Crash Pandas - Eat Trash, Beat Trash
This is a play report on Crash Pandas by Grant Howitt. Every player is a different raccoon, and you're all trying to drive the same car (done through blind voting) to win a race.
The Stat Sheet
| The Label | The Details |
|---|---|
| Adventure | The Fast and the Furriest |
| System | Crash Pandas |
| GM | Jess |
| Player Count | 4 |
| My Role | Player (Dr. Doctor) |
| Human Casualties | 1 |
| Number of Sessions | 1 |
The Snapshot
- Chose a garbage truck as our vehicle
- Harassed, intimidated, and vandalized the competition
- Released the trash from our truck in a fiery blaze
- Killed a hot dog man
- Won the race
The System
Crash Pandas is a two to three page rule system where each player is a raccoon, driving a vehicle and participating in drag racing. Each raccoon can hold two items (one for each hand) and can roll on a table of 20 items. It's easy to pick up (pun intended) and hilarious to play. You can generate a map as players progress through the race or have one premade with various obstacles. It's entirely up to you, and it's fun.
The Party
Bruno Scars – Lounge singer with many gambling debts, lives in a dumpster behind the nicest hotel in the city.
Fuzzy Gunner – Undercover cop, found in a dumpster and raised by police force. Tryna see if the vibes are whack at this street racing thing. Adopted by the chief of police and given a dog bed to sleep in.
Dr. Doctor – A wizened raccoon that has spent years understanding the occult that is humanity (think Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz from Nosferatu).
Sprocket Scrapcoon – Din diesel was a tree wrapped around an old engine in Vin Diesel’s backyard. It was cut down and taken away. Now, Sprocket is following the voice to fulfill his destiny of becoming one with an engine.
The Brief
We’re all in the garbage truck. To prep for the race, the gang vandalizes a couple of the vehicles. No one noticed us sabotaging the cars, because they were listening to some dumb human.
Bang! The race starts. We don’t hit anything! Dr. Doctor beats his lead pipe against the door and intimidates the other racers. We juke, we jive, and Dr. Doctor heaves trash over the back end while yelling “FOR HUMANITY”, causing the orange mustang to spazz out. We run the blue car off the road and into a fire hydrant by using 2 cool points. We make a successful right turn and do a sick ass donut to taunt the other racers. As we donut, Dr. Doctor intimidates the ice cream truck after going all “WITNESS ME!!” mad max on them.
We hit the curb in front of the pizza shop and fuck up a tire. Tilted, we are now careening towards a hot dog man and his cart. Apparently, this hot dog man doesn’t have a permit, and the police hate him. So we speed up. The hot dog man and the cart crash through a window. We fix the tire, reverse in this bitch, and then 1 cool point later, we're fleeing the scene of the crime.
Fuzzy is doing mass surveillance checks to make sure we’re safe and not hitting any obstacles. Bruno Scars hands off the driving to Sprocket, so he can perform a concert of his #1 hit “Show me that trash!!” Sprocket splashes paint on the side of the vehicle to boost our speed. We are screaming into this intersection at a respectable speed.
We take a sick turn behind a Chinese restaurant down a narrow alley. The ice cream truck barely follows. We let all the trash out the back. It’s on fire. The ice cream truck is unphased. We throw one last ditch effort. Literally. We chuck a spare tire at them, and they crash. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. We win the $10k grand prize, because we are cool as hell critters.
The Takeaways
Pros
- Comedic and hilarious to play
- Blind voting for driving a vehicle works (never know what will happen)
- Great with teens!
Cons
- Can't see much replayability
- Maybe too rules lite?
- Item table should be d100, not d20