I am desperately in love with this game, contender for the best TTRPG I have played this year. Certainly an all time favorite with an incredibly flexible system

Honestly I have to say this has been one of my favorite games to play in 2020. My friends and I have been playing TTRPGs for ... decades now and always find that mechanics and obscure rules bog games down. But Henshin! doesn't really have those rules, very straight forward and can go from character creation to world creation to the first session all in one sitting! This game is super easy to learn and really does capture the spirit of Power Rangers and Super Sentai. I recommend this game for anyone who loves easy to learn games, or the source material. My TTRPG of the year!

Roleplaying without the game part.

While everything is well written and there are a lot of options, this isnt what I was looking for in a Sentai rpg.

I even watched a let's play with one of the writers just to make sure I understood the gameplay.

What it amounts to is, as a group describe the whole scene and then act out what has already been decided.

Henshin! is a game that is both aimed at letting you emulate the fun of the Power Rangers and Sentai series while also being a game that lets everyone take part and feel like a part of the game at all times. I've found that running and taking part in it, that no player is ever left out or waiting long for something to come around to them. Which is such a huge plus.

It's simple and to the point. An original diceless system that uses tokens that you will spend and gain by doing various actions. Each 'Color' is a class in the game. With Red, Blue, Yellow, Black, Green & Pink making up what I would say are the 'core' colours. These are those who you would see in episode to episode letting you play the leader archetype, the smart one, the heart of the group and so on. With the other colours being Gold, Silver, White, Orange and Purple. Letting you dip into the "sixth" ranger element similar to the Green Ranger in the original series.

The game itself might not be very crunchy for people which is completely understandable! The game is intended to help you make a fun story/episode/series as opposed to being focused on combat. But Sentai has always been about the good guys winning in the end. Putting that down to chance dice can take away from the sort of 'power fantasy' that Sentai is trying to convey.

The book itself is made up of explanation of the system, the Colors, ideas on how to create your "show/squad", modules (that are more a collection of ideas, story prompts and themes than a guided story like in others) and some other examples of how the game might be played.

It’s a pretty simple book throughout and it’s really easy to just sit down and play. It’s very much based on peoples tastes and I like to play it for only a couple of hours at a time so it’s quick to get into each time and doesn’t require hours to set aside in a day.

My main drawback is that sometimes the “Turns” that people can take can leave them stumped and looking at their sheet too much as opposed to just using the turns as a guidance for what their character is likely to do in situations. As someone who is used to playing it I can usually point out ideas on how to understand players Turns but to new players it can be a bit confusing. This might be coming from the standpoint that situations have to be ‘won’ when really you’re just doing fun day to day stuff. Characters aren’t going to die or have bad things happen to them unless players agree to it in some form

My other issue is that a lot of the modules have beautiful artwork that just isn’t fully shown. Would love to have seen some pages at the end showing all the modules artwork.

Much like how Chroma Squad is the best sentai game I’ve played made by an indie dev, Henshin! is the best example of a Sentai/Toku game I’ve seen. I’d recommend going on their official website where you can check out the modules and character sheets to get an idea of how it’s played!

Henshin! is a easy to learn, fun to play narratively driven role playing game. Rather than rely on complicated dice-driven mechanics and a metric monster-ton of rules, the Cave of Monsters Games have focused on replicating the feel and mood of Japanese costumed superheroes.

What I particularly loved about Henshin was that there are never any "bad" decisions or "wasted" turns to make. Each choice contributes to moving the story forward in compelling ways that reward players for ROLE playing rather than ROLL playing. The collaborative elements of the game really shine through, with play books that help inspire you to think about how your archetype might respond to a situation, while giving you the freedom not to be bound up by complicated class and feat systems or the arbitrary roll of dice. The designers thougtfully have included modules and additional options that will keep the game going as well as the tools to help you and the rest of the players come up with creative and fun ideas on the fly that will make you feel like you are in your very own TV show WITHOUT expecting you to know a lot of lore about the properties that inspired Henshin!

Finally, the design of the book from the art to archetypes make it clear that this is a game made for EVERYONE, not just the "traditional" sorts of gamers. Representation matters, and Henshin makes sure you know that this game is for everyone, and that is super important.

I backed the Kickstarter and I am pleased with the product I received! (P.S. I am the Fandom Menace)

I feel like my review should come with a trigger warning. The authors of this product go out of their way to be edgy and new but at the same time very, very sensitive.

I originally scooped up this product with the intention of running it for my kids.The premade playbooks made it look really newnewnew player and kid friendly.But, the more I read into this, I'm not sure it would be a good fit with an all adult group, either.

It does an okay job of emulating the genre, but it falls down hard on a couple of things I look for in an RPG. The first is dice. It's diceless. There is a nominal use of tokens, but not that much in terms of a "system" It seems more like sitting around a table with prompts to talk about our characters' feelings. Maybe it's a good therapy excercise, but it definitely lacks that "Mighty" and "Morphin" vibe.

Thats where I see the second failing of this product. There's not much game. It's more like sitting down to write an episde of the tv show and we absolutely have to work off the list of pre-ordained motivations and tasks. It's an awesome high school or college writing excercise, but not much by way of an rpg.

I'll say points for effort for the authors. It's a good first attempt. As for me, I'm going back to the drawing board for a system that really captivates the players and still emulates the genre.

I ran one session together with my friends online (so, I am not an experienced player concerning Henshin!) and these are my preliminary feelings:

PROS

• This is an excellent game to initiate beginners to RPGs. I truly believe so because this game teaches to beginners core concepts that I believe should be learnt for the future as well, and applied to other RPGs. The mechanics that puts on the players the responsibility of choosing if winning or losing whatever confrontation is important to avoid attitudes of "Power Players" in the future. In Henshin! everyone around the table (real or virtual) has the responsibility and the possibility of shaping a great episode together. No dice required indeed to run such game.
• It is very funny, we laughed a lot! This is thanks to the setting but also thanks to the mechanis that allow the players to decide when and how to fail in a ridicoulus way sometimes!
• The players do not need to invest so much time in character creation. Narrators need to invest more (I used 4 hours as Narrator to create the setting and the first episode) but anyway much less time is needed in comparison to other systems.
• The quite strong characterization of the playbooks, aligned with playbook-specific turns, allows the players to immediately grasp the "feeling" of their own characters and interpret them correctly since the beginning. I loved the last three pages of the manual comparing the playbooks to the "masks/characters" of the Italian theatre, great analogy!

CONS

• It is a bit difficult to fully graps the mechanics if you never played Henshin before. I also listened to all the podcasts (4 episodes on the website) and some mechanics were not fully clear (for example, the "questions" in the caracters' turns). I understand that the authors are compiling a FAQ document regarding mechanics, which is very much appreciated and will help run the sessions more smoothly. It could be good to have one extra explanation page for players and Narrator (in addition to playbooks) to guide them in choosing the right turn for the right moment.
• Character growth/progression is quite limited.

FINAL THOUGHTS I truly recommend Henshin! in your collection. I believe it is mostly suited for beginners and one-shots or very short campaigns, however also for experienced players (like me and my friends) it was extremely funny and a nice break from heavier and more difficult games. Let's Henshin!

I've played Henshin! with a couple different groups, and they'e all enjoyed it! It's obviously created by people that love the sentai genre, but even players that were unfamiliar with those shows had a good time. It's diceless and mechanics-light, which means its easy for people to get into the swing of playing within a session. The world-building tools are a blast, and the groups created fun, rich, worlds that I can't wait to play within again. The episodic nature also makes it easy for players to drop in or out according to availability without disrupting the session-to-session play, which is a huge plus! The art is also gorgeous; this is a really fun game and I totally recommend it, especially for fans of Power Rangers and other sentai shows!

If you love Sentai or Power Rangers, then this the game for you! The game is easy to learn and a lot of fun. The book is filled with everything you need to know to play. It's even got well writted example play scenerios to help with getting a good idea with what play would be like. Ths book also includes verious game modules for those that just want to jump right in and get to playing. I can't recomend this game enough.