Review of Honor Among Thieves by Minakie
Jump to:
Audience for Honor Among Thieves
Honor Among Thieves is made for all ages. Mechanics are based on Lasers & Feelings, and they should be fairly easy for most players to pick up or handle with some minor assistance as they use a d6 pass/fail dicepool. The core focus of the game is on storytelling versus getting super crunchy with the mechanics.
The adventure revolves around conducting a heist, but it is really clear that you can only pilfer the stashes of other thieves OR foil the plots of ne’er do wells. You’ll control where the story goes, setting the tone as either silly, action-packed, grim, or some other flavor, making it easily usable for different player vibes.
Setting for Honor Among Thieves
Honor Among Thieves is set in the modern world (since there’s hacking, security systems, etc), but lets you choose from there, or use the roll tables to determine your setting’s details. You could be uncovering a plot of a corrupt politician, tracking down a mysterious art thief, or getting payback on a former member of the crew… it is all up to you or the dice rolls!
I used the dice tables for our scenario, and they gave us a REALLY great point to start from and filled out the antagonist of our story magnificently. We were up against a hooded figure who had robbed a bank, just because they could. This arrogant super genius was eventually done in by his greed as he reached for more and more, thinking he could never be caught…. and all that came from the prompt tables!
Your character in Honor Among Thieves
Your character in Honor Among Thieves is made by defining elements of their background, a virtue and flaw, and their lucky number (that determines if they roll better for doing honorable deeds or for thieving). You’ll also pick a goal for them to complete throughout the story.
Like with the setting, there’s some great suggestions in the game to get ideas flowing, and here’s a couple characters that we made:
- Name: Turbo
- Backgrounds: Getaway driver, demolitions expert
- Virtue: Daredevil
- Flaw: Impulsive
- Luck number: 2 (leans toward THEFT)
- Name: Cheryl
- Backgrounds: Pickpocket, hacker
- Virtue: Smart
- Flaw: Forgetful
- Lucky number: 4 (leans toward HONOR)
Beyond this, there’s a really cool flashback mechanic that kicks in if you roll exactly your lucky number, which gives you the opportunity to fill in character elements as you play. I liked that this wasn’t filled in up front because, especially in games with kids, I’ve found that much of the character definition comes as you play. There’s no pressure to know everything up front, and you can figure out your backstory and playstyle a bit as you go.
Mechanics in Honor Among Thieves
I’ve mentioned before that mechanics in Honor Among Thieves is based on Lasers & Feelings. In this particular version, your two metrics, instead of being LASERS and FEELINGS, are going to be HONOR and THEFT. You need to roll above your lucky number to do something honorable (i.e. do the right thing) and below your lucky number to do something thievey (i.e. blow open the door to the bank vault).
You roll from a dice pool that is determined based on how your preparations, environment, virtue, flaw, background, and help from other players factors in on what you’re trying to do. Your success in your task is then determined based on how many dice from your dice pool succeeded based on your lucky number.
This means that you’re going to probably roll a big handful of dice and then compare this to your lucky number. There’s no need to track modifiers, and the success of your task is largely going to depend on how you tell the story with your fellow players using elements from your characters.
Overall thoughts on Honor Among Thieves
I thought Honor Among Thieves was a fun micro RPG that let us just engage in telling a tale together (which is what we really needed that particular day). It was easy to learn, there was no game prep required, and the roll tables and suggestions were great for giving us ideas to spring board from for the rest of our game.
Find a copy of Honor Among Thieves
You can find a copy of Honor Among Thieves by Minakie Games on itchio!
And… if you liked this post, make sure to subscribe to the TTRPGkids monthly newsletter to stay up to date on the latest reviews, tips and tricks, game and podcast list updates, and more! Thank you for playing tabletop RPGs with your kids and sharing this awesome hobby with the next generation!