In Scooby-Doo's footsteps - a Mephisto review

The cover of Weird World News already clearly shows what the inspiration for this Fate World of Adventure was. Weird World News is set in a world where in the '60s and '70s, it became fashionable for groups of young people to chase down sightings of monsters - which usually turned out to be just people in disguise. A continuation of this tradition still exists in the form of newspapers that follow up on any story, no matter how bizarre. In this game, the player characters are members of one news crew investigating such eerie sightings. The fact that the crew consists of young people, each of whom has a role between leader, looker, etc., who travel around together with a mascot and a minibus, clearly shows that Scooby-Doo and other series inspired the roleplaying game. The game does not make any secret of this but references this template's various series and typical patterns and approaches in detail.

For character creation, the player characters are divided into several archetypes. For example, the leader is good at anything, or the looker is particularly stylish - or even the looney who is a bit odd. Instead of the usual skill set, Weird World News used only four skills. Instead of stress and consequences, this setting uses conditions to keep the game simple. Part of the rules revolves around rolling out monsters, locations, and characters and describing the typical structure of such a roleplaying episode. A ready-to-play adventure and some sample monsters round out the book.

Weird World News shows a lot of love for the genre, and those who like series like Scooby-Doo and are looking for a simple, quick roleplaying game will do well with Weird World News. However, even though the game is presented with a lot of attention to detail, it's not my cup of tea and therefore did not convince me personally - not because it's not well done, but because I've never been a fan of the series.

(Björn Lippold)

This is excellent for running goofy one-shots. With pre-gen characters also to introduce people to FATE.

This was a really great supplement to start on my adventure of GMing, and it was good for the players who had never done any RPGing before. I even used it with my parents and they really got into it. This is something I will use more down the road, especially when my kids get old enough to start playing.