I’ll always be surprised that Gravity Falls never got the licensed TTRPG treatment. Not only did it land just as the licensed TTRPG boom got into full swing, but its general setup of young kids encountering weird and wonderful creatures in a new town seems tailor-made for a TTRPG. Thankfully, the lack of an official Gravity Falls TTRPG has allowed indie designers to make my dreams come true. Maple Mysteries is one such game, as its fun mechanics and nice setup make it perfect for living out my Gravity Falls dreams.
Maple Mysteries is set in a small, isolated town called Hamlet. While this town may seem dull and mundane, it is home to mysteries, conspiracies, and many weird goings-on, even if the local adults are oblivious to them. However, when some new teens arrive in town, they quickly find themselves entangled in these mysteries, forcing them to put all of their skills to the test.
A Unqiue Dice System Brings Chaos And Creativity
Characters in Maple Mysteries consist of 6 approaches (Brave, Cunning, Quick, Smart, Flashy, and Careful) and 6 maneuvers (Force, Move, Brain, Sense, Talk, and Tinker), with the former representing the character’s attitude to the world around them and the second representing the skills they’ve built up during their life. During character creation, players pick their character’s age, body type, star sign, and personality archetype, each with each choice adding points to one or more approaches or maneuvers. After this, players get two sets of three points to distribute among their approaches and maneuvers as they see fit. This means that Maple Mysteries supports many different characters, meaning it’s easy to create someone who suits your favorite playstyle or come up with something wild and unique.
By default, Maple Mysteries is built around a D6 dice pool system (however, in a nice touch, the game has alternative rules for players who wish to use polyhedral dice). When a player attempts something with a chance of failure, they decide what approach and maneuver their character will use to perform the action (e.g., a character trying to sprint away from a threat would combine the Move maneuver with the Quick approach. A character attempting to pick a lock without being detected would combine the Tinker maneuver with the Careful approach).
The player gets one D6 for each point their character has in the selected maneuver and approach. The player then rolls these dice and picks the highest result. If this result is three or under, the player fails to accomplish the action and endures consequences. A four or five means the action succeeded, but unforeseen consequences happen. The action succeeds without extra consequence if the highest roll is a six. And finally, if the player rolls two sixes, they get a critical success, meaning things go better than expected.
While this dice system may seem complex on paper, it’s highly intuitive during play. This system also fantastically captures the chaotic vibe of Gravity Falls and similar supernatural adventure shows and makes it work as a TTRPG. The approach and maneuver system encourages players to approach situations from unique angles and concoct outside-the-box solutions to problems. On top of this, the dice system introduces a fun sense of unpredictability to proceedings. As the result is decided by the highest roll, even the most skilled characters have a chance of failure, meaning players are always on the edge of their seats.
Maple Mysteries also includes a few extra interesting mechanics that build on this dice system, allowing GMs to create a massive variety of scenes. This includes rules for stealth, ones for defined combat, and ones for performing both regular and ritual magic, meaning each table can tell whatever story their heart desires.
A Well-Fleshed Out Introduction Makes It Perfect For New Players
One thing I do appreciate about Maple Mysteries is its very robust introduction. This section starts by explaining what a TTRPG is and defines some of the space’s most common slang in an easy-to-understand way. After this, the book has a robust guide to safety tools (inspired by Kienna Shaw and Bryant-Monk’s TTRPG Safety Toolkit) and how to use them.
I’m a big fan of the game’s “Bells and Whistles” and “Stars and Wishes” check-in systems. The first pair is used during the game, with bells being a way for a player to indicate the scene is heading towards something that makes them uneasy, while whistles act like the traditional X-card. This is a fantastic way to phrase the idea, as it’s easy to remember and very intuitive, meaning that using the tools quickly becomes second nature. The second pair, “Stars and Wishes,” are used when the session ends. Stars allow players to highlight things they enjoyed in the session, and Wishes are things the players would like to see in future sessions. Like Bells and Whistles, this is a delightfully intuitive system that helps players vocalize their wants and helps GMs refine their skills in a structured and non-confrontational way.
While this section’s length may seem slightly overkill for long-time TTRPG fans, the game’s atmosphere and style will likely attract a younger audience, meaning there is a non-zero chance this may be someone’s first TTRPG, making this section and its detail a welcome addition.
The Game Has Set Itself Up For Future Success
I also love the world-building stuff included at the back of the book. It does a fantastic job of balancing the mundane and the strange while also playing into the idea that the player characters are all teenagers, each with their own quirks. For example, the weapons table contains everything from regular tennis balls to magic sticks and wooden swords. The same goes for the pre-made enemies, as they include regular threats like wolves and school bullies alongside wacky supernatural creatures like sock zombies and Smurfs, meaning that this section does a good job of helping GMs craft stories that tonally complement the game’s mechanics.
The game is still in the playtesting phase as of the time of writing, so some roughness is to be expected. The biggest issue I found during my time with the game was the lack of a quick reference sheet. The game has quite a few mechanics, and while they mesh together nicely during play, remembering them in the heat of the moment can feel a little overwhelming at times, so having something to glance at would be a massive help.
Additionally, I think the game would be helped by a layout that better splits the core rules from the more specific and specialized ones (or even moving the specialized rules into their own supplement). The current structure makes the game seem overwhelming because many new GMs may think they understand all the rules. Thankfully, these issues can easily be fixed in later updates, meaning they are far from deal breakers.
Maple Mysteries’ well-designed TTRPG mechanics do a great job of evoking the fun, explorative, but gently spooky atmosphere of Gravity Falls and similar shows. Its dice pool system means players always feel like they’re in slightly over their heads and at constant risk of getting entangled in something they don’t fully understand. However, its unique character creation system means that players can approach every situation from many different angles, meaning that players are always encouraged to swing for the fences and attempt whatever plan pops into their brains.
