Winning is the Name of the Game

Subtitled ‘A Co-operate Roleplaying Game (with only one winner)’, Two Sides To The Coin is a light storytelling roleplaying game that can be pitched as ‘being like a LARP, but played at the table’. It is a simple game, best suited to one-shots and convention games in the players will roleplay through a particular story, whether that is robbing the train coming into town, stealing a painting before it can go on display at a museum, solving a murder at a country house, conduct peace negotiations, or surviving long enough being stalked by a monster from outer space which is slowly killing off your crewmates to escape the spaceship and escape certain death. It is played just like a standard roleplaying game with everyone sat round the table, roleplaying their characters as they work towards a shared objective, but played like a LARP—or ‘Live Action Roleplay’—in that every player and every character has multiple motives and personal objectives. Some in game, some out of game. Achieving some will score a player points at the end of the game, but achieving one, his character’s ‘Ulterior Motive’ will not only score the player more points, but will win him the game. Yes, this is a roleplaying game in which there is a winner, so it is unlike almost any other roleplaying game. However, the group’s overall objective must be completed as well for there to be a winner!

Two Sides To The Coin is published by Osprey Games, better known for its more traditional roleplaying games such as Hard City: Noir Roleplaying and Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, so it is different in comparison to the roleplaying games it usually publishes. To play the game, at least one eight-sided die is required as well as ten Coins per player and some pens and notepads, as the players will be passing notes back and forth between each other and themselves and the Narrator. (This aspect makes it more difficult to run online.) The Narrator will decide upon a scenario—there four included in the book—and decide what Motives use and negotiates with her players as to what Motives their characters will have for the scenario.

A Player Character is simply defined. He has eight stats. These are Academics, Alertness, Close Combat, Dexterity, Ranged Combat, Resolve, Social, and Streetwise. He has ten Coins, one Ulterior Motive, and six Lesser Motives. To create a character, a player divides thirty-five points between the eight stats and rolls randomly to determine what his character’s Lesser Motives. These are in game and out of game Motives. The Ulterior Motive is decided upon through negotiation between the player and Narrator to fit the set-up that the Narrator has created for her scenario.

Ruud van der Aar
Occupation: Fraud Investigator
Academics 5 Alertness 4 Close Combat 4 Dexterity 4
Ranged Combat 4 Resolve 5 Social 5 Streetwise 4
Coins OOOOOOOOOO
ULTERIOR MOTIVE
Prove that the painting is real, because you already replaced it with a forgery!
LESSER PLAYER MOTIVES
Get a player to give you something to drink
Get a player to say the word ‘umbrella’
Get a player to pass a note to you
LESSER CHARACTER MOTIVES
Get a character to sing something
Get a character to give your character something to eat
Get a character to lie to another character

Mechanically, Two Sides To The Coin is simple. To have his character undertake an action, his player rolls an eight-sided die and adds the appropriate attribute to beat a Difficulty Number, ranging from eight for Simple to fifteen for Arduous. A player can expend Stat points to boost the roll and make sure that he beats the Difficulty Number. There are no set means of determining how good or how bad the outcome is, but the Narrator is encouraged to reward really good and punish really bad rolls. In addition, each player begins a session with ten Coins. These can be played heads up to add one to a roll or tails up to subtract one from a roll. They can be played after the roll and after a player has decided to spend Stat points on the roll, but they can only be spent by a player to affect the actions of another player’s character that his character is watching. In other words, a player can use his Coins if his character is in the room with the other character. There is nothing to stop the players negotiating the expenditure of Coins, whether that is for promises of help later on, the lending of equipment, suggesting the formation of an alliance, and so on. The Coins are way to signal a Player Characters intent, as in, “I need you to succeed right now, probably for all our sakes, or least mine” or “I need you to fail, because I need to succeed where you must not”.

Where Coins spent cannot be recovered, Stat points spent can be. This requires the Player Character to fulfil his Motives, gaining two points for each Lesser Motive Point fulfilled and five points when his Ulterior Motive is fulfilled. However, no other player can suspect or have reason enough to point out that a player and/or character is attempting to fulfil either type of Motive. If a Player Character does fail a Motive, whether from a bad die roll or another player pointing it out, the Player Character loses a Stat point. If a player points out that another player is trying to fulfil a Motive and it is not actually true, he will lose Stat points. Stat points can also be awarded for good roleplaying.

There are barely any combat rules in Two Sides To The Coin. Primarily because the focus of the roleplaying game is not combat, but interaction between the Player Characters in their push to achieve their overall objective and then their personal objectives. When combat occurs, the amount rolled above the Difficulty Number, modified by the weapon used, determines how much damage is inflicted. This is deducted from a ten-point track and it gets lower, the greater the effect the damage has on the Player Character.

Lastly, a player can flip a Coin once per session to attempt an action. If successful, the Player Character succeeds and gains a bonus to all attempts to do it again that session. If a failure, a Player Character cannot attempt it again and suffer a penalty to a stat. An alternative rule is the ‘Rule of Sabotage’ which turns one of the Player Characters into a saboteur, attempting to undo or prevent the objective of the other Player Characters being fulfilled.

All four scenarios in Two Sides To The Coin include a main objective and a winning condition, as well as several character concepts and their ‘Beginnings’ or introductions for the players and their characters. Some sample Ulterior Motives are also suggested. The scenario details follow, including plot, maps, NPCs, and so on. There are pointers too—on ‘Post-it Notes’—for the Narrator on how to run each scenario. The four scenarios include ‘Moving a Masterpiece’, in which the Player Characters must move a painting from a museum to a storage facility; ‘Finding Fluffy’ casts the Player Characters as an adventuring band commissioned to find a wizard’s missing pet; in ‘Stranded’, the Player Characters are Starfield Industries recruits assigned to recover a missing merchant starship and her crew; and in the Edwardian-era set ‘The Mansion of Murphy Mahoney’, the Player Characters need to find an heir for Lord Mahoney. The second first two scenarios are lighter in tone than the second two, but show off some of the situations and genres that the roleplaying game can handle.

Physically, Two Sides To The Coin is decently written and nicely illustrated with some cartoon artwork that tell the stories of several capers. There is advice and examples of play for the Narrator throughout, all of it appearing on more ‘Post-it Notes’.

Two Sides To The Coin is written to be a relatively easy introduction to roleplaying, taking its time to give an example of play and notes for both player and Narrator as to what they are expected to do. In the case of the Narrator, this includes keeping track of the machinations of both the players and their characters, determining whether their Motives have succeeded or failed, in addition to what you would expect of a Narrator. For the player, the book extolls the pleasures of roleplaying as much as roleplaying Two Sides To The Coin.

Two Sides To The Coin is not quite the perfect introduction to roleplaying as it could have been—as written. It is a better introduction for the player than the Narrator, who ideally still needs some experience of the role, but taking that into account, Two Sides To The Coin is light enough in terms of its mechanics and familiar enough in terms of the stories it is designed to handle, to introduce a player to the hobby. Or introduce an experienced roleplayer to storytelling style roleplaying. In general, experienced roleplayers will be able to pick up and play Two Sides To The Coin without any problems. Light and easy to prepare, Two Sides To The Coin is perfect for one-shots and convention scenarios, and can even be added to a Narrator’s library of pick-up games.