Review of Precious Things, a TTRPG about tiny dragons!
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Age target (number recognition up to 6 required) for Precious Things
Precious Things is a tabletop RPG system that focuses on mechanics for exploration, stealth, and creativity. This game is a system, so you and your players have full control over the story’s content, which you can tailor to your group’s particular needs.
Player characters are also tiny dragons who work together with other tiny dragons, so it’s primarily a collaborative game, and PC’s are generally pretty small, so fighting others is not typically going to be the first route for conflict resolution – this means that the tone of the game will likely trend more towards non-combat adventures.
The mechanics are also really easy to understand and only require players to be able to recognize up to the number 6 to be able to play, so it’s very accessible in terms of player skill as well.
Real world setting in Precious Things
Precious Things is set in our world! Except there’s your characters, these small dragons, who live here and collect items for their hoards! You can play in settings that you make up (like exploring in a museum or throughout a city), or you can do what we did and play as if our dragons were running around in our house, which was a lot of fun!
Your dragon character in Precious Things
Your character in Precious Things, like I have said a few times before, is a little dragon! They are descendant from the big dragons of legend, but they’ve grown smaller and smaller with each generation to become what they are now. Despite their size, they still have a dragon’s instincts, and one of those instincts is to collect treasures.
The treasures for these modern day dragons are things that are important to a particular dragon and could be shiny coins, colorful pens, or event dice! For one of our dragons, we chose tacos and tacos-related accessories/toppings because we couldn’t resist a good book reference. Our other dragon collected candy wrappers… and I’m pretty sure was an excuse for my kiddo to try to get extra candy while we were playing, but I appreciate his cleverness with that plan (he was pretty in character with his dragon).
Character creation was super easy because the booklet walks you through each step for describing your dragon, choosing their particular character number, picking the items they seek, and choosing their special power (more on this in the mechanics section). It took about 5 minutes to spec out both dragons, and then we took some time to draw and color them.
Mechanics in Precious Things
Rolling your hoard of dice
When you want to attempt to do something in Precious Things, you’ll be rolling a d6 dice pool versus a particular number that you choose at the beginning of the game to determine how small or how dragon-like your character is. Depending on what type of skill you’re rolling for, you’ll need to roll either above or below the number you picked for your dragon and see how many dice succeed.
This mechanics set was great for kiddo (he was able to understand everything after only one example roll), and turns were short and flowed from one character or scene to the other quickly (which helped with keeping kiddo’s attention). Because the mechanics are also focused on the character by means of the special number that you picked, it’s really easy to differentiate skills between different characters in the party and clearly show that collaboration is required to meet different checks (i.e. you want to allow different roll leaders depending on if they have a high or low particular number so they have better odds for meeting the check).
Special character-specific moves
Each character also gets a special move! These are particular to your dragon and the type of materials that they like to collect. You have to roll really well to activate these powers, but when you do, you get to do some awesome moves.
For our taco dragon, their special move is a spicy salsa breath that light small fires or make people’s eyes water (which is great for running away if you get caught nabbing taco chips from the counter!), and for my kid’s candy dragon, he can get really sticky from all the candy and climb like Spider-Man or stick other characters and things in place.
It gives some opportunity for stretching your creativity and is an easy way to have fun with making your characters unique!
Overall thoughts on Precious Things
Precious Things is super cute, and I loved getting to check it out with kiddo. We had a fun time exploring the house with our dragons and collecting little trinkets and goodies for our hoards, and it was easy to understand too. Whether you’re looking for a game for friends who want a cozy adventure, are introducing new players to TTRPGs, or have young ones who want to join in on a game, it’s a great system that lends to a lot of collaboration and creative for everyone involved!
Find a copy of Precious Things
You can find a copy of Precious Things here on itchio!
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