The “job gone bad,” is a classic noir and crime movie trope, and for good reason. It is always thrilling to see the usually competent lead characters come within inches of their goal only to have it snatched away at the last moment. Plus, in the Hays Code era, it was a way for directors to tell stories about criminals while sidestepping the code’s demands that criminals could never come out on top. On The Bubble by Nick Kornek combines this trope and a clever central mechanic to create an exciting storytelling TTRPG about criminals on the run.
In On The Bubble, players step into the shoes of a gang of criminals whose seemingly perfectly planned job blew up in their faces. While they were able to grab some loot, one or more of their team are dead, and the area is teeming with witnesses. So, they are left with only one choice, to hightail it back to their hideout before the police turn up and drag them all to jail.
A Job Goes Wrong And Chaos Ensues
Like most games, each game of On The Bubble starts with the player creating their criminal. Each player is given a spread of numbers, which they assign to their four stats: Dirty, Nasty, Fast, and Smart. Each character also has one to three Hang-Ups that represent bits of their past that could come back to haunt them during play.
The moment-to-moment gameplay of On The Bubble is based around a “push your luck” dice system. During the game, each player maintains their own pool of dice, dubbed “The Bubble.”
Whenever a player attempts a risky action, they can either Inflate their pool (by adding another dice to it) or Pop the Bubble (don’t add more dice but remove all the dice from your pool after making the roll). After making this decision, the player rolls their entire pool of dice and adds up the total amount. After this, they add their stats before factoring in relevant Hang-ups or injuries to get their final total.
Players then compare this final total to the total of their previous roll. They successfully complete the action if their new roll exceeds their previous one. However, the action fails if this roll is lower than the previous one.
Even more interestingly, the strength of the success or failure depends on the number of dice in your pool. If you succeed with a two-dice pool, your success merely leads to a benefit. However, do the same with seven dice in your pool, and you get a miraculous result that massively helps you and the rest of your team. Of course, the same is true for failures. Failing with a small pool merely sets your character back a little, but failing with a massive pool leads to terrible things happening to you and your crew.
The Bubble Makes Every Roll Important
The Bubble mechanic is the game’s best element, adding tension and making each roll feel like a big deal. One reason for this is that the game’s risks and rewards are perfectly balanced. While players can attempt to strategize and work out the odds of passing or failing, there is never a definitive solution, forcing them to act with their hearts, leading to some excellent storytelling moments.
This is enhanced by the fact that, while failure can lead to terrible things, taking a massive risk and failing doesn’t totally eliminate the player or their criminal from the TTRPG. In On The Bubble, if you roll with only a single die in your pool, any number over one is considered a success, meaning a player is almost guaranteed to succeed on the first action after a big failure. This, combined with the fact that players are unlikely to fail on their second and third actions (due to how few dice are involved,) means that players can quickly rebuild their dice pool and get back into the action. Because of this, players can indulge in risky behavior more often, which fits the game’s central theme and leads to an overall more exciting game.
Encouraging Players To Find The Fun In Failure
The Bubble mechanic also helps regulate the game’s pacing. At first, players must focus on small tasks to increase their dice pool. But, due to the success and failure system, these early small-dice pool actions will only have minor or short-term consequences. However, as the scene continues, the player’s dice pools will get bigger, leading to more impressive successes and even more painful failures that can utterly change the story. Because of this natural pacing aid, On The Bubble would be an excellent game for newbie GMs or those looking to dip their toes into GM’ing.
On The Bubble is a really enjoyable storytelling TTRPG that perfectly captures the feeling of a heist gone wrong and the chaos that follows as the wannabe criminals throw things at the wall as they attempt to escape in one piece. The central Bubble mechanic leads to plenty of exciting ups and downs as players stack up small wins, only to be knocked back down again, forcing them to constantly regroup and change their plans, meaning that the game perfectly captures how panic-inducing it can be to see your best-laid plans go totally wrong.
