This is a shortened version of my review, for the extended and more detailed assessment visit: https://deathtrap-games.blogspot.-
com/2020/04/game-review-death-is-new-pink.html

Game Review: Death is the New Pink

Author: Mike Evans Publisher: DIY RPG Productions Game Engine: Into the Odd Marketplace: DrivethruRPG

Death is the New Pink is a role-playing game based on the Into the Odd Engine, which is D&D stripped down for fast play and maximum Lethality. It is a minimalistic D&D-based system where characters have three stats: Strength, Dexterity, and Will ranging from 3-18, along with Hit Points. Almost all rolls are 1d20 trying to roll under an appropriate stat like in Basic/Expert and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. In DitNP, these stats are renamed to the more apropos Badassery, Dodging some Shit, and Moxy.

What I love about Into the Odd is that attacks in combat automatically hit, characters have piteously few hit points, and overflow damage goes to your STR stat... the same stat you then have to roll to not die. It makes combat beyond lethal. Generally, if you go toe-to-toe in combat, the first one to attack wins. Which means only an idiot goes into a straight-up fight. PCs who want to live ambush, sneak, sabotage, or do just about anything to turn the odds in their favour. In true OSR style, PCs win by thinking things through, stacking advantages, and treating direct combat as a last resort. There are no heroes in Into the Odd.

And that is what makes it the perfect engine for this particular game. Death is the New Pink is a post apocalyptic survival game inspired by such gloriously loud and blood-drenched titles as Borderlands, Fallout, Tank Girl, and Mad Max, as well as the music of KMFDM and White Zombie.

Death is the New Pink is also what I would call a true Punk RPG: it throws away needless niceties like the drab "What is Role-Playing" or "How to Play" sections and dives straight in assuming you know what you are doing an will play your own damn way. It keeps a rough, DIY aesthetic in its writing style and design, echoing the 80s and 90s punk 'zines I grew up on. The manual is full of humour often aimed at thumbing its nose at mainstream role-playing culture, Corporate America™, and the players themselves. It has no illusions about role-playing games as being anything other than silly stories with excessive Blood and Death -- and aims to deliver.

Cohesive Experience The fusion of the Punk aesthetic, the post-apocalyptic setting, and the stripped-down and lethal engine work incredibly well together. It is rare that a role playing game does such a great job of making the medium so perfectly reflect the content of the game.

With DitNP, the Punk 'zine manual and spray-style art feel as cobbled-together as the armour and junk cars the characters are using to stay alive. The rough writing style is like the trash the NPCs are likely to talk, and the system's brutality mirrors the fast-paced bloody action from the source material that you will want to emulate.

Often the inspirations for the game, such as Fallout - with its cumbersome menus - or Borderlands - with its jarring loot-grinding and undrivable vehicles - fail to keep you immersed because of the way those games' design fails to mesh with the game concept. DitNP here far exceeds the source material. The game's design choices suggest and reward the kind of play that will keep the game feeling like a battle for survival.

[...]

DitNP can be picked up and leaned to Game Mastering levels of comprehension in a couple of hours. Players can have characters in hand in a couple of minutes.

Unlike a lot of fast and light games, DitNP has long-term campaign play baked into the design. Characters advance by engaging with the world, making connections, and trying to change things. Character advancement and its innovative rules for creating businesses, mentoring others, and leading organizations are all interconnected. You level up by making connections, explo, and getting involved.

Where it falls flat is in a core assumption that the GM will absorb a lot of ideas, pick them up, and run with them without any additional assistance:

Mutations, radiation, toxic goo, etc., are all included, but nowhere implemented in the included hex crawl and dungeon adventures. Likewise, we have a system for creating businesses and groups that are designed to decay, break down, and be targeted without mechanics or suggestions on how we can use role-playing to protect them and make them better. The home base of the setting has a few interesting ideas, but they are offered as throw-away lines without any attempt at development.

Even that flaw is consistent with the DIY Punk RPG aesthetic, but it represents a weakness in Punk RPGs in general. They hand us a bunch of cool stuff, but don't help us use it.

This game looks like the best way I have seen by far to scratch that Mad Max game itch. That it requires a little extra improv and forethought to get the full post-nuclear nightmare I want is a minor gripe.