Nobi Nobi

Like Tom Waits, Nobi Nobi is big in Japan. It's a tabletop roleplaying card game (RPG) that's playable straight out of the box, and it comes in several iterations, including the Horror and Thriller versions shown here on Board's Eye View. The game is designed and illustrated with Chibi art by Takashi Konno. It was originally published in Japan by Arclight Games. In Italy, it's published by Studio Supernova but the most widely distributed (English) version is published by Don't Panic Games in France.

Nobi Nobi is a light, super accessible, fully cooperative RPG, ideally for 3–5 players - tho' the rules include adaptations for a two players and for solitaire play. Each player takes a character card that has just two stats – Power and Technique – and an individual ability. Players rotate roles as gamesmaster (GM) and main character. The GM draws and reads a scene card that will include a skill check that the main character has to pass by rolling two standard six-sided dice and adding their Technique or Power, depending on the card. Succeed against the test or in any combat and you earn a Light card, either adding to your Technique or Power, or giving you an additional ability. Fail and you take a Darkness card, mostly also giving a similar Technique or Power uplift or an ability enhancement: Nobi Nobi isn't at all a punishing game!

The GM can as an alternative try to develop the card-driven narrative by engaging the active player (main character) in role play in which other players can pitch in. In this case, the GM decides whether the active player deserves a Light card or a Darkness card. After everyone has taken three turns as GM, players draw an Epilogue card to conclude the story and adventure. This will require a large collective skill check involving all the players.

That's the game in a nutshell. It's easy to play, and playing time is likely to be around 15 minutes per player. The idea is that players feel they are following a story but, because you are drawing random cards, it's down to the players - specifically the GM for the turn - to try to adapt and build the connections to keep the narrative going. One of the attractions of the Nobi Nobi series is that you can combine the decks from any and all of the games; doing so keeps things fresh on multiple replays but it also greatly increases the challenge of building a coherent narrative across the cards.

The creativity caveat aside, Nobi Nobi is about as light and relaxed an RPG as you could possibly imagine: player characters never die and almost never suffer negative consequences regardless of whether they succeed or fail. You are required to flip your character card to its 'dark' side if you have more Darkness cards than Light but this just means playing with a different but still positive ability.

A modification you might consider to up the challenge for more experienced gamers is to make use of the Light and Darkness cards to keep score; measuring players' collective success by how many more Light than Darkness cards they've collected over the course of the game. Even so, GM-judged role-play challenges aside, as the main character players have very little agency: other than the occasional option to substitute an ability, skill checks just mean rolling dice and adding modifiers without exercising any judgement or choice.

Nobi Nobi is a good game to play with children as a way or introducing them to the idea of RPGs and narrative games. And there's nothing even in the Horror version that's likely to give anyone nightmares. Playing with younger children you might just want to modify play so that, instead of rotating roles, it's always an older player that acts as GM. Just be warned - moving on from Nobi Nobi to a grittier, more challenging and less forgiving RPG will come as a rude shock!

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