10 TTRPGs for morphing into your inner Power Ranger

1 week ago 5

Power Rangers has been fueling fantasies of Saturday morning, multicolored, tokusatsu action for over thirty years now. It’s impossible to not have felt the touch of the morphin’ time, whether its been you or some child in your life who has fallen down the rabbit hole. For some, Power Rangers isn’t enough, and maybe you’ve gone further, checking out its origins in Super Sentai or its older brother series Kamen Rider.

While we’re still receiving Power Rangers stuff with no sign of stopping (there’s still toys on shelves and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind is just now hitting controllers), there isn’t, currently, any new shows on the horizon. Mercifully, there are a lot of Power Rangers fans, and more broadly tokusatsu fans, who have what we all need. Here’s some games for you, or someone you love, to manifest those Saturday morning, multicolored, tokusatsu action fantasies.

10. Power Rangers Roleplaying Game (Renegade Game Studios)

It only feels right to start this list with the most official Power Rangers TTRPG on the market. Renegade has been publishing a whole ton of products for Power Rangers for Hasbro over the last few years. There’s a significant amount of extra sourcebooks for different ranger teams, so you can probably just roleplay your favorite team. But, there’s more than enough available to let you build your own team from scratch. Renegade’s Essence20 System powers this game (as it does their GI Joe, My Little Pony, and Transformers RPGs), so folks making a leap from Dungeons & Dragons will be in fairly familiar waters here.

9. Teens with Attitude (David Brunell-Brutman)

To say that Teens with Attitude is a “Power Rangers” game is, admittedly, a little misleading. No, this game takes its inspiration widely. Teens with Attitude seeks to give you all the tools you’ll need to emulate the heroes of 90s children’s television, especially Power Rangers, Animorphs, and Captain Planet. The game utilizes the Powered by the Apocalypse system to bring out the tropes and archetypes of that era of television, meaning all you’ll need is two six-sided dice, a love for campy action, and the image in your mind of your ideal 90s children’s protagonist.

8. Lumen Ryder Core (Samuel Mui)

Lumen Ryder Core skews purposefully more towards Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, in terms of what it is trying to bring to life. Still, at its center, the game wants you to loudly declare your transformations, battle monsters and their mooks, and save the world. This game makes use of the Illuminated by Lumen system, so it lives on fast-paced action, quick throws of the dice, and managing resources for even bigger abilities. All wrapped in the unique skin of a bunch of heroes trying to solve mysteries and understand themselves. The real joy is digging your claws into the many abilities, boons, and drawbacks that make up your different forms and inventing the most chaotic synergies you can muster. You can even have your own mooks to fight monster mooks!

7. Rover Royale (Avagarde)

Sometimes what you need to build your perfect Power Ranger story is some episode structure. Rover Royale builds itself around simplicity with mechanics (you’re mostly just rolling 1d6 + your stat) and the episodic structure you’ve come to expect from Power Rangers and shows like it. Rover Royale asks you to look at your team’s story beyond just the single battles against one evil monster, out to the bigger season arc. Relying on the tried-and-true framework that every episode of these shows works under, you’re gonna be building the full story of a season of your team’s efforts to curb evil.

6. Convictor Drive: Armored by Grief (LionWing Publishing)

Originally published in Japan and eventually translated, Convictor Drive: Armored by Grief presents a relatively more grounded take on the genre, inspired primarily by Kamen Rider. You play as wielders of Convictors, special devices that transform you into an armored hero. As the tragic guardians of a prototype utopia city, you’ll serve as investigators of strange occurrences and defenders against those who would misuse experimental technology for their own purposes. Convictor Drive: Armored by Grief leans very deep into the individual parts and gadgets that make up your special exo-suit. This means you’ll be able to mod out every limb for battle, all while dealing with the emotional scars your characters need to even use them.

5. Savage Tokusatsu (BPB Games)

Savage Tokusatsu is built out of the hefty, yet flexible, bones of Savage World. The game promises, and delivers, the simple premise that it is about fighting monsters and then getting in your mech and fighting an even bigger monster. Savage Tokusatsu is robust with options and advantages for creating your perfect tokusatsu hero and team. True to the name, it doesn’t just just lean in towards any one tokusatsu property. The ruleset is flexible enough that you can emulate just about any series you want to. If this were an Ultraman list, this game would make the crossover.

4. Queerz! (Son of Oak Game Studio)

Based on the manga of the same name, Queerz! brings to life sentai hero action with an LGBTQ flair. The game is built entirely out of a notably different game in City of Mist, but to extremely wondrous effect. Using the same move and tag system, Queerz! creates an incredibly expressive and evocative sense of design. It is hard, at times, to believe that it and City of Mist are the same bones, but it is very effective in its aesthetic. It is also very queer, and very proudly so, thank heavens. The game offers you many abilities, but above all the promise that you can fight, not just monsters, but ignorance, with your own empathy and joy.

3. Super Sentinels Neo (Reizor)

There is a simplicity that I feel you really cannot beat with something like Super Sentinels Neo. The game itself has a minimalist presentation, and its mechanics are exceedingly simple. It’s the perfect kind of game to teach a group of seasoned roleplayers in a few minutes so you can play something else that evening. You can also feel the love of the genre dripping in every minimal element, whether its the special abilities each color gets or the special hazards for the unique fighting locations. But you should consider this game because it is an open book about asking its players to create new things. Make new items and abilities for your Sentinels! Invent new strange beasts with your own table’s rules for the battles! When your Sentinels finally face down Emperor Z, make it unique for your group.

2. Powered by Cereal (bismuth)

Powered by Cereal gives me such a strange feeling, and I can’t explain why. It’s like being eight years old again and seeing Power Rangers Dino Thunder for the first time, with my math homework due the following Monday. The game absolutely drips with this Saturday Morning Cartoon, kid-juiced-up-on sugar energy. Even its system is simple, but incredibly unique, asking you to roll a bunch of d6s and count how many different numbers you roll, as opposed to highest or lowest. There’s an understanding when playing Powered by Cereal that part of the Power Rangers fantasy is everything around the team, the setting, the home town you’re defending, your series, what makes your team or show different from the rest in your franchise. It’s a great game to build the world around your Power Ranger fantasy, then play in the new sandbox you’ve built.

1. Henshin! / Rider Konchu (Cave of Monsters Games)

If we’re talking about RPGs that let you live out the ultimate Power Rangers dream, it feels only right to talk about Henshin! and its hack Rider Konchu. Henshin! builds itself out of the Belonging Outside Belonging system, meaning that the primary method of resolution is earning and spending tokens. However, beyond that, it’s purely roleplaying. In the simplest degree, the game is about you and your friends describing in detail the incredible stunts, wild action, deep melodrama, major downfalls, and ultimate victories of your own Ranger team. Henshin! has received a handful of expansions over the years, adding on new options for players to build characters with. From rebel Green Rangers to Doggie Kruger, genius Blue Rangers to Alpha-5, Evil-Rangers-turned-good and Evil-Monsters-turned-good, even unlikely Orange Rangers to a rogue Megazord itself, Henshin! has provided every possible combination of team members to bring the dream to life. For those experimenting with other toku shows, Rider Konchu hacks Henshin! into a Kamen Rider game straight out of the modern era. But don’t worry about them being mutually exclusive, because you can even play a guest starring Rider using one of Henshin!‘s playbooks.

Your Saturday morning action show dreams are alive and well. They’re just waiting for you to morph up.

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