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No Thank You Evil Hack - 3 Wishes

No Thank You, Evil! (NTYE) by Monte Cook Games (MCG) is a lot of fun. It's designed for kids, but they let adults play too. I've had the opportunity to play it adult-to-adult and to run it for mixed groups and I love it.

Like all games I love, I want to do more with it. There's  a Netflix show called True and the Rainbow Kingdom that is incredibly popular with our kids. The premise of the show is that the protagonist, True, a young girl who lives in the Rainbow Kingdom, solves problems that occur with the help of magical wishes, each of which is a tiny being that reminds me of a Pokemon. They all have names and special powers which are useful in different situations.

In NTYE you get 3 Treats at the start of the session, which you use to ask your Companion to deal with problems. The Companion is a Robot Dog, a Big Bad Wolf, a Little Sibling, etc. and they are the conduit through which players access Cyphers, a staple of MCG designs. These are always fun and creative ways to deal with problems that are outside a character's abilities and are highly mutable. In my opinion, a goal for a MCG session is to use all of your Cyphers.

So instead of a Companion, I want to arm each player with their three Treats and tell them they will get 3 Wishes. To use a Wish, they have to hold up their Treat and say what the Wish they are asking for is. A Wish has a name that relates to its function, and a power. For example, a Wish on True is Pom-Pom, a wish that makes whatever you say much louder, like a megaphone.

During the session, I plan to introduce a main problem that the players will try to solve and a number of smaller obstacles on the way. To solve the problem, they need to deal with those obstacles as they become evident. In an episode of True, the protagonist usually discovers the problem, then asks for her wishes and returns to solve the problem.

Here is my example scenario: It is a super hot day. The gumdrop tree on Sunshine Hill is so hot that its gumdrops are melting and running down the hill making everything super sticky. On the hill along with the gumdrop tree is a bicycle racetrack and a super slide that goes all the way down to the bottom.

Main problem: Sticky gumdrops due to heat
Additional obstacles:
  • Bicycles stuck on track, possible traffic jam or accident
  • Super slide is not slide-y
So if you had 1 player and 3 wishes, they could use their wishes to:
1. Cool down Sunshine Hill, stopping the sticky gumdrops
2. With the gumdrops cooled, the residue on the bike track and slide becomes hard. They could have a candy-eating wish, a smashing wish or some other way to deal with the gumdrops.
3. Someone could be in peril. They might be riding their bike towards a barrier or their could be stuck on the sticky slide. A wish that saves them by roping them in, lifting them up, creating a bouncy trampoline, or some other way to save them.

I think it would be a great chance to emphasize creativity and reward originality to let them deal with the problems in the way that sounds best to them. If something seems really difficult, they could have to roll a higher number. The ability pools and point-spending system of NTYE gives a very flexible way to deal with difficulty that kids seem to like and appreciate. I also find it very common at our house to have kids give each other points to  pay the cost of their rolls. I love that.

So if you want a fun hack for creative kids to play NTYE  in a new way, try this and tell me what you think!

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