We talk to Andre Novoa, the founder of weird minimalist RPG publisher, Games Omnivorous, about what he’s got a taste for

Words by Christopher John Eggett

Weird RPGs are having their moment. If what amounts to a homebrew game world becoming the biggest Dungeonsand Dragons release of the year in the form of Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, I think it’s safe to say that we’re all ready to accept our roleplaying games getting a bit odd. Earlier in the year MORK BORG asked us to roll a dice every day to see if the world ends. Labyrinth (reviewed on page 80) leans into the weirdness of its source material. The thing that links them all is that they offer very specific worlds with a few key things to lean on that allow players (and DMs) to hook into, whether that’s fandom, nostalgia, or the end of the world.

Games Omnivorous is a small publisher of such weird games. There’s two growing lines in their stable of games. Minimalist games, and the Manifesto Omnivorous. The first is for publishing minimalist systems like his own 17th Century Minimalist

HISTORICAL FICTION

“As a historian I’ve always liked the low fantasy historical genres. And I’ve always liked the Renaissance and the Baroque eras, ” says Andre Novoa, the publisher. His first game was his own homebrew that his group had been having fun with, 17th Century Minimalist. “There are obviously some historical or historically oriented games out there, but none of them quite cover that period in time. I wanted to keep it very low fantasy, with no magic, or at least – there’s stuff that could be perceived as magic, but framed as something else, slight of hand or certain treatments. I really wanted to play with beliefs from that era. ”

The game kind of comes with ‘low everything’ – including character health. HP in 17th Century Minimalist does not necessarily increase with levels in the game. “That was the last rule that I designed for the game,” says Novoa, “I was play testing the game and I got very bored with HP mountains and combat that takes 40 minutes to resolve. I didn’t think that gave a very historical vibe or ambience to the game. I wanted to keep it very deadly.”