[Free RPG Day 2024] Garbage & Glory – Trashrun

Now in its seventeenth year, Free RPG Day for 2024 took place on Saturday, June 22nd. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally 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. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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Garbage & Glory – Trashrun is a preview of, and a quick-start for Garbage & Glory, the roleplaying games of raccoons—known as ‘trash pandas’—going on adventures, typically to acquire the best kind of trash dumped by humans and turn it into something useful. They will have to compete—and sometimes even fight—for this trash with other trash-mongers like Rat Bandits and Killoyotes. Of course, there is rubbish, which is rubbish and trash, which is useful, and the best source of waste is always guarded giant Ogres in flashing yellow outfits. Who knows why? Actually, the ‘why’ really does not matter, because nothing is going to stop raccoons from getting the best trash. It is published by Wet Ink Games, which previously published Heckin’ Good Doggos – Someone’s Last Day at the Track for Free RPG Day 2023, but is probably best known for Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, the horror roleplaying game set in a Chinese restaurant in the 1920s. Designed to be played by all ages, it includes the roleplaying game’s +One System, six ready-to-play pre-generated dog characters, and a full adventure, ‘Beyond the Sewer Gate’. In order to play, a group will need a pool of six-sided dice and two decks of ordinary playing cards, each of which should be different to tell them apart.

A raccoon in Garbage & Glory is defined by a Title, Calling, Attributes, and Training. The Title is descriptive, but a Calling grants a raccoon a unique ability and a unique skill. For example, ‘Argentus’, one of the pre-generated raccoons in Garbage & Glory – Trashrun has the Title of ‘The Crafty Blade’. He also has the Calling of ‘Rubbish Ruffian’. This grants him the Calling Ability of ‘The Body Remembers’ which doubles the effect when negating damage or receiving healing, as well as the Calling Skill of ‘Attack Back’, which allows him a riposte if an attack against him misses. The three Attributes are Brawn, Smarts, and Guts, which start at three each, but can be much higher. Each Attribute has four associated areas of Training. For example, Brawn has Break, Scrap, Sneak, and Wriggle. Besides equipment, a Raccoon has rating in Garbage and Glory, which indicate the number of cards for each that a Raccoon has.

Mechanically, Garbage & Glory – Trashrun and thus Garbage & Glory uses the +One System. This involves rolling a number of six-sided dice each to the skill being used. Each five or six rolled is a success. Harder tasks require more Successes. ‘+One Manipulations’ enable a player to change the outcome using points from the Attribute associated with the Skill. Prior to a roll, a manipulation can be made to add a die to a roll or even gain a skill rating in a previously untrained skill, if only temporarily. After the roll, to increase the value of a die roll by one—typically from a four to a five—and to reroll any number of dice. In addition to skill rolls, raccoons can face Challenges, which are attempted by the whole Mask—as a group of raccoons is known—as a group effort. They simply need to roll a number of Successes equal to the target number for the Challenge for the whole pack to succeed. The scenario, ‘Beyond the Sewer Gate’, uses ‘Countdown Challenges’, which if failed, add a cumulative penalty to all subsequent Countdown Challenges in the adventure.

There multiple uses for playing cards in the +One System in Garbage & Glory – Trashrun and thus Garbage & Glory. It depends upon which deck they are played from. Cards drawn from the Garbage deck have two uses—crafting and healing. For the former, the suits represent types of trash. Spades for sharp objects, Hearts for soft, Diamonds for shiny, and Clubs for hard, with higher value cards representing better trash and Jokers acting as wild cards. Notably, very Shiny trash means that it might be magical. For healing one card is discarded per potential point of damage. Cards from the Glory deck can be discarded for ‘+One Manipulations’, healing, and to gain Initiative scores. Whenever a card from the Glory deck is discarded, the player is expected to narrate exactly how glorious it is.

Combat is kept simple. Participants have the one action per turn, initiative is determined by the highest-ranking card of Glory—card suits matter in the full rules to Garbage & Glory, but not in Garbage & Glory – Trashrun—and once a player has acted, then he gets to choose who goes next. At the end of a round, the player of the last character—or the Game Master—to act chooses who acts first in the next round, though it cannot be themselves. Attacks are made against the Scrap, Hurl, or magic values of the defendant as the Target Number. Overall, both the mechanics and combat are nicely explained in Garbage & Glory – Trashrun, and supported with innumerable examples as well as tone and using the X-Card where necessary.

Garbage & Glory – Trashrun includes six pre-generated raccoons. They include a fighter, a skills generalist, a brawler, a healer and skilled dumpster diver, a sneaky raccoon with sticky fingers, and a tinkerer who can delivered a barbed quip. Each has a full sheet, with spaces for each raccoon’s Attributes marked with bottlecaps!

The scenario, ‘Beyond the Sewer Gate’ opens with the raccoons outside the legendary Munci Wastedisp, ready to sneak in and search for its long sought after trove of trashy treasure. The Mask plans to explore its dark and twisty depths in search of good trash, all the whilst avoiding patrolling Ogres in their shiny yellow armour. There is a constant flow of water and rubbish—and perhaps some trash—into Munci Wastedisp, but there is also the chance that too much flows in and it has to go somewhere! Mechanically, if the players fail three Countdown Challenges, they are washed out of Munci Wastedisp. Inside, the Mask will find Rat Bandits, rooms full of all too shiny rubbish, and eventually way into ‘The Depths’ of Munci Wastedisp where they will find the best trash they have ever dreamed of. There they need to avoid the Ogres—and worse—search for the best trash, and get out again, likely chased out… ‘Beyond the Sewer Gate’ is a solid scenario, which hides much of what is going on to the players in the dark of the municipal waste dump, giving it an atmosphere that they unlikely to have thought much about, let considered a location to set a roleplaying scenario in!

Physically, Garbage & Glory – Trashrun is brightly, cheerfully presented. The writing is clear and the illustrated of the various raccoons and the threats they face are excellent. At the front there are illustrations of the weapons that the raccoons use, including a ‘Car Key Shank’, a Stainless Steel based on a steel ruler, and a ‘Pretty Gear Chain Sword’, which is essentially a bicycle chain turned rapidly using the pedals as handles! These are a lot of fun. It is a pity that none of the character sheets for the raccoons have illustrations, and it would have been useful if there had been explanations on what each of the pre-generated raccoons do.

Garbage & Glory – Trashrun is a good quick-start and a good introduction to Garbage & Glory. Its setting and its mechanics make it suitable for younger teenagers and older players and an experienced Narrator, especially one who has run some storytelling style games, will be able to grasp the +One System and explain how it works with ease. Overall, Garbage & Glory – Trashrun is cheerfully, cheeky fun and should give a session’s worth of raccoonish rambunctiousness.