If you’re into tabletop RPGs, you have probably encountered the work of Grant Howitt — whether you know it or not. He’s the creator of the one-page wonder Honey Heist, which has been taking the gaming world by storm from Critical Role to your buddy’s after-work hangout. He’s got plenty of others up his sleeve: Pride and Extreme Prejudice, Big Gay Orcs, and the recent street racing raccoon epic Crash Pandas.
I’ll admit that when Honey Heist first landed, I considered it cute as a Twitter post but unfeasible beyond that. I was wrong. And I was happy to be wrong.
Now, several games and a bit of RPG brush-up later, I find myself craving these pick-up games, both as a player and as a storyteller.
My Honey Heist
So far, I’ve played Honey Heist twice: once with two friends and their daughter, and once with two friends and my friend Ginger when she came to town. The former was fun, if not a bit stop-and-start, as we were all getting the hang of it. (Also our hacker panda had to be retconned because it was past her bedtime.)
Our DM made the second game specifically for Ginger and me to enjoy: a Doctor Who story (we’re all fans) with bears named after Cubs players (Ginger is a fan). This involved dropping much of Howitt’s pretense for the original game, granted. But he’d created a game where you can do that and lose nothing.
For those unfamiliar: here’s a link to Honey Heist. Rolls of the dice decide your breed, role in the group, and hat. Because you need a hat. You have two stats, Bear and Criminal, which both start at 3. And together, your team is off to HoneyCon to pull of the biggest honey heist ever. From there, it’s rolls of the dice and a bit of creative DMing. Honey hitting you a bit hard? A point goes from Criminal into Bear. Being a little too human? The reverse. You’re out of the game if you go too feral or too criminal.
For our Doctor Who game, CJ created a bear prison colony from which our team escaped. We were pointed to a space station with A Whole Lot Of Honey, and our day was almost made… except the Fifth Doctor and crew showed up. From there, it was a mix of self-parody, really terrible rolls (mine), and action. And it was delightful. Also, we ended up with the Hand of Zobrist as an artifact.
Crashing for Charity
I discovered Crash Pandas when Critical Role played it for a live charity stream. This consisted of raccoons with four stats, two items, and a goal. Oh, and potentially the coolest way I’ve ever seen anyone handle multiple characters trying to make decisions at the same time.
I wish I could even begin to tell you what resulted from that single sheet. Watch the video for yourself if you have the time.
Critical Role is already an amazing team, granted. They create and voice wonderful characters over the long term. But in a three-hour block, they brought life to characters created with minimal preparation and stats. And yes, I can chalk a lot of that up to their skill as creators and gamers. But there’s something to be said for a game that gives you that. Even the best creator wouldn’t be able to spin gold out of something underdeveloped.
What Howitt does, as evidenced by Honey Heist and Crash Pandas, is give you enough that you can sit down right here, right now, and just do it. But if you have an hour, a day, a week, you can get a little more crazy. You can make a Doctor Who story, or figure out how Vin Diesel figures into the drama of a rat mafia kidnapping a raccoon’s girlfriend. (Yeah, that’s a thing in the Critical Role Game).
The scope alone is worth the price of admission, but there’s more to it that I find so important as geeky hobbies get greater exposure.
Welcome to Gaming
As much as I love tabletop gaming, it can be kind of unwelcoming at first flush. Right now I’m gearing up for two 5th edition D&D games with different groups. And as much as I love creating characters, the math and logistics beforehand can be rough. It’s actually a reason I shied away from it for a while: I loved the storytelling, but couldn’t remember things even with a sheet in front of me.
This is nothing against any gaming system, by the way. For certain gaming styles, when you’re slinging around magic and weapons, you need both math and the element of chance to keep things fair. I have huge respect not only for people who can create these systems, but also for people who can follow them.
Regardless, there’s major appeal to the ability to pick up and play a tabletop RPG with the same speed as a card game. There’s something freeing and open about knowing that, if I wanted, I could print out one of these games with no preparation (save for a quick read-through to get my bearings) and run a game this afternoon. Recurring plotted-out characters are wonderful, and so is the ability to have a tabletop gaming environment on short notice.
If you want to join the fun, you can check out Grant Howitt’s Patreon, support him, and grab a variety of one-sheets RPGs. It’s a beautiful thing for the genre.
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