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by sdonohue

Timmy & Sally's Imaginary Friends is an entry in the 2011 RPG Geek 24 Hour RPGs. It was written by Ugavine (aka Ugavine} who also did all the artwork and editing.

Presentation
The game is presented in a 4 page PDF document. The document is well-formatted and edited. The artwork is childlike in most spots and fits the theme of the game. The layout is clean and there is a lot of whitespace; it is mostly done as a single column per page.

Theme
The premise of the game is that the characters are the imaginary friends of Timmy & Sally, 7 year old twins who live with their aunt and have very active imaginations. The GM plays Timmy & Sally, or at least presents situations they've gotten themselves into, and the players are the imaginary friends who help them get out of trouble. For Timmy and Sally, everything is about imagination.

Characters
There really isn't any character creation. The players declare themselves to be some type of creature appropriate to be an imaginary friend and the game is ready to start; the friends can be completely imaginary, like a faerie, or they could be a toy which can animate when needed.

System
The system is very simple. When the imaginary friends do things, it becomes a challenge. Challenges are resolved with high-low card pulls using a complete deck of cards. The GM turns over a card and the player predicts whether the next card will be higher or lower. It they're right, they succeed, if they're wrong, they fail. If they match exactly on the first draw, then it's a fumble and something bad happens. If the player succeeds, they can push their luck and try to guess another card right and get a better result and if that happens, they can push one more time for an excellent result. There are two special rules: if the player's card is a joker, he keeps it and turns over another card. The Joker can later be used to get another draw on a failure. If a Queen is drawn, then every player must make a hide check or else Timmy and Sally have to go eat dinner (or something else) before the game continues.

Playing the Game
A lot of the work falls on the GM who must play Timmy, Sally, and the problems they confront. The players can try to solve those problems in any open-ended way they want; it is a story-telling game with very few rules and no stats. If the character is a fairy, the exact powers of the fairy are up to the gm and the players -- there aren't stats or anything like stat-blocks.

It's important that the players always be good and nice friends to Timmy and Sally. If they do something that hurts their feelings, they can be sent away for either a few minutes or forever, forcing that player to create a new character.

Extras
The game includes three scenario ideas which may include special rules for handling certain cards.

Evaluation
First, I want to say that I think it would be unfair to judge a game made and designed by a single person in a single day using the same standards I'd apply to a game with designers, editors, artists, and weeks, months or even years of design and playtesting, so I'm not going to do that.

I like the premise of the game and I think it strikes a nice balance between pure storytelling and having a system. The rules also work; by forcing the players to be nice to Timmy and Sally, it makes the game feel more childlike.

I do think the explanation of card draws could be a little more cut and dried. I interpreted it as you could push your luck, but it could also be the intention is always to play 3 rounds of high-low; if that's the case, it's not clear what happens if my first draw succeeds and my second or third fail.

Overall, this is an interesting game, particularly for one designed in 24 hours.

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