track for Bad Guys and Bosses have Hot Boxes which give the Director Adrenaline points to activate enemy special actions. 

All levels of enemy can also have feats, although these tend to be more mundane than those that characters have. For example, automatic weapons and bulletproof vests are both 1 point feats; 2 or 3 point feats get increasingly dangerous (such as explosive weapons or rage, which means you can only ever deal 1 point of grit in an attack). Special actions tend to throw curve ball tactical challenges to the players ranging from piling onto the weakest character through to using grenades to somehow negating a Spotlight or Adrenaline spend. 

Enemies will also have a weak spot; these can be identified by a character if they spend their action time to scope it out. There's a random table for weak spots that the Director can draw upon should they want to.

The section on enemies rounds out with some pre-made examples of full fleshed out templates with special actions and feats. For example, Corrupt Cops are the lowest ranked Bad Guys, needing critical for attack and defence, having 7 points of Grit with one hot box, and the shotgun enemy feat. They also have the foul play special action, which can force a hero to lose their turn.

Chases are covered in detail. Every chase has a need (for example escaping the enemy) which is expressed as a track with a number of boxes (a track between 6 and 18 boxes is recommended). The heroes' ride will define the speed, rated from 0-3. At the end of each turn, the players get to fill in a number of need boxes equal to their current speed. In the heroes' action turn, the driver and passengers get to take actions which could increase their speed (for example shooting at the enemy, cutting down a side alley). Successes at critical or above increase speed. A jackpot ends the chase. However, if you don't get a basic success, you lose speed. If the need track isn't filled at the end of action turn, the Director triggers a reaction turn, which means that players need to make a dangerous reaction roll. If the driver fails, the ride loses 1 Armor. For every hero that fails their roll, the ride loses 1 speed. If your speed would go below zero, you lose 1 need each time.

There are tweaks that can be made; a countdown can be set for the number of turns to complete the need, and a minimum speed requirement can be added after a number of turns. If the heroes push their speed up to 5 or beyond, all rolls become gambles. There's guidance on using the chase rules for multiple vehicles or on foot. The Director can also chose to use special actions in a chase. To do this, they add hot boxes on the need track, when they trigger the opportunity to spend Adrenaline to have a complication happen (for example a jay-walker, clipping an object or getting caught in rush hour traffic).

The book has an extensive guidance section on creating and running missions and campaigns. These give the opportunity for characters to advance, but also for the heat they're facing to increase. Heat is a track from 1-12; as it rises, it gets easier for the heroes to be left for dead, and the enemy gets tougher. Maxed heat gives the characters Adrenaline, but means they can die even more easily. Heat is initially set by the number of Heroes on the mission. The Director is encouraged to use the heat track to trigger campaign events.

There's a great section describing Villains, giving them strong spots and weak spots and describing how to use them in encounters with the heroes. There's also guidance on using supporting characters.

If you are running a campaign, Plan B becomes available. There are three Plan Bs - Bullet, Backup and Bluff. Each can only be used once and you can only ever use one in a session. If you trigger them, then they can - like Spotlight - overwrite what is happening and get the heroes a get-out-of-jail card when they most need it

Time out scenes are also expanded upon. If the Director calls a time out scene, it's like the point in a movie when the heroes are regrouping at a friends, hiding out at a hotel or laying low. The Heroes each get to take two actions; investigating, healing, fixing something, shopping or working. Time outs can be extended, but that automatically raises the heat by one point.

There's good guidance on running a heist campaign. The Heroes make their step-by-step masterplan. Missing or failing steps increases the Heat and can trigger responses. In heists, Plan-B's can be used in flashbacks, allowing the characters to have addressed specific issues when they arise.

Advancement can happen three times; each time you gain skill points, an extra feat (and this can be any feat, not limited to your role and trope), and you also gain a point of adrenaline. Characters can also gain experiences - achievements, scars, bonds with others or reputation. These are triggered the events in the story, and there is a set of questions to identify if an event is significant enough to count as an experience. The Director is encouraged to make sure all the heroes get the chance to gain experience. Experiences can give you advantages or disadvantages on rolls, or potentially give an automatic success on a roll. This is typically only usable once per shot. In some circumstances, the Director and player may agree to change a character's catchphrase or flaw because of the Experience they've been through.

The Director's section concludes with advice on how to balance out the game based on the number of heroes in play. Guidance is give so you can play in duo mode - a director and a single hero. 

The book concludes with an example one-shot with great guidance notes, an extensive filmography and Hero and Director sheets.

So what do I think of Outgunned?

I am an incredibly impressed with what I've read, and I really want to get this to a table. I was watching the second season of Reacher on Amazon Prime when I was reading this, and I kept on mapping how parts of the action and story would fit into a game of Outgunned. I want to try this out and see if it is as good as it reads. The actual play material I've read from its close sibling Broken Compass suggests that it should be a blast. 

Beautifully illustrated, cleanly laid out and typo free, Outgunned looks and feels like a fresh and fun game with simple and effective mechanics. It's giving me the GM-tingles, and that's always a good sign.

Recommended

2 June 2024 

Update 8 June 2024 - I've also done a comparative review with Broken Compass now. You can find it here.