The Other OSR: Teenage Oddyssey

The nineties was a decade of Grunge, Britney Spears, and Hip-Hop, of growing up without the Soviet Union and Communism being the traditional bogeyman, of television sensations like Twin Peaks, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and Friends, and the rise of easy communication and information with the widespread adoption of mobile phones and the Internet. This is the decade in which Teenage Oddyssey is also set, a decade which was in its own way just as odd and crazy as the previous decade when many ‘Player Characters as Teens’ roleplaying games are set—though of course, without the existential dread and paranoia given that the end of the world was imminent. Published by Cannon Otter Studio, as its title suggests, Teenage Oddyssey uses Into the Odd, the Old School Renaissance-style rules light microclone published by Free League Publishing as the basis for its mechanics. The result is a fast-playing, fast set-up, sometimes brutal roleplaying game.

A Teenager in Teenage Oddyssey will be aged between twelve and fourteen and have three stats—Body, Mind, and Charm—and Luck, Hit Points, a Background, and some starting Gear as well as some cash. The stats range in value between eight and eighteen, but can go up and down. Body will go down because of injury and Mind because of fear, but all can be improved through experience. Luck ranges in value between one and five and Hit Points between one and six, but can go higher. Background might be Arcade Champion, Farmer’s Kid, Drama Club Kid, or even TTRPG Nerd and grants one or two items of Background Gear. Teenage Oddyssey uses an inventory system, so there are limitations on how many items a Teenager can carry, depending on whether they are Big Items or Small Items, carried in the hand or the backpack. High stats means that a Teenager begins play with one piece of Background Gear, whilst low stats mean he starts with two. Creating a Teenager is simply a matter of rolling for all of these and then cross-referencing Luck and Hit Points to determine Background, all of which can be done in a matter of minutes.

Michaela Puckett
Age: 13
Background: Photog
Body 13 Mind 15 Charm 11
Luck: 3
Hit Points: 3
Cash: $8
Gear: Camera, bicycle, backpack, notebook, pencil, House keys

Mechanically, Teenage Oddyssey is simple and straightforward. To have his Teenager undertake an action, a player makes a standard Test, rolling a twenty-sided die, the aim being to roll equal to, or less than, an appropriate stat. Standard rules for Advantage and Disadvantage apply. A Luck Test is rolled against a Teenager’s Luck, but Luck can also be spent to reroll a standard Test or to increase the damage rolled on a damage die to its maximum. The Game Master can reward Luck for good roleplaying or even out of pity! Depending on the situation, a Teenager’s Background can grant an Advantage or even an automatic success on an action.

Combat, in line with Into the Odd, is brutal in Teenage Oddyssey. Initiative is handled in narrative fashion, with combatants acting in order according to what fits the story and then when one participant has acted, he gets to choose who acts next, including the Game Master. Attacks always hit and inflict damage and the only time an Attack Test is rolled is when a Called Shot is desired. Weapons inflict damage according to their size, that is, whether they are Big Items or Small Items. A Small Item that will fit in pocket inflicts less damage than a Big Item carried in the backpack. The damage die can explode, so that it is possible to inflict a lot of damage with a lucky series of rolls. Damage is deducted from a target’s Hit Points and then his Body Stat. Armour—which can be Big or Small (Small Armour is not as easy to spot, whereas Big Armour is obvious to spot)—reduces damage, as does a shield. Once a Teenager starts suffering damage to his Body stat, his player has to roll to avoid Injury. The number of dice rolled for this depends on the Teenager’s current Luck. If it is very low, the maximum number of dice are rolled and there is a slight possibility that the Teenager will be killed straight off. A Teenager will die if his Body is reduced to zero.

In addition, weapons can have Tags, such as ‘Flammable’, ‘Nauseating’, or ‘Shrinking’. Although a combatant targeted by such a weapon cannot avoid the raw damage, he can make a standard Test to avoid the effects of the weapon’s Tags. Some Tags have ongoing effects and some allow further standard Tests to avoid their effects.

Fear is treated as an attack that inflicts damage to the Teenager’s Mind stat. A Mind Test is allowed to resist its effects, but if failed, a roll is made on the Fear Table. This works like Injuries, the player rolling more dice if his Teenager’s Luck is low. If the Teenager’s Mind stat is reduced to zero, a roll is made on the Madness Table, which can result in a permanent loss of Mind. Having a Snack will restore points of Body and Mind, whilst Going to Bed will restore both completely. When a Teenager goes up a Level, he gains more Hit Points and can either increase his stats or choose a Perk. Perk is typically based on the adventure just played, but can include being given a car, getting a job, building a treehouse, getting a companion pet, finding a Freeze Gun in the secret lab of the deranged scientist, or finding an Arcane Spell.

For the Game Master there is some advice, including not being afraid to make it up or keep it weird, and try not to kill the characters (but let it happen if they bring it on themselves). That said, Teenage Oddyssey is brutal in terms of its combat system and a big feature of its rules are combat-related. Enemies and NPCs are provided as templates to which the Game Master can add Tags to individualise them and so create interesting monsters and NPCs.

Almost half of Teenage Oddyssey is devoted to the single scenario, ‘Bad Times at Pazuzu Pizza’. Designed to be played by four to six First Level Teenagers in roughly a session or two, it begins after school with the Teenagers going to their favourite hangout, Pazuzu Pizza, a small hole-in-the-wall pizza shop. Here they can shoot the breeze, watch cartoons, eat greasy pizza, and play arcade videos. Something happens though, and when they wake up, the Teenagers find their hometown and its residents transformed into a hellscape and threatened by madness and monsters and demons. In order to save the town and its inhabitants, at the insistence of the ghost of one of the Teenagers’ crushes, they must destroy the demon responsible, hiding out at a farm on the outskirts of town. Except none of this is actually true. It turns out that the proprietor happens to be a Soviet sleeper agent and has spiked the Teenagers’ pizza with powerful experimental hallucinogens, and when they wake up, the Teenagers are not in a town fill with wrecked cars and broken buildings under roiling purple clouds and spiking red lightning, but suffering from a shared hallucination. In the course of the quest, the Teenagers will fight a Snake Priest at the church and take the Holy Sword, essentially play Frogger with huge insect-like monstrosities skittering along the highway, fight their Science Teacher wearing an exo-suit of hamsters, and so on. Finally, they will face the Demon in the Field.

So ‘Bad Times at Pazuzu Pizza’ is weird and gonzo and over the top. It is also entertaining, but its pay-off is incredibly shocking and downbeat. Essentially, because the Teenagers are on powerful experimental hallucinogens, nothing that they see is true. So, whilst they may think that they are attacking monsters and demons that have infested the town, what they are actually doing is attacking the townsfolk and going on a rampage. A drug-induced rampage true, but a swathe of actual bloody murder all the same. And whilst they are doing that, the scenario never lets them know that this might be the case, that what they are seeing is not real and what they are doing is having tragic consequences.

As an introductory scenario for a roleplaying game, ‘Bad Times at Pazuzu Pizza’ is a very bad choice. It is a one-shot scenario since the players are unlikely to want to roleplay their Teenagers again as they are now mass-murderers. It is shockingly violent—both in play and in hindsight after the reveal—which runs counter to the advice for the Game Master that she should avoid trying to kill the Teenagers. Most of the encounters in the scenario are about combat. It showcases the roleplaying game poorly. ‘Bad Times at Pazuzu Pizza’ could instead have been offered as a one-shot separate from the core rules and that would have been fine. The scenario also does not have warnings and it really does need them.

None of this is helped by the lack of advice for Game Master on what the nineties were like. There is no background, no bibliography, and no suggestions as to what a scenario for Teenagers set in the nineties would be like. The question is, what makes scenarios with Teenagers in the nineties different from scenarios with Teenagers in the eighties? Teenage Oddyssey does not tell you…

Physically, Teenage Oddyssey is well presented and the artwork has a suitably scrappy look to it.

In terms of rules and play, Teenage Oddyssey is a solid adaptation of Into the Odd. The Game Master can take these rules and run a fun game, based on her own knowledge of the nineties and that of her players. However, the lack of advice and historical background is disappointing and the included scenario is horrifyingly shocking for a roleplaying game that is pitched as one of wild and crazy adventures rather than one of unwitting murderous rampage.