3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars

3:16 is a minimalist RPG, and one that glories in violence, pure and simple. You are soldiers of the glorious 16th Brigade of the 3rd Army, sent forth into space to preemptively defend Terra against alien threats by executing them with extreme prejudice. While it’s neat and simple and fast to play, and is a lot of fun for one-shots, there’s some wonky balancing in the long-term play. Promotion is based on how much you kill, and being promoted makes you better at killing, leading to a nasty spiral of escalation between characters. For a combat heavy game, there are almost no tactics: I don’t need D&D 4e levels of microcrunch here, but the gameplay gets samey fast. The final twist (you go insane and turn back towards Earth to destroy it) is really cool, but I doubt anybody could play enough 3:16 to see it. And finally, the GM advice is kinda flat, giving you a list of planets and monsters when a way to generate combats and objectives would be more useful.

3:16 is a great one shot game, but could use a little more polish on the rules.