Household - Reasoned Review

Lucca Comics & Games is a real boon for us information sites, as it brings waves of news before, during and (at least this year) sadly after. We have dealt with various games in this 2019 now running out and in our stable we could not miss a prized horse like Household, the role-playing game winner 2019. We had already had the opportunity to interview the creators of the game in one of our precedents article.

Disclaimer: I am announcing that I have not yet had the privilege of physically trying out this RPG at the table. This is therefore a review of the reading of the manual and not of its actual presence at the table. Many games change and turn out to be better / worse than how they are read, so give it a try and let us know how it runs!

Created by the minds of Simone Formicola e Rico Sirignano, Household is a "traditional" role-playing game. Although the definition changes from person to person, traditional play usually sees the presence of a handful of players and a narrator. Household puts players in the shoes of miniature fairy beings while the narrator / referee, called Historian, is responsible for narrating the stories of these creatures in the immense house of the Master.

The world of Household is the real world of a manor house; to add to the myriad setting Fate, boggart, You sprinkle e Slaugh grappling with the dangers of men: cockroaches, scolopendras, spiders, birds and mice are the typical enemies of these little heroes, in a Renaissance-like time that helps to mix everything.

Sprigo-proof techniques!

Household is presented in a gentle and refined way, with an elegant layout similar to the style of the manual. The setting is the classic one: from races we move on to classes, combat and narration, then all the various notes for the Narrator.

The six classes in the manual are well framed and never out of line, even if those fighters are likely to dominate each other easily. Each of these has strong points that go to increase as the narration proceeds.

It is interesting to observe how Household uses six-sided dice with equal sides to represent successes, with a system of stakes and risks very similar to a game of chance such as Liar dice or similar; it seems to work particularly well and the dice roll is saving him from becoming a wargame with hundreds of dice rolling on the table.

The entire system of character advancement goes hand in hand with the temporal advancement of the plot, divided for ease into Chapters; one of the choices that I appreciated the most from the creators, as it establishes an indissoluble link between plot and characters.

The Opinion of a Historian called ...

I found Household terrifyingly inspired and always in tone with himself, never out of line and always willing to tell a story that we have all seen a little but that no one has ever read. The world of Household he is alive, breathes and moves with all of us. Slipping into the microworld of men is easy to be fascinated by.

The division into years and chapters helps Household a stand up even without relying on long and endless endless campaigns, breaking away from more traditional games and winking at a faster and more immediate game. Unfortunately, all the technical notes do not help the speed in the creation of the character, which remains a bit slow and, at least at first reading, a bit cumbersome.

The inclusion of maneuvers in combat, definitely necessary to differentiate the classes without overcrowding them with characteristics, on the one hand performs its function very well but shifts the weight on the part of the manual dedicated to combat; not an immediate thing, but certainly better than many other games.

A huge amount of information about the whole setting (i.e. the house where the events take place) takes the reader into the world of Household; a well-made, pleasant and original description for each place.

Is there more beyond the threshold? The future of Household

To this Lucca Household came accompanied by the Historiograph kit, a great addition to all storytellers looking for additional stimuli and missions. The manual adds 6 original assignments / plots, an avalanche of pre-generated characters and tools, a couple of additional descriptions and some errata; the narrator's screen is definitive to keep everything important at hand (apart from attacking maneuvers).

Definitely Household is a game that can easily satisfy most palates thanks to its setting and setting; a unique and rare piece, albeit concerning little heroes, capable of telling huge stories.