Hughesville High is a TTRPG from Lakeside Games published in 2013 and written by Leonard Pimentel.
The name "Hughesville" is a reference to film director John Hughes who created a barrage of teen friendly "coming of age" films in the 80's. Among them: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, and the Breakfast Club. Hughesville High looks to capture the innocence and wonder of these madcap coming of age experiences in a tabletop RPG.
Characters are made up of "Mundane Roles" and a "Unique Role." All of the Mundane Roles are the same for all characters, but they will have different ranks. Your Unique Role is just that. It's special and unique to just your character. Players will also define the qualities: drive, baggage, flaw, style, and music for their characters.
Mundane Roles are the high school stereotypes common to the John Hughes films – and life: Brain, Delinquent, Jock, Nerd, and Royalty. (Not sure if these are pulled from the famous assignment read aloud at the end of the Breakfast Club, but they sound right.) All characters will have ranks in the different Mundane Roles. I would have scored high in Nerd and Delinquent, and low in Jock and Royalty.
Unique Role is special. It's something spectacular and supernatural. This pushes Hughesville High away from Breakfast Club territory and firmly into the Weird Science arena. That's okay with me. RPGs are fantasy escapism, and players need to have something to do aside from revisiting high school. A character's unique role gives them a way to do that.
Unique Roles are things like: alien, cyborg, ghost, dragon, and vampire. There are many to choose from. They are really out there, and they start at a high rank (5 out of 6) so players are encouraged to use them. This makes Hughesville High a mix between Ferris Bueller and Percy Jackson. I might have had a hard time selling players on a purely John Hughes "Sixteen Candles" experience. This fixes that.
But, the "high school" experience isn't to be ignored. It's at the core of everything. The supernatural stuff is just a bridge to hook your players and get them into the high school halls and locker rooms. All the other aspects that define a character: drive, baggage, flaw, style, and music are about leveraging the high school experience – specifically, the high school experience as seen in a John Hughes film.
Drive is the thing that motivates your character. When a character does something that connects directly with their drive it becomes a lot easier to do. The drives are: acceptance (from your peers), hormones (you're a teenager), independence (from your parents), romance (real love), and stuff (material possessions). Everyone is driven by these, but players choose which one motivates them the most.
Baggage is a negative thing that you can roleplay to earn plot points. Plot points are a meta currency that can be used to help your character later. The game lists the following forms of baggage: bully, burnout, crush, crushed, dweeb, experienced, frenemy, inexperienced, involved parents, one of them, one of us, practice, silver spoon, stress case, uninvolved parents, and wrong side of the tracks.
Flaws are like baggage and work to earn players plot points in the same way, but flaws must be directly connected to the character's unique role. For example: kryptonite would be a "reaction" flaw for Superman. The listed flaws are: aversion, compulsion, frenzy, hunted, light sensitive, need, nocturnal, oath bound, reaction, repair, uncontrolled transformation, and vulnerability.
Style is sort of your character's description, but it is more about the impression that they make than what they actually look like. Style can encompass how the character dresses as well as how they carry or present themselves (whether intentionally or not.) The listed styles are: broke, flashy, geeky, goth, plain, preppy, punk, sporty, surfer, tough, uniform, and western.
Music might be the kind of music that your character likes or just the kind of music that suits the character on the whole. It's what's playing in the background every time your character enters a scene. The game lists several types of music to choose from. Selecting a form of music completes character creation. (Although, I might ask my players to pick a personal "theme song" specifically from the 80's.)
Character creation does a lot to establish the nature of play that Hughesville High hopes to inspire. I believe it does a great job at focusing expectations and "building a world" through the eyes of its inhabitants. As I was writing this, I found myself imagining the kinds of characters that I might like to create and what their world would look like.
In the last few pages of character creation, the rules mention "Assets" which are special items or boons that provide a character with temporary unique roles. There's also a discussion of "Ordinary Kids" which provides guidelines on playing without unique roles and flaws. In case you really do want to just play out Sixteen Candles without any of the supernatural stuff.
Dramatic action is resolved through plot roles. Players will roll 3 dice. One die is a different color and is called the "critical die" – ignore it (unless you roll triples) and add the other 2 dice. Add the rank of one of your roles to the sum of those 2 dice to reach an outcome. Higher results are better and will give the player more narrative control. Lower results are not as good and give the GM more narrative control.
Rolling triples is great, as that results in a critical success that lets the player narrate something awesome. (Triples is the only reason you're rolling 3 dice, and when you roll triples the values on the dice don't matter. All triples are a critical success.) This dice system is clean and straightforward. It seems easy to implement and easy to explain.
Combat in Hughesville is true to the spirit of John Hughes films. This isn't Quentin Tarantino territory. The consequences of combat may result in unconsciousness or kidnapping, but never death. More likely these kinds of conflicts are "scraps" that end in torn clothing or messed hair that can negatively affect a character's royalty rank, or a minor injury that might affect their jock rank. Things like that.
Hughesville concludes with GM advice. This includes explanations about how Hughesville differs from other RPGs and how to make the most of the game's focus on narrative control. There's also a bunch of information to help GMs set the game in the world of the 1980's with all kinds of useful guidelines on capturing the look and feel of the period. There's even a random adventure generator.
I love Hughesville High. It's a great example of the "rules light, strong narrative" cross section of RPGs that really hit a sweet spot for me. I think character creation is clever and accessible and works to capture the intention of the game's theme. The resolution mechanic is clean and functional, and the whole thing screams, "Bring me to the table." Hopefully, I can make that happen.
Give Hughesville High a look for yourself. It's well worth your time.
Dedicated to the memory of John Hughes who died at the age of 59 of a heart attack. RIP John.
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