Animon Story: A Nostalgic Blast of a TTRPG

As a new parent with a full-time job that is taking courses after work to get a promotion and whose friends all live in different cities, it is incredibly difficult to get everyone together to play TTRPGs. We regularly have multi-week/month breaks between game sessions.

Last month we only just finished our Tomb of Annihilation campaign that we started in 2018 - which is a really long time to go from level 1 to level 9 in D&D 5E. Part of our issue stems from my desire as GM to have every player there when we hit important milestones in the game (for example the final room of the Tomb of Annihilation). Another issue is GM burnout (more specifically I get too tired from real life that I don't have time/energy to prepare for our next session).

When we end up having a large break in between our "main campaign" games, we usually try to play something else (even if it doesn't fully fill our schedule it at least keeps us a bit more in touch). In the past we've played card/board games (when we all lived in the same city) or short adventured that last a few sessions at most GMed by someone other than me.

Around mid-2019 I started expanding my TTRPG collection beyond D&D 5E. I haven't had the chance to play many of the non-5E games I've collected over this time (to date only Mork Borg and Animon Story - two very different games lol).

When the player from our game with the least experience with Digimon and/or Pokemon said he would be busy moving to a new city and all that involves for a few weeks, I realized that it would be the perfect chance to play Animon Story - a game that I have been interested in since I first learned of it by watching The Wandering DM play it on YouTube (you can find their session 0 here and the one-shot game here).

Generally, my goal when writing TTRPG reviews is to compare the content back to D&D 5E, since that game is where I got started (and have the majority of my experience), but also because that is a game that holds a large player base and I hope to possibly encourage people to try more non-D&D games. The problem is, Animon Story is very different than 5E, this is something that I think is really great for Animon, the Digimon & Pokemon inspired game that it tries (and succeeds) to be is not really related to the epic heroic fantasy that 5E tries to provide.

The TL;DR of my review would be that if you have played D&D 5E (or probably any other TTRPG) and also like Digimon or Pokemon you will probably love Animon, and I suggest you pick it up if you have $20 USD to spare!

The first thing that I noticed when I originally opened up the Animon Story PDF was the art, I think it is incredibly cute and gives the game a unique feel that pulls on the nostalgic strings of my childhood, but that is also far enough away from Digimon & Pokemon's art that it feels quite unique as well.

Simple to Run & Prepare

I have been GMing our Animon Story adventure, and so far I have found it easy to prepare for. At the time of writing this, we have only played one session, and I only wrote down less than 1/2 page of notes.

We made 3 characters and then played the game. The whole session took about 5 hours, but I am not sure how much of that was character creation and how much was play. We also had some technical difficulties that slowed us down in character creation (issues related to our internet connections etc. and nothing to do with the game or its contents).

Everyone really enjoyed the freedom to create their kids and their Animon companions however they liked.

Building a world collaboratively with your players definitely is a joy in this game, although you as the GM could come up with a world for your players to adventure in all on your own it definitely made our game more enjoyable to work collaberatively and intertwine the world creation into our ongoing game - even though everyone was a little awkward about it as we are new to that aspect of TTRPGs.

The game feels easy to run for new GMs, and I really cannot recommend it enough if like me you loved Pokemon/Digimon growing up. If your players are coming from a background of 5E (or other similar games) I definitely recommend your game prep to focus more on pulling on the strings of nostalgia and encouraging people to really get into the kid/Animon companion dynamic when they roleplay. I didn't do this, and it took a little bit longer to get everyone in that mindset in our first session.

In our first session I had people roleplay their kid and their own Animon, but I think (for my group at least) that having everyone RP someone else's companion might be more enjoyable. That way there is more banter between kids and their companions - rather than one person talking back and forth to themselves. I am hoping to have another session before publishing this blog post, if that happens I will update how this goes.

In the end, Animon Story is a game I can highly recommend if you are looking for a new TTRPG to play, or if you are just getting into TTRPGs for the first time. You can grab yourself a copy by clicking here.

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