Mycelium Soup by Rick Hershey and Lucus Palosaari is a role playing game published by Kids in the Attic.
The supplement is available as a PDF from DriveThruRPG for $5.95, as a softcover print on demand book for $12.95 or as both PDF and softcover for $12.95. The PDF is the version reviewed, although it was purchased at a reduced price as part of a special bundle, and has 50 pages with two being the front and back covers and two the front matter.
The opening page describes the forest where mushroom creatures live and have a never-ending quest for the most delicious delicacy known as Mycelium Soup. Using crude weapons, they stalk their prey and defend against rival tribes.
The Game starts by explaining what Mycelium Soup is and that gathering the ingredients is no easy task. The players are Fungifolk, mushroom humanoids of various types, who go on meat hunts for the required ingredients. Each type of Fungifolk has different abilities.
Basic Rules explains that the d6 is used to roll d66, 1d6 and 2d6. Action Rolls involve rolling 2d6, adding bonuses and if this equals or surpasses the Difficulty Score, this is a success. A table has the Difficulty Scores with how difficult each is, to be used as reference. Action Rolls are used to resolve things with the potential for physical harm and overcome opponents. After this is an example of gameplay. Characters have Health Points, and when these reach zero, they die. They can be recovered by resting.
Character Creation covers this. Name is determined by the player, level is 0 and Health Points are 10. Characters also start with 1d6 meat. Characters have ten inventory slots, four carried, six in a backpack. Strength, Agility and Wit are the three abilities, which are fairly self-explanatory. There are six different types of mushroom folk, one of which needs choosing, a skill needs choosing and any starting gear. The six types of Fungifolk are then described, each of which has different strengths. Instead of the suggested skills, there is a d66 table that can be rolled on with the GM’s approval.
Marketplace explains that items provide bonuses, each has usage dots depending on the type of item before they are destroyed and then lists weapons, armour and tools, as well as how to sell items.
Spores can be encountered in spore clusters, and there’s a 2d6 table of potential effects from such.
Hunting looks at the activities required in this as well as an optional rule for roles in a hunting party, which are used to divide up the work.
Mycelium Forest explains this is a sandbox location and some interesting areas and animal dens are described, as well as rules for creating interesting locations.
Gamemastering has tools for the GM. This starts with some general tips on GMing before moving onto Condition Tags which have game effects. Characters advance by gaining XP, and as they increase in level, they can increase an ability by 1 point, and either Health Points or a Trait by 1 point. How XP are earned and how many are needed to advance is covered.
Other Game Mechanics has an assortment of other mechanics, as well as what to do when there’s no specific rule.
Encounters has stats for various creatures with their names, Difficulty Score, description and meat yield. These are organised by Difficulty Score.
The final two pages of content are character sheets.
Mycelium Soup in Review
The PDF is in theory bookmarked, but they are garbled and not useful. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a single column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a variety of custom colour illustrations, up to full page in size. Presentation is good.
This is an odd game. It feels like it’s supposed to be a comparatively simple game aimed at children, but there’s rather more complexity in it than might be thought of such a game. It can still be used by children, but it might need to be used by older children. There is a complete game in the book, though not much in the way of tips for creating adventures; the feeling is that characters go to places, meet creatures and kill them for their meat with little more than that. Resulting in a moderately complex game with fairly simplistic adventures; the balance of these could do with being better. Mycelium Soup can be found by clicking here.
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