Tales from the Loop: The Roleplaying Game is a different flavor, altogether. First of all, it's not meant to be played as a single-take following your character, which is how D&D tends to feel, but instead, the adventures (called "Mysteries" here) are composed of "scenes." The players work through a scene and then, once the purpose of that scene has been achieved (or the players don't know what else to do), the game skips ahead to the next scene. Given that the characters are all children, this is convenient, as it avoids slogging through sitting in class or doing homework. The other vast departure is that player characters can't die. They can be hurt, exhausted, bullied, robbed, scared, and get into various types of trouble... but they can't die. So, if you're a GameMaster who loves your TPKs (Total Party Kills), this isn't the game for you.
This film-style approach to the game, combined with its Earth-bound, 1980's theming gives it a familiar feel, dredging up memories of movies and shows that I guess could be grouped into a genre, but I hadn't noticed it before. Tales from the Loop reminds me of Scooby-Doo, The Goonies,E.T., and Stranger Things; the stories revolve around kids, and adults aren't much help... the mysteries and problems have to be solved by the kids.
Mind you, though your character might be a huge fan of Tears for Fears or spend all of his time on his Commodore 64 or riding her BMX bike, this isn't exactly the 80's you remember. This is an alternate 80's, where particle acceleration technology (hence, the loop) has introduced lots of futuristic inventions, such as hovering ships, a wide variety of robots, and portal technology, to name a few. This alternate version of the 80's is based on Simon Stålenhag's amazing imagery, which is plentiful in this book. Simon's artistic works border on photo-realism and juxtapose the 1980's we know and love with robots and even dinosaurs. Essentially, the "loop" acts as a reason behind strange things that take place in the world. The techier things, such as floating ships and robots are easy to see, but the ability for accidental portals opens up possibilities for anything from other countries, to other worlds, and things from past, present or future.
There are eight different character classes, including things such as Computer Geek, Jock, Popular Kid and Weirdo, and each class comes with a set of three skills, such as Calculate, Investigate, Tinker, Contact, Charm, and Lead, to name a few. You only have four attributes: Body, Tech, Heart, and Mind, and their values range from one to five points. Anyone familiar with D&D games will see this as quite a bit simpler, mechanically. There are special Tales from the Loop dice that you can buy, separately, but they're just themed six-sided dice; you can simply grab some six-sided dice from other games and you're good to go.
For those of us who lived through the 80's, playing Tales from the Loop will include a bit of sharing nostalgic stories, because players will be able to personally relate to certain aspects of the setting and characters. While in a D&D game, it's unlikely that one player is going to interject some anecdote about that one time in their childhood that something funny happened when they were actually casting Fireball or fighting an orc, but in this environment, they may regale each other with their crush on Duran Duran, the awesome skateboard they got before any of their friends had one, or when they took apart and successfully repaired an Atari 2600 controller, making the game feel a bit more personal, familiar and relevant to the players. While the simplistic mechanics might make this sound like a great game for younger players, getting the most out of the game would rely heavily on players having personal experience with (or copious knowledge of) the '80s.
The Tales from the Loop book, itself, is obviously a core rulebook. Anyone familiar with pen & paper game rulebooks will know what I mean: It has explanations of the rules and game mechanics and there are lots of dialogue examples to show how things might play out in the game. You'll also find the occasional chart, but with the relatively simple mechanics involved, there is not a call for a lot of large charts. However, from cover to cover, there are also lots of Simon Stålenhag's beautiful illustrations, helping to set the environment and convey the look and feel of some of the locations and NPC characters for the included Mysteries. That's right - to get you started, there are five Mysteries included in the rulebook.
All in all, Tales from the Loop takes the magnificent otherworldly realm depicted in Stålenhag's art and gives you everything you need (well, except some six-sided dice) to explore that world, yourself. Even if you don't play the game, it could serve as a coffee-table book, for the illustrations alone.
