No Nut November

I had a god damn ball.  I was a little miffed at using the more random design for special abilities but I ended up loving the character and would encourage others to do so as well.  As an added bonus, every time we didn't know if the squirrels could do a thing we googled it and I had a drink every time I learned a new squirrel factoid.  Just a fantastic set up from the mechanics to the bizarro world of super intelligent rodents.  

I strongly reccomend.

I just played this and it's great.  Absolutely brutal, I almost killed myself one-shotting a boar with the Super Strength power and then spent a day desperately grubbing for safe food in order to eat enough to recover. The amount of power you can bring to bear on a problem with energy, compared to how scarce energy can be, is brilliant - I felt like an unstoppable badass and a bottom-feeding prey animal in the same short session.

It's rare that you see a game commit so hard to the bit that the bit passes over it, and through it, and leaves it serene and deeply changed.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is that No Nut November (Squirrels Of The Post Apocalypse) is a heck of a thing.

The PDF is 5 pages, in a simple but readable zine style layout. There's just enough art, and it's placed perfectly. Visually, nothing feels undercooked.

Lore-wise, No Nut takes place in a humanity-induced post apocalypse. You play as mutated squirrels on a quest for nuts.

The premise is goofy, but I have never seen writing that so finely walks the razor line between "this is a fully fleshed out setting" and "this whole thing is an immaculate comedy routine." Like, the GM is called the Nut Master, but also the game seems to have genuinely researched squirrel diets and metabolism and presents that information to the reader in an accessible way.

Mechanics-wise, No Nut runs on kind of a nut currency. Rolling skill tests requires energy, which you get from nuts. You can also spend energy for rerolls, although it's much more costly than making the original roll, and you take damage if you're out of energy and want to spend it anyway.

There is some definite crunch to No Nut. Stats all have separate pools, character builds are a possibility, there's weapons and armor you can equip, as well as unique mutations for different characters. 

For GMs---er, I mean Nut Masters, there's a bestiary, safety tools, and an adventure hook generator.

Also everything is a treat to read. I cannot stress that enough. This book is a joy just to read through, even for folks who don't ever play it.

Overall, this game may be tricky to verbally recommend to other people without some short term confusion, but it is absolutely worth the effort. It's concise, but is incredibly charming with both its writing and its mechanics. It's oneshot friendly, but could definitely be run as a short campaign as well. I would strongly recommend this to most ttrpg players.

Minor Issues:

-There's a number of places where Sniffling is written as Sniffing, primarily on page 3. This might be the result of an autocorrect.