Going Rogue TTRPG Review by Andrew Delacruz

Does your party want to explore the darker, more difficult moments of revolution? Then flip to Jess Levine’s Going Rogue, winner of CRIT Awards 2023 Best GMless Game of the Year. In your galaxy, do Liberation spies in The Intelligence want reduced oversight and leverage over Liberation members, or are they content to bear the heaviest burdens so others don’t have to as they hunt for the heads of Mandate officials? What do they do when The Parliament governing The Liberation desires lengthy deliberation and safety from retribution for the innocent? Decide quickly, because fate is calling. The gravity of The Sacrifice pulls every game of Going Rogue towards one inevitable end. You know from beginning that your characters will give their lives in a selfless act that moves the galaxy closer to freedom, but why would your band of cynics, loners, and misfits grow into people who would sacrifice everything in pursuit of a dream? That’s a question only you can answer.

If you are familiar with Belonging Outside Belonging games, Going Rouge does a great job of capturing the “Star Wars: Rogue One” theme. Playbooks are well designed to create characters that fit in the slightly gritty sci-fi fantasy. The Pillars make sense for the theme. The Sacrifice Fate really helps the storytelling progress to an exciting climax. If you like Belonging Outside Belonging games and like Starwars this game is a no-brainer. Back it for sure. 

If you are new to this type of game there are some additional considerations. This system is GM-less and Dice-less, meaning there is no Game Master and no Dice used. It is a collaborative storytelling experience. Players have a character sheet with questions that help flesh out who their character is as well as a handful of “moves” that correspond to the kinds of things their character archetype would do.

There is a token system that has players exchanging tokens to execute different types of moves, if you make your character do something weak or vulnerable you gain a token and to do something really cool you have to spend a token. But the game system is very freeform, it is up to the players to make up the story and determine the outcomes of events. This is very different from the traditional “D20 Fantasy” like D&D and may be jarring for some players.

I think the biggest impact is that there are very low stakes and no real consequences as you do not have dice to introduce an element of chance or luck. This plays less as a game and more like a writers room with players all telling a story together. What this does let you do though is tell fun stories together and explore a wide variety of roleplay scenarios. I think it is worth trying for any group that enjoys roleplay. 

For those that have tried No Dice No Master’s type games and know they do not like them, you probably won’t like this either. Buy something else.