Radical High is a 1980s period piece RPG By Paradox Games and distributed on Big Geek Emporium.
https://biggeekemporium.com/store/paradox/

I feel that these book really should be taken in as a single product as they complement each other and give a more well rounded game when taken all together.  There are five books in the series, each about 32 pages each:
Radical High
College Bound
Freshman Orientation 1985
80s Slang Dictionary
Fon Phreaker's Recipe Book

It's important to note that the game is about being a high school student in the 1980s

Mechanics

Mechanically, this game is very simple.  It's a straight 2d6 + stat with some PC modifiers for specific conditions.  It's smooth and easy, yet has a enough variety to keep it solid.

There's rules for fist fights but not more complex combat.  This game as written is primarily a social game and much of the rules lean in that direction.

Radical High: College Bound is a separate volume that contains a lot of additional rules that I feel are essential for running the game.  This includes things like movement and some amplification on time management. 

Additionally, Fon Phreaker's Recipe Book contains a lot of mechanics for using and manipulating the phone system of the 80s as well.

Setting

As mentioned above, this game is a period piece for the 1980s, particularly the US in that time.  The core book centers around the activities of students in a high school though other books add some other locations and some material for fleshing out your game world.  There's also a lot of inspirational references to use, particularly movies and music.

It's hard to do an entire decade justice in just 150 pages, particularly when you have to share those pages with game mechanics.  Add to that, the 1980s was a very complex decade with a lot of shifting social lines, technological advancements (much faster than than the current year), and the advent of the information age.  January 1st, 1980 looked way more different from December 31st, 1989 than just about any other two dates ten years apart in US history;  remarkable considering that there was no significant war at this time.   

Radical High definitely reflects this decade well but it's like trying to view it through a colander.  If someone with no concept of the 80s were to try and use this game, they are in for a lot research.  80s culture wasn't monolithic either, while it's easy to see it that way through movies and television of the time.  There were many cultures, sub cultures, and counter cultures and they varied based on location.

The most recent book, Fon Phreaker's Recipe Book, is a big departure in that it focuses on a specific activity and subculture.  While the rest of Radical High is generic to the point of being too broad, Fon Phreaker's frames it's content very well in both what it is and how it's meant to be played. 

Layout and Presentation

It's designed to look like an 80s home brew game and it does that to the tee.  There's a certain nostalgia that it evokes that's pleasant for me.  The font makes it look like it was typed with an old IBM typewriter and it has a few pieces of black and white art to round it out.  If you wanted to see what indie material from the 80s looked like, this gets it down cold.

I think it's written pretty well but It's a little odd having to go between volumes to get a full picture of the rules.  In my opinion, the first four books should be combined, reorganized, reedited, and sold as version 1.1.  I also feel that the game play examples in the the core book could be refined a bit. it incorporate

Odds and Ends

High School as a setting perplexes me.  It seems an awfully niche gaming experience to dedicate and entire game line to.  Living through an alternate version of what we already go through seems like it would have a small audience.  For the most part, gamers I know want to either have high octane adventure with life at the edge or to explore the fantastic.  Radical High is a game about a low risk and mundane part of life in the US, albeit with a separation from current year by a few decades.

This leads to the second complication, throughout jr. high and high school, I never had a single year where I attend all the same classes as another student, certainly not enough classmates to make up a party.  Therefore, the party is inherently split as a natural consequence of the game setting.

The game takes a strong inclination to being played purely as a social game and it approaches this with some solid ideas.  It doesn't gamify social interactions from a players perspective but it does structure it behind the screen for the GM.  I think the over all best value of this game is helping a GM see how it incorporate social elements in RP in crafting the game play experience.  I would humbly recommend that Paradox games lean into this with any future efforts in this game line.

Nearly all RPGs frame hacking as either some VR experience or as a one roll skill check.  Fon Phreaker's Recipe Book offers an entirely new way to give that experience in a game world.  Fon phreaks were really the first hackers and this volume does a good job of giving a game play sample of how you might implement hacking in a more functional and playable way.  Use this volume if you want hidden chat rooms, network manipulation, and the use of system tools.   

Final Thoughts

Over all, Radical High is interesting.  I don't see it as a game that will appeal to most people, though.  I don't think I could put together a table to play this for a one shot, let alone a campaign.  That makes the overall value of the product difficult to judge.  I think the core system is very playable and would be a solid start for anyone wanting to do a detective game or some form of social intrigue. 

If you're looking to RP a high school game, this will do well.  Other than that, it's a bit too niche.

Thank you for your honest review of Radical High.
Can you elaborate on this paragraph?  I'm dedicated to making the game as good a resource as possible.  With more clarity, I can consider your suggestion for future modules.

Quote from: BadApple on November 03, 2023, 02:30:54 PM
The game takes a strong inclination to being played purely as a social game and it approaches this with some solid ideas.  It doesn't gamify social interactions from a players perspective but it does structure it behind the screen for the GM.  I think the over all best value of this game is helping a GM see how it incorporate social elements in RP in crafting the game play experience.  I would humbly recommend that Paradox games lean into this with any future efforts in this game line.

A few notes:
1) The next module, in development right now, heavily uses fantasy elements in Radical High.  This expands the game from "niche" to those who want to play old-school fantasy.  The basics for such fantasy gaming are in the rules already.

2) I've done layout work for something you said you would prefer in Radical High: a compendium of all these rules in one place.  After the next module's release, I'd like to crowdfund all six modules as a single book and see how well of a response it receives.

Anyone with questions about the game, post them and I'll answer.  If you are interested, they're on Big Geek Emporium: keyword Radical.  Or msg me to order physical editions of multiple titles and save on shipping.

The PCs are high schoolers, not some highly trained action professionals.  A student is going to most affect the world around them by how they talk to people and what they share.  If you were to run a mystery game, the PCs would call the cops or their parents, not have some big showdown with guns a blazing.  How an NPC is going to respond to PCs telling them things is a big aspect of how an adventure will play out.  Once the police have the full picture, the crooks are going away in handcuffs.  Now it's up to the players to figure out how to share evidence with trusted adults that will get them to follow through.  In essence, a social game. 

That's not to say that there aren't other things that PCs can do, it's just that there are things that only people with authority should be doing in the setting.

Honestly, I thought you'd be taking it down the three main tropes of kids on bikes stories of mutants, spies, and aliens before doing magic. 

Quote from: BadApple on November 05, 2023, 12:32:43 PM
The PCs are high schoolers, not some highly trained action professionals.  A student is going to most affect the world around them by how they talk to people and what they share.  If you were to run a mystery game, the PCs would call the cops or their parents, not have some big showdown with guns a blazing.  How an NPC is going to respond to PCs telling them things is a big aspect of how an adventure will play out.  Once the police have the full picture, the crooks are going away in handcuffs.  Now it's up to the players to figure out how to share evidence with trusted adults that will get them to follow through.  In essence, a social game. 

That's not to say that there aren't other things that PCs can do, it's just that there are things that only people with authority should be doing in the setting.

Honestly, I thought you'd be taking it down the three main tropes of kids on bikes stories of mutants, spies, and aliens before doing magic.

Understood.  The "kids on bikes" aspects from College-Bound Radical High are really expanded upon in the next module, "Bodacious Bestiary".  Basic rules for bikes, adventuring, aliens and creatures, and spies & saboteurs are in the College-Bound module.

I think if you were to tweak it a little and make it a game about teen investigators in the same vein as Call of Cthulhu except spies, mutants, and aliens, it would be a solid winner.  Tales for the Loop and Kids on Bikes are already games out there so there is a market.  Your own flavor comes out in making it more of a Teen in Cheap Cars rather than Kids on Bikes and you really dove into the culture and lifestyle of the time from that level.

Anyway, that's my parting though on it.

While there are already games like Kids of Bikes, Radical High can play like such a game.  But I created Radical High because there was no game where you could just play real 80s high school drama.  However, the next module, Bodacious Bestiary, which is about halfway complete, is heavily geared toward those who want to play Radical High as a game of teenage paranormal investigators/fighters.