Dozens and Dragons

TWERPS: The World’s Easist Role-Playing System

a review of a tiny parody rpg from the 80s that is actually pretty great

2025-10-13

I forget exactly how I came across this, but there is a tiny little game from 1987 written by Jeff and ’Manda Dee and published by Reindeer Games. (It was their only game.)

It was called TWERPS: The World’s Easiest Role-Playing System.

GURPS had come out the previous year, and the name is an obvious reference. Even though it was already ten years old at the time, D&D was still in its infancy. The current version was AD&D.

TWERPS was a response to both. To the complicated nature of GURPS and also to the fact that D&D was becoming more and more advanced if you will. Games were getting complicated.

By comparison, the entirety of TWERPS fit on 8 small pages. There were no character classes or races. Characters have one stat: Strength. (To determine starting strength, roll a single d10 and look up the result on a table.) And there is one mechanic: roll d10 + Strength +/- any bonuses versus a target number. In combat, the target number is the opponent’s own defense roll of d10 + Strength + modifiers. Outside of combat, it’s a Difficulty Level between 1 and 10. (This rule is described in the section titled How To Do Everything.)

scan of the original 8 pages of TWERPS 2nd Edition
scan of the entire 8-page 2nd edition by zigmenthotep

You collect Victory Points for winning battles, which can be used for increasing your Strength. Thus, the point of the game can be determined: to seek out danger and be victorious in battle.

There are a few additional rules for combat and movement and such, but that’s really it! That’s the game.

It’s like other popular fantasy wargames, except just scaled down in every way. Even the choice to make the d10 the main/only dice used seems like a very intentional and deliberate move away from the bigger spikier d20.

Damage is done directly to a character’s Strength stat, so it definitely has more of a death spiral feel than a sudden-death feel like D&D has. (That is, as you take more damage, you become less capable. As opposed to in D&D where you remain as powerful on death’s door at 1 hp as you are at full health. Pros and cons. D&D combat just doesn’t feel that interesting to me because of sudden death, and because even at 0 hp it’s kind of hard to die outright if you have party members with potions and/or healing spells.)

It may be tempting to disregard TWERPS as mere parody with no legs of its own to stand on. But when I look at it, I think it’s actually pretty valid and great on its own merits. (But then again, I have little to no interest in crunch, or simulations in my tabletalk games; if that’s what I wanted, I’d go play a video game or something.)

Contrary to expectations, and despite its appearance as a “toy” game, TWERPS did in fact enjoy a bit of success. There was a printing of the expanded rules, How To Do Everything Better, that included rules for magic. And there were splatbooks printed for playing cyberpunk, space opera, superheroes, martial arts, and even X-Files parody games.

(Jeff Dee apparently sold TWERPS to Lou Zocchi of Gamescience for pennies. You can still get the basic rules on drivethru but judging from their website, Gamescience seems to have no interest any longer in publishing any of the titles it owns; they’re here to make dice, and only to make dice.)

It’s not that serious of a game. But it seems surprisingly capable. I can see a direct lineage between TWERPS and Risus, the “anything” comedy rpg: both are minimal; both embrace the death spiral; both have little cartoon guys; both deploy tongue-in-cheek humor that might tempt the reader to dismiss the game as unserious. (https://www.risusiverse.com/)

I wasn’t able to find any digital copies of any of the supplement books, so I’m not sure how, for example, magic works. But it seems like the setting books provide bonuses based on profession or class. In a dungeon fantasy setting, e.g., you might have a Warrior with +1 to hit with melee weapons and a Ranger with +1 to Tracking and Trapping rolls and a +1 to hit with ranged weapons. (Similarities to Risus intensifies: we are basically inventing Cliches from first principles here.)

Meanwhile, nearly 40 years later in 2023, Mark Conway, aka blark, published his own, unrelated, “Your only stat is Strength” game called Meatheads (https://halforc.itch.io/meatheads). Whereas TWERPS is kind of a gonzo deconstruction of old school D&D, Meatheads is more of a jovial reconstruction of some of the good parts of old school D&D. It’s great and you should check it out.

I can’t really think of any other games that have ONE STAT. The infinitely hackable and remixable Lasers & Feelings has one stat called “number,” but even “number” is really a kind of an abstraction over the game’s two stats: lasers, and feelings. https://johnharper.itch.io/lasers-feelings

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