So. This is a blog that is intended to be about monster taming in ttrpgs.

You know--Pokemon-esques, original monster taming properties, SRDs and how one could use them to make such a game. . . that kind of thing.

I had outlined this very personal post about my love of both of these topics, and how special it is to me to focus on the design elements of both, and see how the themes and mechanics combine to tell a variety of fun, beautiful, memorable stories.

Maybe I'll publish that some day. But that post has not been paid for by John Taylor of Geekify.

Neither has this one, but the Neopets Beta Playtest document has sparked so much conversation online that even though it is only tangentially related to monster taming, it feels irresponsible to not start this blog by talking about it.

I was one of the early 00s Neopets kids. I have extremely fond memories of playing the game. A lot of my very first monster taming ttrpg creatures were fully plagiarized from Neopets, because I loved the designs so much (I was thirteen. calm down). So last year, when the kickstarter for the official Neopets tabletop rpg hit our screens, it was only the power of staggering poverty that kept me from backing it. Even then, as I was actively talking myself down from terrible financial decisions, I knew the game would likely be a disappointment. Very little was shared about how the game would actually work--it was mostly nostalgia bait, with a lot of grandiose promises about all that players would be able to do in the game. Yet still--there was a yearning inside me to spend money on this suspicious endeavor, partially because I am not immune to nostalgia and partially because the idea of a Neopets ttrpg is so captivating.

Silly though it is, Neopets is a massive universe, with sprawling lore and a devoted fanbase that has persisted across decades, company exchanges, and a genuinely astonishing number of dramatic internet events. Cute lil guys who can also be adventurous lil guys? Pets that can have pets of their own? A variety of items and activities created with joy and whimsy and childlike silliness? Sign me the fuck up. If someone created a tabletop experience that captured even a fraction of the diversity, creativity, and youthful joy promised by the Neopets world, I'd be incredibly on board!

The problem, of course, is that such an experience is not what is being created. This weekend, the beta test rules for the Neopets TTRPG were made public. The comments were left on, which has resulted in an absolute field day for ttrpg editors, designers, and other creatives in the space. It has been roasted for numerous reasons--overly complex dice mechanics, wildly inconsistent item economy, and themes that seem to be significantly more mature than those of the Neopets franchise itself.

I had an absolute blast scrolling through Bluesky yesterday, feasting my eyes on as much of this unfolding dumpster fire as I was able. I would hardly deprive anyone of such an experience, so I highly recommend looking through the feeds of Will Jobst, Thursday Garreau, and Farmer Gadda, whose reactions and contributions have been succinct, informative, and hilarious. I'm not going to try to say anything that they've already said, because they said it better and funnier. Instead, I'm going to try and think about what I would want in a Neopets TTRPG--what final form of such a product would be satisfying for me, a nostalgic millennial and tireless ttrpg nerd.

The scope of the project is, of course, the first problem. There are 56 Neopet species, and that's before you get into petpets (don't even get me started on petpetpets). It's going to be a challenge to make each pet type feel distinct and interesting to play. The world of Neopets touches on almost every genre in children's fiction--there's a faerie land, a spooky forest, a pirate island, a moon colony, and a secret world made entirely of gelatin. Some of the daily activities in Neopia would be essential to making the game "feel" like Neopets, but too many would subject the player to unnecessary tedium. You want to be able to have some of the spooky, weird, and dark themes that do exist in Neopia, without devoting an entire section of the rules to negotiating sexual content in a game about puffballs that have duck feet.

You DO want to have some sort of combat--battling has a long history in the game, even though it isn't the sole focus. You also want to have a host of other ways to interact with the game mechanics. Neopets has crafting, riddles, magic, and a lot of randomness that could make a ttrpg world incredibly fun! How does one incorporate all of these disparate elements into a single game that is going to satisfy everybody at the table?

The short answer is, one doesn't--no one game does everything well. I do think, though, that there are plenty of starting points that would have made way more sense than the 5e reskin that appears to be the trajectory of the existing game.

I think that a Firebrands or Stewpot hack would be an incredible beginning to a game set in Neopia. Minigames are a huge part of the Neopets experience, so why not make the rpg itself a series of minigames? Plenty of games in this format have combat as well as social encounters, and there's lots of room for weirdness and whimsy.

Similarly, I think a game like Wanderhome has a lot of potential as a starting point. It's already about animals, it already includes the whimsy and the magic. It even has rules built-in for creating different settings that can influence the party in unique and powerful ways!

These games don't rely as heavily on RNG as more traditional RPG fare, which can be strange or off-putting to newcomers to the tabletop. If you must start with a more conventional system, I think that beginning with a much more stripped-down d20 or d6 system would be much more approachable and accomplish a great deal of what the game is ostensibly setting out to do. If the step-up and step-down dice mechanics that currently exist in the playtest document are well-loved, why not start with a ruleset that already incorporates these smoothly, like Cortex Prime or Shift?

I genuinely think that's what is so frustrating to me about the entire Neopets playtest situation. The project has clearly been run by people who do not know the first thing about tabletop rpg design, and it is poorer as a result. It's also clear from the sheer volume of comments that there are a lot of ttrpg enthusiasts who are invested in the project and want to see it succeed! Rather than crowdsourcing the design from the internet, Gamify could have brought on a team of people who understand the landscape of this hobby. They would have begun from a place of knowledge and been able to build on the successes that already exist in the community, rather than reinventing the wheel in the most unnecessarily complex ways possible.

The idea of the Neopets game is always going to outshine any physical product that hits tables. That's just how nostalgia works. Inevitably, somebody--several somebodies, in fact--would be disappointed with the result of this project. But it could be better. It could be fun. It could be interesting and unique and in conversation with all of the wild, wonderful creativity that exists in the ttrpg space. I'm excited for all of the weird indie games that will emerge as a protest to the Neopets ttrpg, but I do grieve a bit the use of my millennial nostalgia to create yet another bizarre, ill-fitting 5e retool, especially when the possibilities are so vast.

We will see in the days ahead if the makers of the Neopets ttrpg heed the advice of the professionals flooding their google doc comments. I still yearn for it to be something fun. My more grounded hope, though, is just that it becomes something less than objectively terrible--an average, if unsatisfying, experience for the scores of Neopians who want to roll some dice and have an adventure.