Friday, August 9, 2019
The first full “official” setting for GUTS+ play has been released in the form of a hack of the system! It’s called SKATER+, and it lets you play as a skater in the fabled Sk8r’s Paradise skate park. You can go head to head against your friends or play as a team against some pre-made skater gangs in customizable skate parks! You can grind rails and shred half pipes all day to prove you’re worthy of being called a Skater Legend!
In SKATER+, you have 6 base SKATER stats, just like how GUTS+ has the 4 base GUTS qualities, and you build your skater to be able to handle certain kinds of tricks. Instead of managing your inventory or health, you manage your Energy and Recovery points, which determines how many tricks you can do before needing to rest. It’s chock full of cliché skater lingo and the example characters are a little bit of an Easter egg reference for kids who grew up watching the same shows I did.
I had the idea for a skate park setting a month or so ago, and then the #RPGenesis 2019 game jam came to my attention. One of the options for the jam was to make a hack of an existing RPG system, so I decided I’d go ahead and hack GUTS+ to make my skate park idea a reality! As I got more into it, it just started working out and getting better and better. I was able to try it out with some friends, and the combo system feels good, the gameplay loop is enjoyable, and the theme is just plain fun. The #RPGenesis jam required a minimum of 5000 words for submitting the game, which forced me to get creative after I finished writing the game rules and resulted in adding some lore and details about opponent skaters. I had a lot of fun with this, and it’s very encouraging for me making some more GUTS+ settings in the future!
If you wanted to, it would not be hard to add SKATER+ to an existing (or new) GUTS+ campaign. Simply make a Sk8r Card for your character and ignore the + on the card in favor of your existing + quality! If you’re starting at a low level or if your characters don’t have much skating experience, distribute 5 points instead of 10 to your SKATER stats, and hit the skate park! The rest of the rules shouldn’t interfere with GUTS+ at all!
SKATER+ is free to download from Itch.io, but it gives the option to pay what you want as well. If you like the game, it’d mean a lot if you could throw a buck or two my way so I know you like it. If you don’t have the money, that’s totally fine! Leave a comment on the page and let me know what you think! I’d love to get some feedback and make the game even better. Either way, I hope you enjoy and that you’re able to become the next Skater Legend!