Pizza Roles preview — We’ve all been there
Let the pizza fight begin!
You get your entire group together, and then the question comes up, what do we get on the pizza? I think we’ve all been there, especially if you’re into the tabletop hobby. Jan hates sausage, Dave wants extra mushrooms, and Lindsey must have anchovies, for some ungodly reason. And worse, no one really wants to just say what they want. They just talk around it. Well, Pizza Roles by Thomas Mathews is a card game about that exact interaction.
Up to six players will each get one character card, which also doubles as a convenient reference on the back, and 5 conversation cards. Each character wants only certain things on the pizza, such as “Carnivore Cate,” who just loves the meat, or “Hawaiian Huey,” who only wants a Hawaiian pizza. Each conversation card will then manipulate the pizza. There’s a “How About…” card that adds or removes a single ingredient, or a “What do you want?” card passes the buck to someone else so you can suss out why they’re acting the way they are. There are a few special cards, too, like “Social Anxiety” which can’t be played, or “This is my hill to die on” which locks an ingredient in place.
The interplay between these cards is what makes the game tick. You have 5 actions to get to the point where you’re happy with the pizza, and if you can’t, you lose. See, each character’s goals include positive and negative points. Foodie Faye, for example, gains points for each ingredient on the pizza, but starts at negative points, meaning she NEEDS to load the pizza up with whatever she can. Picky Pete, on the other hand, really only likes a few ingredients, and REALLY hates others. Figuring out who’s who quickly means that you can help find a compromise that, at the very least, works for you. Whether it works for anyone else? That’s their problem. The game has friendly ties, but at the end of the day, you only want what’s good for you. This is especially true when there are multiple roles that directly contradict each other. Friendly Fred wants as many people to be happy with the pizza as possible, while Mean Mel can really only enjoy his food if most of his friends hate it.
Of course, the game comes with a cooperative version, where there’s two pizzas, and players just have to be happy with one. If your group can’t figure out how to make two pizzas that everyone enjoys, everyone loses. If you’re springing for 2 larges, you really should be able to get something everyone likes, right?
The Origins unpublished board game extravaganza
In the sheer amount of stuff available to see at a major board game convention like Origins, it’s easy to overlook the little guy. That’s where the unpub section of the con comes into play. In it, intrepid independent board game developers all sit eager to show off
James van Tonningen
There are a few other wrinkles, such as flipping an ingredient card to make it “double toppings”, making it worth twice as much (or subtracting twice as much). The prototype we received was extremely convenient, fitting in a standard poker box, meaning this is a game that you can take literally anywhere or everywhere. It only took about 10 minutes per game, and everyone was eager to go again, game after game. I figure it might even be a decent way to actually decide on a pizza if your friend group is being obstinate.It’s on Kickstarter right now, ending on March 5th, and is running for $15 USD. If you miss the Kickstarter, don’t fret, you can still order it through the Kickstarter as a late pledge. We’ve followed this one from the Unpub tables at Origins 2024, and I was super excited to be able to preview it here, so check out its Kickstarter page now.
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