Introduction

The name's Davenport. I review games.

So the other day I'm readin' the morning paper and enjoyin' my coffee... when in walks a Space Nazi.

I hate Space Nazis.

"Achtung!" he says. "I am Kommandant Hans Gelber. You are hereby ordered to review Tales from the Floating Vagabond Second Edition, und you vill like it!"

"Tales 2nd edition? Well, whaddaya know!" I says, surprise gettin' the better of me. "Got to play that back in the day, when my buddy Lee Garvin was still with us and workin' on it. Great multi-genre comedy game. Figured it would never see the light o' day after he moved on to the Big Bar in the Sky."

The Space Kraut rolls his eyes. "Yes, yes, all very moving, I am sure... Now! You vill note zat zere are new rules for powers, critical successes und fumbles, und inzanity!"

"Yeah, that's all great stuff, but... I gotta ask, what's your angle? Why're you giving me this review copy?"

"Ha!" he snorts. "It iz all part of my master plan! Ven verd gets out about zis, vould-be heroes vill be flocking to ze Floating Vagabond. Und zen, vit zem all in vun place? I vill destroy zem all!"

He cackles like a loon. Onna counta he's a loon.

"Yeah, that's really great," I says. "Say... does Tales still have all those crazy species to play?"

"Bah!" he says, all disgusted-like. "Yes, zere are still ze inferior races..."

So I punch him.

"Ach!!" he says. "You punched me!!"

"Yep," I says. "Bet you did Nazi that comin'."

Substance

Setting

Tales from the Floating Vagabond 2nd Edition (hereafter TF2V) takes place in a decidedly silly multiverse where anything goes, as long as it's at least somewhat silly.

The eponymous dive bar, the Floating Vagabond, sits on an asteroid in a pocket dimension at the crossroads of everywhere with a dimensional portal as a front door that abducts poor drunkards just trying to enter their local pubs, leaving them stranded amongst the drunken dregs of the multiverse.

Fortunately for the proprietor, Hawk "Spit" Luger, this leaves newcomers in dire need of a drink.

Arithon Kinkade, an Indiana Jones lookalike and Spit's silent partner, runs an adventurer-for-hire business out of the Vagabond, so hapless newcomers to the bar needn't lack for anything interesting to do for long.

Oh, and there are Space Nazis.

Much of the setting's insanity comes up in conjunction with the rules, but the rulebook does include certain specific setting elements. While the book is rather stingy in terms of locations, covering only the Floating Vagabond itself and arch-rival bar the Crane's Nest, it does feature writeups of some interesting NPCs, stats for equipment from primitive to high-tech, organizations and corporations, and unions.

I get quite a kick out of that last one. Unions are no laughing matter in this setting. (Well, they are, but you know what I mean.) So long as a PC meets the qualifications and pays his dues, he can be a member of the union of his choice. Membership in each union has a Major Effect and a Minor Effect. For example, if you happen to be a member of the Bartender's Ancient Brotherhood (BartAB), you gain the Major Effect that you cannot be killed, or even knocked out, while you're on duty -- and "on duty" can simply mean tossing a buddy a cold one in the middle of combat. The Minor Effect is that if anyone spills a drink or drops a glass, you can declare that anyone unconscious wakes up.

I should mention that the book also includes drink menus from the Floating Vagabond and the Crane's Nest, as well as the Good Stuff: gonzo beverages with results way beyond mere intoxication, such as the Vagabond's signature drink, the Singularity.

(As an aside, one of my all-time favorite gags from first edition adventures was when a distraught Bug-Eyed Monster bellied up to the bar, ordered a Singularity, and asked for a double.)

One complaint: no bestiary. As anyone who's been reading my reviews knows, I love a good bestiary, and TF2V doesn't have one, unless you count the aforementioned stats for major NPCs.

Basically, it's just a whacked-out Looney Tune of a multiverse where the Laws of Physics and of Nature are minor inconveniences, at best.

Sample Adventure

The book includes a very small sample adventure that introduces characters to the Floating Vagabond and sends them off on a quick jaunt to nab a MacGuffin. It's nothing to write home about, but it does offer the chance for some humorous interactions and combat.

System

Character Creation

TF2V characters have the following stats, which range from 0-6 for normal humans, 0 being basically crippled:

• Strength
• Nimbleness
• Aim
• Smarts
• Cool
• Common Sense
• Luck
• Cheese

I like the face that Nimbleness and Aim are two separate stats here, as even in a comedy game, not every gymnast is going to be a crack shot.

Most of these stats are pretty self-explanatory, aside from Cheese. Cheese covers any paranormal powers that the character may have. Lacking such powers, this stat would be zero.

Then it's time to calculate derived stats:

• Oops! Points (hit points): Strength + Luck + 10
• Damage Bonus: (Strength/2 - 1)
• Speed: Nimbleness +2
• Shtick Score: Cool x 2

TF2V allows for characters from any manner of setting, so long as the society is advanced enough to support some manner of tavern.

It follows that PCs may be members of many different races/species. Some of these races -- Elves, for example -- simply represent a common type of being encountered throughout the multiverse that may go by many different names.

Sample species include:

• Big-Head Alien
• Bug-Eyed Monster
• Canoid (dog-person)
• Disgustingly Cute Furry Thing
• Dwarf
• Elf
• Feloid (cat-person)
• Human
• Monkey
• Orc
• Pixie
• Reptoid (lizard-person)
• Rhinoid (rhinoceros-person)
• Robot
• Slime-Dripping Alien
• Weaseloid (weasel-person)

Each species includes attribute adjustments and skill category bonuses and penalties, along with any unusual natural abilities like armor or wings. If this selection isn't enough for you, the section also includes very simple rules to create more species.

To speed up character creation, the section includes a list of ready-made stereotypical characters for use by players who can't be bothered with the details:

• Knight in Shining Armor
• Hard-as-Nails Gunslinger
• Bug-Eyed Clone Soldier
• Ninja-Pirate-Monkey
• Cybergeek
• Time Police Officer
• Disgustingly Cute Ship's Mascot
• Grumpy Old Dwarf
• Mad Scientist
• Ninja
• Corporate Security Weasel
• Tough Guy
• Super Speedster
• Teenage Monster Hunter
• Tragically Hip Bloodsucker

Task Resolution

Every skill is linked to a stat and has a level from 1-6, with levels 5 and 6 offering bonus abilities.

Skills, by the way, range from the standard (e.g., Acrobatics and Dodge) to the standard with an amusing name (e.g., Blow Things Up and Swing Nasty Pointy Thing) to the absolutely absurd (e.g., Belching for Effect and Raise Children to be Responsible Adults Instead of Game Designers). Skills also have variable costs based upon their overall usefulness.

Task resolution involves trying to roll under the stat + skill, with difficulty being simulated by increasing die sizes that start at d4 and work their way up to d100, including the elusive d30 along the way. Critical successes ("Chugs") occur on a roll of one and critical failures ("Spills") occur on a roll of the highest number on the die. While nice and simple, this does mean that the easier the task, the more likely you are to Chug or Spill. Even for a comedy game, that's fairly counterintuitive. Still, task resolution produces clear results with minimal math -- always a good thing in my book.

Level of task difficulty is likewise transparent, taking the form of either increasing ("Bumps") or decreasing ("Slides") the die type used for the attempt.

Combat

TF2V breaks combat down into 5-second rounds with actions taken in order of Nimbleness. Melee attacks have a flat difficulty of 1d10, while ranged attacks have difficulty based on range. The target can only proactively avoid by use of the Dodge skill, which gives the attack roll a Bump for each level of skill and can be used once per round. Ranged attacks unsurprisingly use the Aim skill, while Melee attacks may use Strength (with Hurt People, a.k.a. brawling, and Swing Nasty Pointy Thing), in which case you get your Strength-based damage bonus, or Nimbleness (with Hurt People Really Badly, a.k.a. martial arts, and Swing Nasty Pointy Thing with Panache, a.k.a. fencing/swashbuckling), in which case you don't get the Strength bonus but may get extra attacks. I like how that allows for different fighting styles.

Damage, like difficulty levels, is based on die types, and armor gives incoming damage dice a Slide down to a minimum of 1d4. That's a big of a problem, as it happens. Why? Well, because armor becomes useless against the weakest possible attacks. If a character is heavily armored enough, it won't matter if he's punched by the Hulk or Aunt May -- the attack will still do a minimum of 1d4 damage. The system already allows for called shots that ignore armor, so I think I'd let armor Slide damage down to zero and require a called shot if you want to take out Panzerman with a toothpick.

I should mention that the game includes combat rules specific to bar brawls, in which nobody dies and actual weapons aren't allowed, but everything including the kitchen sink is ripe for the bashing.

But even in "real" combat, death is not a foregone conclusion. For one thing, if a single attack exceeds the target's Strength, the victim must make a 1d10 Strength roll to stay conscious. For another, losing all of one's Oops! points isn't an automatic death sentence; rather, the victim must make a Luck test, the difficulty of which is determined by how far gone the victim is. If the test succeeds, the victim is merely unconscious (and will, unfortunately, be a tad touched in the head). Best of all, the player can reroll the death test once if the character is inebriated.

Speaking of being touched in the head, the game includes a nifty new insanity mechanic. Depending upon the source of the potential madness, the PC must pass a d20 Common Sense Test, a d10 Cool Test, or both. Fail, and you pick up a level of psychosis, which manifests as a Bump to all tasks of a given skill group and (hopefully) roleplaying the nature of the psychosis.

Drinking

The game does, of course, include rules for drinking and getting drunk.

Every alcoholic beverage has a numerical intoxicant factor. Drink a total intoxicant factor equal to your Strength score or more in the space of one hour, and you're drunk -- it's just a matter of how drunk. If you fail a 1d10 Strength roll, you drop two levels on the Inebriation table. Succeed, and you just drop one level. Each level increases both the hourly difficulty of not either passing out or puking and the number of Drunk Dice you get.

What are Drunk Dice, you ask? They're d6s that you can roll along with any skill roll. Roll a 1-5, and the score on the main die drops by 1. If even one 6 comes up, however, it counts as +1 on the initial roll (as do any additional 6s), and the roll is an automatic Spill. I really like this goofy, whimsical way of dealing with drunkenness. (Well, in the context of a TTRPG, anyway.) The only problem I see is making the spending of Drunk Dice optional. It seems odd, even in the game's silly context, to be able to choose how much intoxication affects any given action.

Cheese

TF2V refers to the special powers characters can have as "Cheese," and characters can spend as may points on Cheese as they have points in the Cheese Stat. These abilities may be flavored as superpowers, magic, psionics, cybernetics, weird tech, or what have you. Much of that flavoring comes from Stink -- power drawbacks with point values that must equal the total number of points spent on Cheese. For example, if the character is a wizard of some sort, their Cheese power might be tied to an item like a magic wand, or the power might have to be activated with a roll using the Use Cheese skill.

And speaking of the Use Cheese skill, it has several uses aside from just activating a power that requires it. It can also be used to "Slice" the Cheese (i.e., use a power stunt), target multiple individuals, or resist power-affecting attacks. That being the case, even a character with no activation requirements may want to purchase the Use Cheese skill. However, the Use Cheese skill comes with a drawback of its own: The first time that it's used, the difficulty is 1d4. With each subsequent use, the difficulty increases one die type until the character fails the roll, at which point the die resets to 1d4. Furthermore, the power backfires in some manner ("Cheese Dip") -- the worse the roll, the worse the backfire. (Note that this means that a character who never uses Use Cheese can use his power indefinitely with no issues.)

Shticks

Here's where TF2V really shines.

Every character gets one Shtick: a ridiculous ability to ignore the Laws (or, rather, Suggestions) of Physics. Each ability has one Major Effect (which requires the use of the Shtick Score stat), one Minor Effect (that is always "on"), one Downside, and a result that happens on a failed use of the Schtick Score.

Take the Bay Effect, for example. Named for action director Michael Bay, the Major Effect grants total immunity from an explosion... so long as you're slowly walking away from it like a badass. The Minor Effect lets you put an entire scene (except yourself)  into "slo-mo," giving you twice as many actions. The Drawback is that any conveyance you use (including beasts) have a higher-than-normal chance of exploding in a massive fireball, and the Failure condition means that the explosion affects you after all.

Other favorites of mine:

• The Elfman Effect: You have background music playing at all times that's appropriate to the current situation.


• The Harpo Effect: You can pull any item from out of your trench coat, so long as someone else asks if anyone has such an item. ("Hey, does anyone have the antivenom for the bite of a Venusian Death Goat?")


• The Escher Effect: You can blithely ignore the Suggestions of Physics altogether.


• The Newton Effect: Sort of an "anti-shtick," you can enforce the Suggestions of Physics as you understand them. ("Hey, Mongo knows big metal bird no can fly!" *crash*)

Shticks have their own Dice Track that works in the same way as the one for Cheese Powers, meaning that Major Effects get more difficult every time you use them until you finally fail, while you can use Minor Effects with impunity except as otherwise noted.

Style

This full-color 148-page rulebook boasts some exceedingly silly cartoonish artwork, which is only right and proper. None of it really blew me away, but then, were you really expecting Van Gogh from a book about a space bar?

The writing deftly threads the needle between being funny and being informative. I got plenty of good chuckles from the text without ever having to go digging for the actual rules and setting info.

Regrettably, the book needs a good proofreader. Among the issues I discovered were inconsistencies between weapon damage listings and NPC skill levels that are often incorrect or even missing altogether. I have it on good authority that this will be addressed prior to the print version becoming available.

Like all good TTRPG rulebooks, ridiculous or otherwise, TF2V features a solid index.

Conclusion

I'm proud to have called Lee Garvin a friend. We frequently chatted on Facebook, I hosted him for Q&As at Randomworlds, and I got to hang out with him at a couple of GenCons, at one of which he ran an early version of Tales from the Floating Vagabond 2e. In the years since his passing, I'd come to believe that his work was lost forever. Imagine my surprise when I learned that it had gone up for sale at DriveThruRPG late last year!

I'm happy to report that the folks who picked up Lee's torch did him proud. No, the game's not perfect. Yes, there are some rough edges for now. That's to be expected when you're working from scattered notes written by someone you can't consult. The point is that this edition is a big improvement over the already-entertaining first edition, particularly regarding the inclusion of Cheese powers. And the team behind it never forgot that it wasn't enough just to be funny -- they had to have an entertaining game. And they do.

I give TF2V 2e a solid seven out of ten fedoras. It would be higher if the book were cleaned up a bit (which it will be) and if it had a bit more content (supplements are on the way). The GMshoe says check out the Floating Vagabond, and have a cold one on me.