Paratype

 Where to get it: itch.io page 

First, an order of business to get out of the way: Ew, gross bugs! Yech! Yes, you have at last discovered my shameful secret - your friend, John Frazer, the vegan who is intellectually curious about non-human intelligence and who believes in the essential interconnectedness of all living things, is one of those hypocritical "nature lovers" who subconsciously slots insects into a different mental category than "regular" animals. Yes, if you ask me in an abstract context whether I think mosquitos and jumping spiders and what have you are an important part of the ecosystem and worth protecting, I will say "of course," because that is what I believe . . . but it's not a belief that echoes in my heart. If I saw a giant porcupine, the size of a horse, I would say, "Aww, cute," but if I saw a giant cicada the size of a horse, I would almost certainly shit myself and cry.

Which makes Paratype (Mars Drake) a little bit difficult to enjoy, through ::gritted teeth:: no fault of its own. If you can get past the screaming willies that accompany even imagining its fictional world, it's actually a fun and breezy rules-light rpg with a well-organized integrated campaign that you can play right out of the box.

The high concept pitch is simple - it's a post-apocalyptic world thanks to those wacky government scientists, who genetically engineered a bunch of giant insects as part of a secret bioweapons program. Those insects were released into the wild by a malicious rogue AI and apparently they were a pretty effective bioweapon, because global civilization collapsed. It's unclear whether the first batch of insects merely bred so fast that they were able to conquer the world, or whether it was some kind of virus that led to wild bugs growing giant, but as a practical matter, it's not that important. This is a world of isolated human settlements separated by a wilderness full of weird creatures that will eat travelers alive. Classic Points of Light.

I must reluctantly concede, through white-knuckle typing, that this is an elegant and effective set-up for a sci-fi action game. One of the biggest challenges of populating a creature-infested wilderness is simply coming up with unique and interesting creatures. What do they look like? What do they eat? Do they have any unusual habits that might translate into challenging combat maneuvers? You've got to balance the memorably alien with the biologically and ecologically plausible. Working from scratch, it can be a real pain to come up with ideas, but in Paratype you can just consult an encyclopedia of entomology and make a giant version of whatever catches your fancy.

So, you know, the sample campaign has PCs running into two separate groups of giant ants - one that's infested by the "zombie fungus" that causes them to seek high places and wait for death, and another that engages is fungal agriculture like leafcutter ants. And that's just one type of bug. You can encounter locusts, territorial male butterflies, carnivorous fireflies lurking among otherwise harmless swarms, and a cuckoo bee whose counterfeit pheromones inexplicably work on humans (even to the point where the humans can have conversations with the creature, who will use the information to be a better infiltrator). 

I guess there's never been anything stopping us from plagiarizing wikipedia and making, say, a species of dragon that has a similar lifecycle to encarsia perplexa (just read the link, my recap couldn't possibly do it justice), but I think we have to give Paratype some well-earned props for actually going there. Potential was seen. Opportunity was seized. And the result is a one-of-a-kind rpg setting.

If Paratype has a flaw, it's . . . that it's rules-light . . . mwa, ha, ha! Take that, popular rpg style that is outside my personal preference! No, actually, even as an unreformed tome-and-bloat lover, I quite enjoyed this game's level of mechanical complexity. It's a very simple base, but it's got about 150 special character widgets (which range from 3.0 feat-level bonuses, to roleplaying flaws, to full on inhuman powers like flight). Each one is only about a sentence long, but they work well with the game's minimalist rules. It feels to me like a happy compromise.

The games real "flaw" is genre. It never quite dials into a compelling tone. A big way to get access to the character widgets is through "splicers," sci-fi devices that allow you to transfer genetic traits from insects to humans, creating superhuman "hybrid" characters. And the body horror you're (probably, if you're like me) feeling right now is not entirely incidental. The acknowledgements section lists The Fly (1989) as inspirational media.

But this isn't really a horror game. In general, it's much more flippant with its hybrid characters. One of the antagonists is a New York City landlord who's also a hybrid tick. And a major setting villain is a mosquito hybrid named Ragtag, who gets some absolutely adorable art that is strongly reminiscent of a Borderlands boss' splash screen, complete with hand-drawn arrows pointing at her with the captions "Super cool!" "It's not a cult!" and "I heard she does graffiti."

Damnit, Paratype, you made me love the mosquito woman! I'm not going to forgive that any time soon!

Unfortunately, the game doesn't really explore the reckless transhuman element. It doesn't turn genehacking bug-splicers into a proper subculture.

So it's not horror, it's not biopunk, and despite the testimony of the Acknowledgements, it's not 50s B-movie kaiju either. It has elements of those things. And it could be made into those things, but aesthetically, its biggest influence seems to be indie roguelite video games. The campaign is a linear hexcrawl where your progress hinges on careful management of highly abstracted "fuel" and "rations" resources, which you track with a box-based inventory system. And, on a broader level, the whole thing just has that particular breed of slightly-glossy/slightly cheesy quirk that you will instantly recognize from any of a dozen pixel graphics rpgs.

Now, forget everything I just said, because none of it fairly applies to a single-author, rules-light ttrpg. I'd say, rather than being a true flaw, Paratype's genre-squishiness is more of an "area where further development is low-hanging fruit." The only part of this world we see is a stretch of I-95, near the American east coast, and I see no reason why other regions can't lean more into one particular genre or another, if you were inclined to homebrew a larger Paratype world.

Overall, I'd say Paratype punches above its weight class, considering that it fits in that odd middle-ground between "hefty zine" and "slim corebook." Which seems fitting for a game that wears its love for insects proudly on its sleeve.

Ukss Contribution: There's a broken-down lighthouse that the keeper wants to bring back online by using giant fireflies instead of electric lights. Yeah, that's a solid gold idea for weird fantasy if I ever saw one.