We Dig Giant Robots

Came across this by chance while leafing through the pages of a bundle, and the title caught my eye immediately as a homage/reference to Megas XLR. I expected a 10 at most 20-page cover-to-cover game-jam rules-light etc. style of fan homage that would be interesting to look through but would need additional support to be realistically playable.

What I got instead was a spirited and fully fleshed out recreation of/ and guidance for how to play Megas XLR as a tabletop game. We Dig Giant Robots spins a ruleset simple and quick enough to get into as support for a single family game night; yet complete and engaging enough to entertain a longer term table if you want to truly explore the hammy action-comedy ideas within. True to its source material, WDGR is an action-comedy that will have lots of silly things happen during play, like finding out your mech has a nacho-cheese cannon, and possibly further finding out said cannon is necessary to overcome your villain-of-the-week's random hidden weakness. You are also guaranteed to Kick Too Much Ass at some point, which will make the situation worse before you find the right button on your mech to achieve your goals or save the day.

How does it play?

Gameplay wise, there are some parallels to be drawn to the FATE system, but overall I find WDGR is distinct enough that it stands on its own and the resolution system which uses 1 standard 6-sided die is much easier to jump into and explain to someone with no TTRPG experience and/or lower tolerance for basic math. There are 9 playable archetypes of characters: 1 is mandatory and repeatable, the others are designed as narrative support roles which open up different means of problem-solving, and are recommended to keep at 1 per-role of at the table. The game has full support for wacky things that can happen when you press a button on your mech that nobody is too sure what will occur, and creating a villain to fight, with good advice on episode structure and character motivation as rules to drive the narration forwards that tie the whole thing together.

How big is the book? Starting on page 4, there are 46 pages that contain the entirety of the game, after which is added another 20 to rehash all the tables in 1 easier to reference section (which I didn't find necessary given the length of the initial rules, but its something), and wraps it up with a final extra 20 pages for 20 pre-generated character examples (one of which is missing from the TOC but is on p73). The PDF is 94 pages altogether. 

TL;DR If you ever watched Megas XLR and thought to yourself, "Wow, I wonder what it would be like to star in that story?", We Dig Giant Robots is your table of 3 or more answer. If there were other reviews on this page I probably wouldn't have bothered being as comprehensive as this but y'all need to know this game has heart and should be seen by at least somebody. To Kamala Kara Arroyo, you and your team have my full kudos for the creation of this game. To anyone sitting on the fence, this is your sign the game is worth the $15 to buy. I love giant robots. Nice.