Everyone is John: A Postmortem Review

 

INTRODUCTION

It’s finally time for a review of Everyone is John along with worthwhile changes and additions to the system. So far having run Everyone is John 117, Everyone is the Grinch Christmas Special and finally Everyone is John Arbuckle its time to do a deep dive.

REVIEW

The game is fun and has potential, but it still has its flaws. It's very much a pick up and play on a random night with a couple of friends. Overall 3.5/5

WHAT IS IT

Everyone is John is a tabletop RPG in which the players play as John, a person being controlled by multiple consciousness who all have varying goals and obsessions. The game is rather simple with a few major stats and basic dice rolls.

AN EXAMPLE ENDING

To summarize John Arbuckle is going to prison for property damage, vehicular assault, more property damage, grand theft auto and animal abuse for throwing Garfield in an accordion case that was filled with lasagna. He was arrested by 15 cops, tazed multiple times and beaten with a nightstick; after he was sold out by Odie to the police for all this. Odie obviously flipped him off as he was arrested. Liz now has both Odie and Garfield in protective custody. Garfield has switched from the episcopalian church to Panelist Lasagnaism and believes that everything is a comic panel.

 

THINGS THAT WORK

1.    The D6 Rolls: John sucks and that’s okay. The continued failures while annoying to players can be lightened by upping the humor and making things fail forward.

2.    The Improv: The game is improv based and shines best in that fashion. It takes 10 minutes to set up, and it can lead to an easy 2 hours of fun and chaos.

3.    Crossovers: Throwing the players into other properties leads to more fun than just the normal setting.

THINGS THAT DON’T WORK

1.      Combat: It’s very hard to run and not have it be a drag. In John 117 having highly specific skills leads to making combat a drag and boring. It led to the fact that” run really really fast” as a skill was the most effective method and just doing an A Train moment against the covenant

2.      Will Power: As a concept it works, however in practice betting willpower for control quickly falls to the wayside. And gaining willpower is rather difficult in scenarios that aren’t the normal setting of John is a random guy who took some head trauma. The scenarios lead to constant shenanigans and John is always doing something that isn’t boring. And when it is boring it is just to set the next scene and 1 willpower gain while useful isn’t enough to prevent rationing of said willpower

PERSONAL CHANGES

1.      Keeping Things Secret: Having skills and objectives kept mostly secret by the player lead to interesting moments of unintentional synergism. It also prevents people from setting up scenarios that other players cannot do anything useful or prevent them from completing an objective.

2.      2 Skills Only: Having only 2 skills leads to more limitations but also gives the players more willpower. This one was a test in the John Arbuckle game, and it isn’t good or bad overall. Just another way to try and maximize the action economy.  

3.      The Wheels: Spinning wheels were borrowed from MagicTheNoah, but adding random wheels does add to the game if done appropriately. The wheels need to add to the game and should not penalize the players. In John Arbuckle the Cheese Wheel had a Bus spawning in as an option and the bus rolling twice in a roll caused a very fun moment in game. It’s also more amusing to spin a wheel than it is to roll on a table afterall.