100 Days of Halloween: Cupcake Witches

Continuing my exploration into the Witch RPGs on Itch.io I ran across this one and had to grab it.

As always I will be following my rules for these reviews.

Cupcake Witches

This is version 2.0 of the game. The price is 3.50€ for 10 pages. Converting that over to what I spent, about $4.00 US (back in February) that comes to about ¢40 a page.  The PDF is full color and there is a print-friendly version.

The design, writing and layout is by Steffie de Vaan. The cover was edited by friend of the Other Side, Elizabeth Chaipraditkul.

The introduction from the game:

"You’re a coven of witches running a cupcake bakery together. You’re fantastic at your job and swimming in orders, so it would be really great if the local demons could cut out their bullshit.

Yes, demons—the actual, literal kind from Hell wreaking havoc upon humanity."

Ok! Many of you know I love witches and my oldest kid is a pastry chef now. So honestly this gets all sorts of immediate buy-in for me.

Requirements for the game outside of the rules? 2d6 per player and all the cupcakes. Tea or coffee too. Again. This has my attention.

The game discusses the use of the X-Card mechanic. Fine. No problem with that.  What follows is a description of the world. We have all seen this one before "it's a world like our own but magic is real..." the default supernatural world then.  Character creation as after that. You describe your witch, what power(s) they have, motivations, and so on.  There is your role in the bakery and a neat little mechanic called Approach. This is Sugar, Spice, and Sprinkles. These are, try to get things done as nicely as possible, getting things done in a forceful manner, and saying "the hell with it" and using magic. Respectively.  Every witch has a 1 in each and then 3, 2, and 1 points to put into the three categories. So scores of 4, 3, and 2.  You decide how you want to approach each problem.

There is a nice little table of relationships. You roll d6x2 (not exactly a 2d6) and get two relationships.  You work with other players and characters here. So a roll of 1 indicates you have another character who is your bestie. This one is worked out with another player.  

There are demons, hunters and other witches that can come into your lives and bakery. You must deal with them.  

The idea is to be a fun little game (it is described as a micro-RPG) to spend an afternoon with. Personally, a rainy and cold afternoon in the fall would be perfect. Bake some cupcakes or muffins, put the kettle on, and have some fun.

There is even a nice random plot generator that honestly is flexible enough to use anywhere.

This game also shares mechanics with de Vaan's other game, Wights which also looks fun.

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I would use this as background material for figuring out some major NPCs in my War of the Witch Queens.  I can see taking my members of the Tredecim and working out "Cupcake Stats" for them all.  

Larina would be: 

Sugar: 4 Spice: 2 Sprinkles: 3
Motivation: Witchcraft
Role: Barista
Personal Power: Read emotions

I'll have to work on the relationships. 

It is a fun little game and would be an amusing time with the right group while say making cookies or cupcakes.  I would say everyone has to decorate a cupcake to be a spell and then you get to eat it when you use it.