DISCLAIMER
I’ve played enough that I figured I’d write a short review of it, but I’ve not read the book.
I’ve played a few games in a few settings, each as one shots, or multi session adventures. I’ve not played a full campaign. The PCs were furries, but you could run it as humans easily. The magical realm was kept to a minimum, or I managed to avoid most of it.
UNVARIFIED
Having not read the book, there are limits to my knowledge.
Supposedly the book is a giant piss take of Games Workshop. Aka. The Warhammer company. Other than the name abbreviating to GW, I don’t know what the book does to mock GW specifically
I also haven’t seen the acclaimed damage system in action much. Basically, each attribute dictates how much damage you can take of that type. And should you take damage beyond that you get some kind of condition. I’ve generally had good enough rolls (or tactics) to not fall below the threshold.
CHARACTER CREATION
Character creation is straight forward. You have 4 attributes. Str, dex, int, and cha. Though they’re given odd names like “Force” and “Beauty”. I didn’t get the joke until someone pointed out that the attributes spell “FLAB”. Dumb, but given the internet's nostalgia for FASERIP, I don’t think it’s too bad.
Skills and flaws I’m not a fan of. The player makes up three of each. Some of the examples make no sense. Close quarters is a skill, and also a flaw. I’m guessing that means good at fighting or bad at fighting.
The player making up skills and flaws is the issue for me because they can be all over the place, from crippling like “deaf” or “blind” to something as mild as “estranged from sister”, all are all given the same weight. How much of that is RAW or just a DM thing I can’t say. It hasn’t been a real issue because most players are making reasonable characters instead of min-maxing.
Natural abilities like flight, scales, etc. each take an inventory slot. Though this isn’t the kind of game where you’re carrying a bunch of stuff. It also seems it would be trivial to ignore if you wanted to play this as a human game, or retheme it as cybernetics.
GAMEPLAY
It uses what I think are “fudge and fate” dice? D6s with a + side, a - side, and a blank side on them. You roll your attribute rating (usually 1-3). If you roll a +, you pass. With advantage - also counts as a success.
Combat reminds me of Descent. You roll attack dice, enemy rolls defense dice, successes cancel each other out.
The attributes have weapons associated. Force for most melee, agility for knives and light ranged, learning for spells. But beauty has some weapons too. I’ve only seen it a couple of times, but it appears to be for exotic weapons? Not revolutionary, but it’s nice the face gets weapon options.
So far, there hasn’t been much tactical depth. Our DM uses the same generic 2x3 grid for all combat. There’s no measuring. Your character moves between grid spaces, or moves you into melee within a space, though that last part is inconsistent.
I don’t know if having the same board will make combat feel samey long term, but for a game this light it’s functional. I’d like more options though. Even something simple like advantage on defense rolls when in cover or line of slight blocks between squares would give a reason to move around.
I qualify all this because even in d20 systems, this DM never made the most engaging combats and often has open fields or large empty rooms where PCs and monsters trade blows. So I can’t tell if the static, simplistic combat is a result of the system or the DM.
I haven’t had a chance to play with spells yet, so this is speculation, but I’m guessing they work like natural abilities.
FETISH CONTENT
I’m guessing that you really want to know all the degeneracy that happens at the table. Well, it’s been fairly mild. Furries are standard. Instead of listing species you can pick, you choose anything then pick abilities they would have from a list. Like claws, natural armour, or flight.
The fat stuff was either edited out, is DM facing, or quite mild. I want to say there was some consumable that gave you a benefit at the cost of making you fat, but that’s really about it. The character stats spelling out FLAB counts I guess, but I didn’t notice that until it was pointed out after the fact.
Supposedly the game rates enemies from “nibble” to “buffet”, but that’s DM facing stuff I didn’t encounter.
CONCLUSION
My gut tells me this game is a 5/10. Mediocre. Functional, but unremarkable. But the more I think about it rationally, the more I think it has the potential to be my rules lite game of choice.
While Gorge World lacks the depth of something like Savage Worlds, Starfinder, or DnD, it also doesn’t need a degree in autism and 200 page rule book of homework to start. If taken as a rules lite game for one-shots, it’s a step up in crunch from Tiny d6.
I’m tempted to compare it to BESM, but I’ve not read that book in years. It’s the same general concept. A simplified stat block, and some skills and flaws. Though BESM character creation seems to be more math heavy, and thus require a bit of homework on the part of the player.
Gorge World is surprisingly lean and well thought out, which has made it difficult to make jokes about fat, bloat, or rules being fuzzy. I guess I could speculate how the game got so big? The main things holding it back are the theme and the special dice. But then the theme is likely the only reason people gave this game a look in the first place.
