[Free RPG Day 2020] Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start

Now in its thirteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2020, after a little delay due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, took place on Saturday, 25th July. As per usual, it came with an array of new and interesting little releases, which traditionally would have been tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Again, global events meant that Gen Con itself was not only delayed, but run as a virtual event, and likewise, global events meant that Reviews from R’lyeh could not gain access to the titles released on the day as no friendly local gaming shop was participating nearby. Fortunately, Reviews from R’lyeh has been able to gain copies of many of the titles released on the day, and so can review them as is the usual practice. To that end, Reviews from R’lyeh wants to thank both Keith Mageau and David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3 in sourcing and providing copies of the Free RPG Day 2020 titles.

The Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start is the second title for Free RPG Day 2020 to be ‘Powered by Kids on Bikes’, the other being Kids on Brooms. Published by Renegade Games Studios and based on the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse graphic novel series, the players take on the roles of Junior Braves, essentially the equivalent of young scouts who are have gone away on camp for week to learn outdoor skills, good citizenship, and teamwork. Unfortunately, since they went away, something has happened, something which has caused apocalypse and brought society to its knees. Of course, being away from their family, friends, and society at large, the Junior Braves have no idea exactly what happened, so part of playing through the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start is about establishing what happened as much as it is establishing contact with their friends and families.

The Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start comes nicely complete. It includes a good explanation of the rules, six pregenerated Player Characters, and a sandbox ready for a group to play. In this way, it is complete and presents a ready-to-play package in a way which Kids on Brooms failed to be.

Instead of character generation, the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start includes six Tropes—or basic character types. These are Honcho, Rustic, Ruffian, Tinkerer, Dreamer, and Tribe Master—the latter the leader of the troupe whom the Game Master roleplays as well as the NPCs. Each of these has its own special ability. For example, when the Dreamer earns a Brave Token—the equivalent of luck points or tokens—his player must give one to another Junior Brave, and the Ruffian gains a +3 bonus to solve problems involving force or chutzpah when his player spends a Brave Token. As per Kids on Bikes, each Junior Brave is defined by six stats—Brains, Brawn, Charm, Fight, Flight, and Grit—to which are attached to a die type, from a twenty-sided die for the character’s best stat down to a four-sided die for his worst stat. The ten-sided die represents an above average stat, whereas an eight-sided die represents a below average stat. So, a Honcho has a Charm d20, Fight d12, Grit d10, Brawn d8, Brains d6, and Flight d4, and a Rustic has Brawn d20, Charm d12, Flight d10, Brains d8, Fight d6, and Grit d4.

Tropes in the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse and thus the quick-start do not have skills, but in keeping with the theme of the game, they have Skill Patches, each sewn onto their Skill Sashes. Example Skill Patches include Orienteering, Woodworking, Knots & Ropes, Radios & Codes, and Sign Language. Each of these grants a +3 bonus to skill rolls—or possibly +1 bonus if only tangentially relevant. A Junior Brave will also have a Flaw, which can complicate his actions and increase the Target his player needs beat on a die roll. If a Junior Brave fails a roll due to his Flaw, he earns two Brave Tokens rather than the one usually awarded for failure. Lastly, a Junior Brave has some equipment and gear, stored in his ‘Pack and Pockets’. These consist of a pocketknife, sleeping bag, and a canteen, plus three items he would have had with him on the camp. Some of these are limited use items and will likely run out during the adventure included in Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start.

Mechanically, the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start uses the same mechanics as Kids on Bikes, Teens in Space, and Kids on Brooms, with each of a Junior Brave’s stats being represented by a single die type. For a Junior Brave to do something, his player rolls the appropriate die for his Trope’s stat and attempts to roll over a difficulty number set by the Game Master, for example, between ten and twelve for an impressive task that a skilled person should be able to do. A player can add a +3 bonus if his Junior Scout has an appropriate Skill Patch and a +1 bonus for any Brave Tokens he wants to spend—or his fellow players want to spend if their Junior Braves are collaborating. However, complications increase the difficulty of the target number by three for each one. If the die roll beats the difficulty number, the Junior Scout succeeds, but if the roll is equal to the difficulty number, then he succeeds at cost, as in ‘Yes, but…’. It should be noted that the mechanics in Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start that player-facing in that only the player roll dice—the Game Master never does.

A potential cost of failure is Stress and Trauma. Stress typically consists of bruises, cuts, scrapes, panic attacks, depression, and other forms of distress. Stress can add a complication to an action, but overnight rest or reassurance can get rid of Stress. However, should a Junior Brave suffer more than four Stress, he suffers from a Trauma. This represents serious injury or distress and until the Junior Brave recovers—which takes either medical treatment or weeks of rest—he cannot use one of his Stats.

Just as the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse categorises damage into Stress and Trauma, it divides its adversaries and dangers into Troubles and Threats. Troubles are the overall danger, the ultimate cause of the danger that the Junior Braves must face and , such as a zombie uprising, alien invasion, and the like, whilst Threats are individual parts of the Troubles the Junior Braves will encounter upon returning from camp. Notably, Threats are scaled down in Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse, so if a town is taken over by a biker gang, Junior Braves will deal with a few of the Bikers rather than whole gang. The point is that as much as Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse is a post-apocalypse roleplaying game, it is lighter in tone and scaled to the capabilities of the Junior Braves, who are , after all, still children.

Rounding out Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start is a complete set of starting characters, as well as ‘Perils at the Pit-Stop’, a complete campaign starter. The Junior Braves return home from camp and taking a break from the journey in the town of Penelope, discover the clerk at the gas station was dead and zombie-like. What has happened and is it like the zombie television show the Junior Braves are definitely not allowed to watch? ‘Perils at the Pit-Stop’ includes a full description of the town, its current factions, and hints at some of the mysteries going in within its boundaries. It is essentially a mini-sandbox, a place for the Junior Braves to explore and make discoveries, and so there is no single defined plot or outcome, though there are several Troubles which they will encounter.

Physically, the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start is a simple black and white booklet. It is well written, the artwork is good, and the map nicely done.

Like other ‘Powered by Kids on Bikes’ roleplaying games, the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start is easy to pick and up and play, the rules are simple—made all the easier by being player-facing, and the set-up easy to grasp. Unlike Kids on Brooms, the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start comes with everything necessary to play. So with just the five characters and the given scenario, ‘Perils at the Pit-Stop’, the Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse Quick-Start should provide both a couple of sessions’ worth of play and a good introduction to the full roleplaying game and the setting.

[Free RPG Day 2020] Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition

Now in its thirteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2020, after a little delay due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, took place on Saturday, 25th July. As per usual, it came with an array of new and interesting little releases, which traditionally would have been tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Again, global events meant that Gen Con itself was not only delayed, but run as a virtual event, and likewise, global events meant that Reviews from R’lyeh could not gain access to the titles released on the day as no friendly local gaming shop was participating nearby. Fortunately, Reviews from R’lyeh has been able to gain copies of many of the titles released on the day, and so can review them as is the usual practice. To that end, Reviews from R’lyeh wants to thank both Keith Mageau and David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3 in sourcing and providing copies of the Free RPG Day 2020 titles.

Amongst some gaming groups, there is much anguish and wailing that there is no roleplaying dedicated to the Harry Potter franchise. This is not to say that there have been no pretenders to the throne, no attempts to something in a Harry Potter-style setting, but with the serial numbers well and truly filed off. For example, the Redhurst Academy of Magic Student Handbook was a d20 System supplement published by Humanhead Studios in 2003. In 2020, Renegade Game Studios supported Free RPG Day with an ‘ashcan’ version of Kids on Brooms. This is a collaborative role-playing game—using the Kids on Bikes model and mechanics—about life at a magical school, where as a teenage witch or wizard you will study various types of magic, cast spells using your wands, and participate in sports astride brooms you ride through the air! You will have adventures, face dangers and mysteries, and uncover the fantastic secrets of the school and magic!

The Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition presents a cut down version of the full Kids on Brooms rules. It starts by discussing the setting of boundaries, the Game Master and her players being expected to agree on what they want and do not want in their game—what they want to see, what they are okay with, what they want to gloss over, and what they want to avoid. The point is all about be being respectful to each other, especially in light of the fact the players are going to be roleplaying children. The Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition omits though, both rules for setting creation and character creation. In the full rules for Kids on Brooms the players and Game Master gets to create their school of magic and the players roleplay pupils from all years. In the Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition, the setting is the Rainheart Academy of Magic just outside of Tacoma, Washington, an old Victorian manor house perpetually hidden from the normal world by fog, its surrounding trees and buildings covered with a fungus whose study is one of the more dangerous classes on the curriculum, and its primary sport being Branderball, a combination of rugby and bowling, only played, of course, on brooms. Also, the only characters available to roleplay are Underclass Students—essentially, First Years.

Instead of character generation, Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition includes six Tropes—or basic character types—and the means to modify them with the scope if their all being Underclass Students. These Tropes are Teacher’s Pet, Bullheaded Muscle, Firstborn Caster, Haughty Descendant, Offbeat Eccentric, and Reliable Bestie. As per Kids on Bikes, each student is six stats—Brains, Brawn, Charm, Fight, light, and Grit—which are attached to a die type, from a twenty-sided die for the character’s best stat down to a four-sided die for his worst stat. The ten-sided die represents an above average stat, whereas an eight-sided die represents a below average stat. So, a Bullhead has a Brawn d20, Fight d12, Grit d10, Flight d8, Brains d6, and Charm d4, whereas an Offbeat Eccentric has Flight d20, Grit d12, Brains d10, Charm d8, Brawn d6, and Fight d4.

Each Trope also has its own Strengths—or advantages, for example Loyal & Prepared for the Teacher’s Pet and Spell Slinger & Wealthy for the Haughty Descendant, each of which grants an advantage during play. So Loyal for the Reliable Bestie grants each Adversity Token spent to help a friend a +2 bonus rather than +1 and the Intuitive of the Firstborn Caster enables his player to spend Adversity Tokens to ask questions of the Game Master, who must answer truthfully. A Trop also has a Wand, which consists of the Wood and the Core, both of which grant bonuses to casting particular types of magic. So Cherry Wood grants a bonus for Charm magic and Pine Wood a bonus for Brawn magic, whereas dragon’s heartstring, wolf’s tooth, and elk antler grant a bonus to Fight magic and parchment, phoenix’s feather, and owl’s feather to Brains magic. Every student also has his own broom, such as The Blocker’s Broom which grants the rider the Guardian Strength, a familiar such as an owl or a frog, and an expansive schoolbag (of holding).

Having selected a Trope and made all of these choices, each player answers a random question about the relationship between his Trope and the Trope of the player to his left. Then each player notes down his Trope’s motivation, fear, and what might be found in his schoolbag. Given that this only the Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition and the Trope or character options are fairly limited, there is a fair amount of advice given on the process.

Mechanically, Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition uses the same mechanics as Kids on Bikes and Teens in Space, with each of a Trope’s stats being represented by a single die type. For a Trope to do something, player rolls the appropriate die for his Trope’s stat and attempts to roll over a difficulty number set by the Game Master, for example, between ten and twelve for an impressive task that a skilled person should be able to do. When a die is rolled and its maximum number is rolled, the die explodes, the Trope gets a Lucky Break, and a player gets to re-roll and add to the total. A player only has to keep rolling exploding results until his Trope succeeds. The Game Master also decides whether an action is a Planned Action or a Snap Decision, although a player can attempt to persuade her either way. Primarily, a Planned Action allows a player to take the average of a Trope’s stat and so forego the need to roll, whereas with a Snap Decision, this is not possible.

In addition, Adversity Tokens can be spent to modify a roll on a one-for-one basis. If a Trope succeeds at a stat check, his player gets to narrate the result, whereas, if he fails, then the Game Master narrates the outcome. Failures tend to be worse for Planned Actions rather than Snap Decisions, but whatever the failure, the Trope earns an Adversity Token.

So far, so like Kids on Bikes, but Kids on Brooms, magic complicates things—or at least adds aspect to the game. In fact, magic and the casting of spells is surprisingly simple, yet flexible. Each Stat is associated with a particular type of magic—Brains for astral projection, finding hidden things, and so on; Brains for levitation, magically locking doors, and binding opponents; Fight for attacking, disarming, and exploding magic; Flight for deflecting magic, moving magically, and blending into the surrounds; Charm for disguising yourself, magically persuading others, and projecting illusions; and Grit for keeping yourself and others safe, dispelling magic, and healing. Of all these spells, there are ethical limitations on the use of Charm and Fight spells—especially against others.

Mechanically, spellcasting in Kids on Brooms uses the same dice rolls as stat checks, with the Game Master setting the difficulty of the task based on what the player wants his Trope to do with the spell. This is modified by the magnitude, area, and duration of the effect, as well as the caster’s experience with the spell, so the more unnatural the effect, the greater area it affects, the longer it lasts, and the less experience his Trope has with the spell, the greater target difficulty the player has to beat. In addition to the stat die, a player also has a Magic Die or a four-sided die, which he rolls and adds to the total. The Magic Die is not rolled if the target of the magic is a living being, but it does explode, and since it is a smaller die type, there is a greater chance of it exploding and so of a Trope successfully casting the spell. As with standard stat checks, there is a table for interpreting the results for the Game Master to use.

And… this is where Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition effectively ends. There are no NPCs given and there is no scenario. So in effect, Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition gives a group everything it needs to play, but nothing roleplay or act against, and worse, nothing to do. In effect, it handicaps any group wanting to find out what Kids on Brooms is like to play. What is worse is the fact that almost two thirds of a page is left empty, which could have used for  scenario seed or three and perhaps the stats of monster or two—just something to make the Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition more immediately playable.

Physically, the Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition is where well presented. The artwork is reasonable and the booklet is decently written. 

The Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition is a good introduction to Kids on Brooms. It is easy to pick up and understand, the setting is instantly accessible, and the rules are light, providing for a good narrative-based storytelling game. However, as a full introduction to Kids on Brooms, the Kids on Brooms Free RPG Day Edition is frustratingly, unnecessarily incomplete.

[Free RPG Day 2019] Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court is a bit of both. For starters, it is a scenario for use with theKids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns roleplaying game published by Renegade Game Studios, but it also feeds into the publisher’s forthcoming roleplaying game, Teens in Space.

Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns is a roleplaying game of small town life before there were smartphones in everyone’s pocket—so no access to cameras, the internet, and GPS which would make investigations into the mysterious and the unknown all the easier. Although the mysterious and the unknown may found around any corner and behind any door, it is the kids who are ready to believe and ready to investigate. The only way for them to investigate and confront such mysteries and unknowns is to work together, know their strengths, and be prepared to ride like hell when the mysteries and unknowns turn on them and their meddling!

Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court provides a town, a set of five pre-generated investigators, and a mystery to explore. The town is Hebron, Indiana, a quiet place with a combined school for all of the town’s children, a grocer’s, a gas station, and a bowling alley for socialising and entertainment. There is not a great for Kids to do in the town, though the school organises numerous after-school activities and clubs. One of the after-school clubs is the Investigation Club, set up by several of the students, but not really endorsed by the school, to investigate mysteries in the town as well as research monsters and how to deal with them. The Investigation Club definitely does not have the support of School Principal Davis, but there are other members of the faculty who can be persuaded by the club’s members to look the other way when access to the right research material or resources is needed. The other issue, of course, for the members of the Investigation Club is Zane Madison, the school bully, and his cohorts. 

Five pre-generated Kids (or investigators) are given. They include an eager Boy Scout, a Popular Kid and athlete, an insightful Conspiracy Theorist, an ambitious, but Stoic Professional, and a wealthy, but Reclusive Eccentric who likes to invent things. All five come with a short background and a couple advantages and disadvantages, so are easy to read and use.

The mystery in Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court takes place during the summer vacation of 1985. There have been rumours of monsters in the nearby woods and things been moving outside windows, but this weekend the head of the Investigation Club has decided that the club’s members are going to investigate a strange, abandoned house at the end of Poplar Court on the edge of the town. The adventure plays out in three acts, the first act being essentially a haunted house mystery which sets up the second act—a monster hunt! Under the direction of an NPC, the Kids are encouraged to hunt down a quartet of monsters which have got loose in the town. The creatures are not evil per se, but all are designed around the Universal Classic Monsters though the Kids will not necessarily know this (the players on the other hand…). As part of the Monster Hunt, the Kids will need to research each of the monsters, track them down, and then capture them before returning them to the house. Tracking down each one is an adventure in itself, played out across the sandbox that is the town of Hebron. The third act is a whole other matter…

The sandbox structure of the second act enables the Game Master to bring in the various NPCs and places into play, depending upon what the players decide their Kids to do. To that end, both NPCs and locations are neatly summarised and each of the monster quarries is given a list of clues for the Kids to discover as well stats and some staging notes for the Game Master.

Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court is neatly, tidily presented. Although both the front and back cover are nice colour pieces, the inside is simple black and white with not a single illustration in sight.

As an adventure, Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court offers a bit more play than just the single session that a quick-start typically provides. If there is an issue with ‘The House on Poplar Court’ scenario it is perhaps the ending, which goes off in an unexpected direction. It is designed as a lead in to Teens in Space, but it would have been nice if an alternate ending had been provided for the Game Master who does not want her campaign to go in that direction. That it can work with the Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition is a nice bonus, but Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court is a decent little adventure, one which provides some fun with some classic monsters for Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns.

Free RPG Day 2018: Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition

Now in its eleventh year, Saturday, June 16th was Free RPG Day and with it came an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. The contribution from Renegade Game Studios is Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition, a version of the collaborative storytelling roleplaying game just for Free RPG Day 2018. Funded via Kickstarter, Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns is a roleplaying game of small town life before there were smartphones in everyone’s pocket—so no access to cameras, the internet, and GPS which would make investigations into the mysterious and the unknown all the easier. Although the mysterious and the unknown may found around any corner and behind any door, it is the kids who are ready to believe and ready to investigate. The only way for them to investigate and confront such mysteries and unknowns is to work together, know their strengths, and be prepared to ride like hell when the mysteries and unknowns turn on them and their meddling!

The Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition presents a cut down version of the full game. It starts by discussing the setting of boundaries, the Game Master and her players being expected to agree on what they want and do not want in their game—what they want to see, what they are okay with, what they want to gloss over, and what they want to avoid. The point is all about be being respectful to each other, especially in light of the fact the players are going to be roleplaying children. Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition omits though, both rules for setting creation and character creation. In the full version of Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns, everyone collaborates on creating the small town where their kid characters will have their adventures. Here it presents a town called Undecided—sic!—so named because nobody could agree on an actual name and then on what to change it to. Undecided stands amidst miles of forest whose only other feature is a lake. On the edge of the town stands a mine entrance with a cemetery and pet cemetery on either side, whilst teenage life in town seems to revolve around the Space Lanes Bowling Alley and Flying Robot Arcade. Then with spring coming, so will the fair and its Fabulous Freak Show. That said, every player gets to add a single rumour to Undecided, the veracity of which may—or may not—be proved in game.

In place of character creation rules, Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition includes four pre-generated Kids, four pre-generated Teens, and four pre-generated Adults. Each has six stats—Brains, Brawn, Charm, Fight, light, and Grit—which are attached to a die type, from a twenty-sided die for the character’s best stat down to a four-sided die for his worst stat. The ten-sided die represents an above average stat, whereas an eight-sided die represents a below average stat. A character also has a pair of Strengths, such as Lucky, which allows a player to spend two Adversity Tokens to reroll a stat check, or Treasure Hunter, which allows a player to spend one Adversity Token for his character to find a useful item. Each of the twelve characters also has two questions, such as “What do you remember most about your father?” or “What are two of your go-to jokes?”.  

In this quick-start, each player chooses a character and answering a question about the relationship his character with the character of the player to his left—good or bad (a list of twenty questions for each is included at the back). Then each player notes down his character’s motivation, fear, and what might be found in his backpack. Given that this is a quick-start, there is a surprising amount of advice for all four of these final steps, reflecting the complexity of the characters, whether Kids, Teens, or Adults.

Mechanically, Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns uses the full polyhedron panoply, with of a character’s stats being represented by a single die type. For a character to do something, player rolls the appropriate die for his character’s stat and attempts to roll over a difficulty number set by the Game Master, for example, between ten and twelve for an impressive task that a skilled person should be able to do. When a die is rolled and its maximum number is rolled, the die explodes and a player gets to re-roll and add to the total. A player only has to keep rolling exploding results until his character succeeds. The Game Master also decides whether an action is a Planned Action or a Snap Decision, although a player can attempt to persuade her either way. Primarily, a Planned Action allows a player to take the average of a character’s stat and so forego the need to roll, whereas with a Snap Decision, this is not possible. 

It is possible to roll critical successes and failures as well as easy successes and failures. The former have long term consequences, whereas the latter have short term consequences. In general though, successes enable the player to collaborate with the Game Master to narrate the outcome, whereas the Game Master mostly gets to narrate the outcome if the roll is a failure. One other consequence of failure is that a player earns Adversity Tokens for his character. These can be spent to provide bonuses in stat checks, other players being able to spend theirs on another player’s stat check if it is a Planned action, as well as to trigger particular strengths. Combat employs these same mechanics, but for the most involves Snap Decisions and characters rolling against each other or NPCs to gain narrative control.

So far so good. If Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition—and thus Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns—had been released prior to 2016, then its inspiration would not have been so obvious, but that is not the case and so the inspiration is obvious. That inspiration all but announces itself with the rules for ‘Powered Characters’. The Powered Character is not a player character though, but then nor is she or he an NPC solely roleplayed by the Game Master. Instead, the Game Master creates the Powered Character, deciding their reactions, powers, personality, and so on, but apportions each of these aspects out to the players so that they collectively control the Powered Character together with the Game Master. This further emphasises the degree to which the players have narrative control over the flow of events in a game of Kids on Bikes, but the Game Master can use the Powered Character to nudge events here and there. A few sample Powered Characters are provided for the Game Master to use—they include others besides the young subject of government experimental program, as well as places of interest in the town of Undecided, some NPCs, and plot hooks.

Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition is plainly and simply presented, with just the single internal illustration. The writing in general is pretty good and it is all very readable. Overall, a good showcase what for what the Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns can do, there being plenty of gaming potential to be had in the pages of Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition.