I don’t regret buying this book.
I’m ashamed of myself.
But I don’t regret it.
“The Tingleverse: The Official Chuck Tingle Role-Playing Game” is a kind of Schroedinger-esque creation. Once you hear about it, you’re simultaneously surprised and unsurprised at its existence. I had a copy of the core rules on the way to my house within about three minutes of seeing it online. I’m a little late to the party, though, because it came out in 2019. Blame the pandemic for keeping my attention elsewhere.
I’m not sure what I expected, or even if I could have expected anything, but what arrived is absolutely peak Tingle. Also, shouldn’t it have been called a Roll-Pounding Game instead?
THE BORING
As far as systems go, it’s unremarkable. The character-creation is based on your typical 4d6-and-drop-the-lowest method and the goal is to roll under your skill number to succeed.
The layout is typical Tingle print-on-demand — words poured into a template with little attention to formatting and editing errors here and there. No images except from some hand-drawn fare in the back of the book.
Six ability scores, classes, races (unicorns, dinosaurs, bigfeet, humans), the equivalent of “Feats,” magic items, spells. From a mechanical standpoint TOCTRPG isn’t anything special. There’s nothing in the game design that eagerly has me seeking a group of Tinglers to give it a try.
But, be real with me. You don’t buy this game because you’re interested in the mechanics.
Now that that’s out of the way.
THE TINGLE
I still can’t believe I’d never heard of this. I’m not a huge Chuck Tingle fan or anything, but he’s always been on the periphery of my awareness. In the Venn Diagram of my interest in games and weird things this lands directly in the center of the overlap. I always have said that even if I don’t like a thing, I respect the creator if it’s a big swing at a pure vision of something. Tingle’s entire writing career is a slow-rolling big swing. You cannot help but respect that kind of commitment.
You can say a lot about what goes on in Tingle’s novellas. A whole lot. But I’m keeping it family friendly. If you don’t really know a lot about Chuck Tingle, please consult your search engine of choice from a non-employment-related Internet-connected device.
The Tingleverse is populated by many alternate timeline creatures other than humans: Dinosaurs, Bigfeet, Unicorns, Personified Items and Abstractions. The game allows you to play as all but the latter and, additionally, you can select character classes from such archetypes as “Bad Boy,” “Sneak,” and “Wizard.”
The crown jewel of the book is the bestiary — the only part of the book with illustrations. Alongside these creatures’ stat blocks are crude, hand-drawn images of monsters such as “The Man with No Eyes and Weiners for Hair,” “Not a Basketball,” “Manifested Concept of Self-Loathing,” and “Mashed Potato Elemental.” They all are glorious and look like they were drawn by a child instructed to put form either to their feelings or their fears. There is a charming innocence here.
A character sheet is included in the book. It, like the front and back cover, is obviously *slightly* too low resolution for the size it’s printed. I used to work in production so I notice things such as that. I’m torn about whether it was an accidental thing brought about by an ignorance of image resolution, or an intentional choice designed to further the notion of a home-made product. Either way it fits perfectly with the DIY Tingle aesthetic.
Whether you’re a Tingle fan or not, I’d say buy this just for the novelty of it. It’s obviously a thinly reskinned Dungeons and Dragons 5e. You can accomplish everything here with a random Tingle book and an hour of home-brewing time. You don’t buy this because you need it, you buy it because it’s there — it’s like a mountain.
I probably never will play this and that’s fine. I’m just happy we live in a world where it can exist.
