MYFAROG: Weird Name, Bad Game

This is up there with the worst RPG's I've read. I'm still processing this thing after reading it.

I had such interest when this photo was taken

MYFAROG stands for "Mythic Fantasy Role-Playing Game." It's both a system and a campaign setting rolled into one. Let's delve into the good and the bad.

I want to start with the positives. Scattered throughout the book are these quotes and phrases. Some I have certainly heard before, others not so much. I think some are quite interesting. They can make for great lines NPC's and villains can say to a group of adventurers. Another great thing is there's an appendix with very interesting sounding names of people and places. Lastly, the cover has a striking look to it that while simple, pulls the eye with the black and white contrast and very brilliant dragon. The fluff can be great at times, I think Thule(Not to be confused with Primeval Thule by Sasquatch Game Studio) could be an interesting setting based on real world mythology if conveyed better.

Now, let's start the bad....
The copy I ordered from Amazon had two pieces of art. The cover, and the deities' symbols. 161 pages with a dragon on a cover and symbols on one page. Without art this book is a dry, monotonous read with nothing to stop and say "that looks neat." Great art in an RPG makes a world come alive, good art helps break up long periods of rules and how to use them, Bad art can at least be fun and sometimes iconic. No art is just dull and lifeless. There's also a typo saying there's an included poster map, there's not in this amazon printed edition.

The formatting and layout are not great by any stretch. Tables and charts are heavily littered throughout and grey text boxes poke out on almost every page. There's so much content to take in. Within the book, the author suggests playing the game with less rules. It's nothing new, but even then it's hard to figure out what is and isn't a core principle rule that the game relies on, since the book's chapters aren't very well formatted. It feels like I'm reading a beta with fluff thrown in. The writing has an air of pretentiousness and the game is filled with acronyms whose meanings are littered somewhere else, hopefully nearby in the text. The rules seem more complex than they really are which makes it feel like it's simply poorly conveyed.

Onto PC's. There's 5 playable races but 8 in total. 3 are meant as NPC's and are limited in some degree for campaign setting reasons. I think this, mechanically speaking, is where the game itself turns me off. I can understand wanting to fit these specific niches within a campaign setting, but it limits what players can be. The races themselves also seem very bland and almost indifferent. It swings between the Humans(Natives), types of elves(Elf-Born, Wood Elf), and some kind of supernatural godly humanoid (God born & Fairling). It's very samey. I understand this is based on mythology but it just kind of fails at impressing me with the races and the real lack of diversity and options. The Classes, called Character Roles, appear interesting and different but really are versions of the classics. I do like the Character Role fluff, although it limits things.

Onto the last part, Monsters. On a side note, there's a Men & Monsters supplement. I made the mistake of not reading the amazon description. Men & Monsters is literally the Monsters segment of the core book. It's kind of useful considering the poor formatting but not what I expected from a supplement. I thought it'd be more monsters. There's pretty standard fare, but some monsters have been renamed for fluff reasons. Dragons are called worms. This bothered me because I was trying to find dragons. Without artwork, I saw worm and thought 'worm'. Some monsters get a paragraph or two(Sometimes even more) describing the monster, the Hyaenodon gets one sentence. There's a lack of consistency and it's just a disappointment to see and irritating to read.

I personally cannot recommend MYFAROG. But if anything in here sounds awesome You can find it on Amazon. I really think the setting could be it's own book, maybe a system agnostic setting, or even a setting for another game system. But as it is, I cannot recommend this game.
1/5 Copper!
Pros:

• Interesting Setting
• Interesting Quotes
• Good Looking Cover

Cons:

• Incredibly Poor Format and Layout
• Dull, Uninteresting Races and Classes
• Lack of Artwork