Tales From the Loop: Get your 80’s kid retrofantasy fix 🚲 RPG Review & Mechanics

Tales From the Loop is an alternative history RPG set in the 1980s. You play a Kid, who unravels Mysteries with fellow Kid friends in a small town. The setting is either a small town in Nevada or in Sweden. The game won five major ENnies Awards in 2017, and was soonafter optioned to be a television show.
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[@oliveranderson9075]

The game and the TV show were both based on a terrific art book by Simon Stålenhag. The art in the game comes from that book.

[@sickkitten763]

I have played a lot of RPGs, but from a roleplay perspective nothing comes close to Tales from the Loop. In D&D you shrug of your third ressurection in the campaign like it was nothing and then procede to conquer the nine hells. In Tales from the Loop I was literally crying at the end of the session because my older sister was put in jail for a night because she took the blame for something I did. Great review of a great game. I love your content.

[@safe-keeper1042]

Yeah, I play D&D regularly and to be honest it's too rules-bound and hack-and-slash for me and I find myself growing a little bit tired of it (same reason I never got into RPGs like Icewind Dale, but I absolutely loved Disco Elysium, as the latter focuses more on plot, immersion, and unforgettable characters). Just bought the Tales from the Loop starter pack and I'm trying to convince my D&D DM and gaming group to interrupt our campaign for a night to do a one-shot of this game. Hopefully I can draw them in. TftL looks like it's way more up my alley and a really fun game to GM, and I think most (hopefully all) of the people I play with will enjoy it, too.

[@safe-keeper1042]

Oh, and yes, it definitely looks like a game and setting that can make players cry. (sorry about the three year old replies :P)

[@MarkoArillius]

The generalization of DnD players is unwarranted. I don't even allow resurrection in my games barring extreme acts of heroism, quests or long journeys. A party member dying was literally the entire campaign once because my players didn't care about the plot and they liked him so much. They made a new friend along the way. You just suck at D&D.

[@BlueFlash215]

​@@safe-keeper1042this sounds like you have a horrible DM. Encounters can be good if creatures are Homebrew, if they or the area come with a twist. My party was allowed to skip all and every combat. With the milestone system they didn't miss out on experience. There is no experience for fights. They actually managed to reverse a poison back to the BBEG in the 3rd session and killed him outright (well, they weakened him and crippled him). There were big scouting missions, ways to observe and get into a city, try to win a tavern contest which would soon turn out to be really weird. That's the stuff D&D needs.

[@Wesley_Youre_a_Rabbit]

I most definitely get a Stranger.. “Happenings” vibe from this game lol.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Buzzards Chillin Yeah. A bit. :)

[@NotNotJoel]

I have a friend who actually grew up on Adelsö and was mighty confused as to why I would have a map of her old home area on my wall

[@DaveThaumavore]

JoEl hahaha!

[@safe-keeper1042]

Wow, I thought it was a fictional location. Must be awesome for the people living there to know there's an RPG setting based on their hometown. Now I want to go there for a visit xD

[@dansvensson5292]

I live closeby to the particle accelerator in Sweden, Lund. I should probably buy this book as a survival guide.

[@SteveDahlskog]

I live in Lund too, and I've got it. Mind you, I live in western Lund and I expect you to tell us when it starts! ;-)

[@Jorphdan]

Really great stuff, I'll definitely be checking out the rest of your channel.

[@HeadHunterSix]

What I love about Tales from the Loop and Stranger Things is, they've really got the 80s down pretty well. It's basically like I remember, as far as the culture, aesthetic and archetypes.

[@norcalonline1]

First of all, your RPG reviews are top notch. You have a talent for exploring and nailing the key elements to the handful of videos I have seen from your channel. Second, I love this game. Your description makes me want to circle back to it and start another campaign. Thanks for your hard work.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Thanks! This is one of my very favorite games of all the ones I’ve reviewed thus far. Glad you like the vids.

[@bjornh4664]

Nice review! I wrote some of the technical descriptions in the game (robots and vehicles), as well as trying to explain how the magnetrine effect works. Basically, it was me looking at Simon Stålenhag's art and asking myself: "OK, is there a way of making it sound plausible without resorting to handwaving or technobabble?" While I agree that the focus of the game is the kids, explaining the tech is to provide that suspension of belief any science fiction setting requires.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Really nice work on this!

[@bjornh4664]

@@DaveThaumavore Thanks!

[@hnorrstrom]

My best friend served his last months in prison at the Svartsjö prison in the game. So I got a bit of real life info on the Islands in Sweden from him. I love the 80's nostalgic drawings of this game, I remember all cars and cloths from when I had a BMX.

[@bluey7520]

This channel deserves more recognition. It will come with time, keep it up!

[@paavohirn3728]

The concept art, as well as the concepts altogether and the rule set including character creation is so good its really to bad they dropped the ball in the lack of GM tools given. This would be great place for random tables as well as encounters/scene seeds like those in Forbidden Lands.

[@burkle4508]

I love how he stopped for a second and then said "happenings" 😂

[@argophontes]

Just FYI: Boulder City, NV and the Mälaren Islands in Sweden are real places. Great vid otherwise!

[@DaveThaumavore]

argophontes Wow, I cant believe I didn’t Google that before recording. Thanks!

[@DrJamesDickson]

Just stumbled upon this channel, looking good Dave! :)

[@jamest.harnden3659]

Boulder City Nevada is a real place. It is where the workers lived while they built the Hoover dam. Also it’s destroyed by the NCR in Fallout New Vegas. Also also it is the place referred to as Boulder on the wild Colorado in the song Highwaymen by the group of the same name.

[@DaveThaumavore]

James T. Harnden Yeah, someone corrected me on this already. It was an oversight on my part for sure. Malaren Islands are real too. Oops.

[@shufflerdom09]

Great work!! Good review!!

[@jdrprep4907]

Nice video as always. ^^

[@DaveThaumavore]

Support the channel by joining my Patreon! www.patreon.com/thaumavore Newsletter sign-up: bit.ly/ThaumavoreNewsletter

[@allones3078]

Great review just played my first game of it was a blast

[@Discalle112]

Great stuff, keep it up.

[@CraftNicks]

Cool... now i know what this is about.... nice work! Dig dug expert and a pocket full of quarters right here!

[@PeterKoperdan]

The art is without question amazing. But I was wondering about the fictional world. I kept thinking what was up with all that super advanced tech just rusting around the landscape. It seemed so unrealistic. Now I now that in that fictional world, tech progressed in different ways, from the 50s onward. OK, but how come there are rusting robots all around, but people are driving old 80s SAABs? What is it like to play? When all that tech is basically everywhere and quite accessible, doesn't it defeat the point of mysterious mysteries? I mean isn't there so much tech and strange stuff that it becomes mundane? I imagine that as a PC you could basically walk out from your apartment into the fields in a straight line and sooner or later you would trip over a rusty hovercraft or a robot. Or GM rolls a 6 and you run into a dinosaur instead. A fantasy equivalent would be an ordinary village or a small town, with semi-functional magical artifacts all around the landscape, everywhere. Occasionally a mythical creature would eat your neighbor's cow. People don't care, life goes on, they ride horses while walking magical automatons are lying in the fields... Only the kids get about to investigate or mess with the magical artifacts. Really??? I know it's a FICTIONAL world, but how much do I need to suspend my disbelief? Or is this game targeted at young adults or something? Clearly I'm not getting something guys. Any players care to comment? Thanks.

[@DaveThaumavore]

I've actually run this game. There is definitely a suspension of disbelief required by the players, but I've never had anyone complain. You tell them the premise of the game and they're always happy to follow along. All my players have been adults who wanted to re-live some nostalgia in a rules light game.

[@billnightbloom]

Can you do Kids on Bikes, and Kult Divinity Lost

[@DaveThaumavore]

BillNightbloom Kult is creeping it’s way onto my list for sure.

[@ChrundleTGreat]

Jesus Christ it’s funny listening to him describe latch key kids as a historical phenomenon!! (I was a latch key kid)

[@kosterix123]

solo?

[@safe-keeper1042]

Three year old comment, but I feel compelled to point out that the TFtL setting (and the RPG Kickstarter) came before Stranger Things.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Tales from the Loop KS launched on November 24, 2016. Season 1 of Stranger Things debuted on Netflix on July 15, 2016.

[@safe-keeper1042]

@@DaveThaumavore ah, someone said it came first, so then I guess I was misinformed. The artwork still seems to come from 2015, though. But thanks for correcting me, and thanks for bothering to reply to comments on three year old videos :).