The Neopets tabletop RPG has shared its beta playtest document, 7 months after the product was meant to be delivered to crowdfunding backers. While a select number of testers saw the game’s alpha playtest, this is the first complete rules document to be shared with the public. The TTRPG community has not been kind – and it’s mainly because the game is a messy, unfinished hack of Dungeons and Dragons.
The Neopets RPG successfully funded in August 2024, earning $426,519 from supporters. The Kickstarter page describes the game as “a dice-driven system of classless, skill-based experience, leveling your characters and determining what they will do”. Species, stats, and traits are mentioned as core gameplay features, alongside signature features from the original digital pet web game – think BattleDomes, PetPets, and more.
Crucially, the original crowdfunder does specify that the game “originally started as a D&D 5e system”. “We decided about a year and a half ago to ultimately make it its own system and have used 5e and Pathfinder as a basis for many of the core, tried and true mechanics of a dice-driven TTRPG system.” “A d20 is used to resolve many dice rolls, many checks refer to your specific stats, etc.”
“A lot of it is going to feel very familiar to a D&D player”, it says. However, publisher Geekify also states that those original rules have “undergone some extensive modifications, reworks, and re-imaginings”. Backers might be forgiven, then, for assuming that the finished product would be more distinct from Dungeons and Dragons than it actually is.
On the first page of the playtest, Geekify establishes that it uses material from D&D’s 5.2.1 Systems Reference Document. Although there are no DnD classes to speak of, the system relies on many core principles from the world’s biggest TTRPG.
Characters are defined by ability scores and skills, and their powers take the form of spells and feats (though these were later renamed ‘powers’ and ‘perks’). Many of the skills are identical to D&D’s, and most of the spell list is directly copied over from the SRD. Lightning Bolt and Misty Step both appear, for example, as well as a version of Vicious Mockery that deals fire instead of psychic damage.
Traits like Darkvision, Tremorsense, and Truesight all appear. Characters can have advantage and disadvantage, but these now stack. We have opportunity attacks and grappling, bloodied creatures and death saving throws, and even references to a ‘Material Realm’ when there was apparently no reference to such in the original Neopets game.
Where Neopets does diverge from D&D, it does so in complex and often confusing ways. All skills have a Passive version that can be privately checked by the DM, and every NPC gets a full character sheet, as complex as those given to player-characters. That adds a lot of bookkeeping.
The system relies on numerous resources, many of which have extremely similar names. A character’s Armor Class and Resistance Class determine what incoming damage they take. Characters spend Level Points on new abilities, Action Points in turn-based combat, Stamina Points on Perk powers, and Hit Points when they get hurt. There is a stress system, as well as a vices and virtues system that fleshes out a Neopet’s personality.
Another unique feature of the system is how it approaches dice. Instead of an ability score modifier, your Neopet’s ability score determines the size of die you roll when resolving a skill check. This can range from a d4 all the way up to a d20, and if in-game effects modify the size any further, you might even end up rolling d4s with disadvantage or d20s with advantage. D&D’s standard proficiency and expertise rules also apply.
The ability scores themselves are rather woolly. Strength covers all forms of physical might, but also “the strength of their convictions and the force of their personality”. Defence determines how easily you withstand damage, but also how perceptive you are. Agility is the stat for nimble movement, but also the ability “to think quickly, reason, and be creative”. Endurance decides your physical health, as well as wisdom and memory. Finally, there’s Magic, which covers your Neopet’s charisma and insight alongside any magical prowess they might have.
There’s a clear attempt here to give each stat value in combat and non-combat scenarios, even if it severely stretches the original meaning of each stat’s name. However, the Neopets playtest has been heavily criticized for its heavy focus on violent scenarios over non-violent ones.
D&D was originally a combat-heavy dungeon crawler, so its rules inherently spotlight the tools needed to skirmish. NeoPets appears to do the same, offering very few mechanics for anything beyond dealing damage to hostile opponents. There’s a small, Pokémon-style section on capturing PetPet companions, but not much else.
The original web browser game does feature combat thanks to its signature BattleDomes. However, many critics of the game have argued that Neopets is less about violence and more about caring for a pet and playing non-violent games together. Commenters on the playtest document repeatedly lambast the NeoPets RPG for placing too much emphasis on combat.
They also point out other anachronisms that don’t seem to suit the Neopets brand – for example, the inclusion of medieval equipment like torches and waterskin when Neopets are known to have hospitals and mobile phones. Another section of the playtest provides advice on agreeing how much sexual content a game of the Neopets RPG should include, while the playtest adventures feature bandit characters that drink alcohol and make comments that some backers have interpreted as homophobic.
A Reddit user claiming to be part of the Neopets RPG dev team has since responded to claims that the game’s focus is too heavily placed on combat. “I think anyone coming into this expecting it to be an exclusive mirror of performing dailies on the site is going to be a bit disappointed”, they say in one Reddit thread. “We’ve been very clear from the offset that this has been designed from day one to be set within the ‘lore’ world of Neopets where the Neopets are people and not animals owned by humans.”
“The campaign book is an adaptation of the Faeries Ruin plot. I cannot imagine a way you could build a campaign around Faerieland falling and an invasion of monsters where the significant gameplay is exclusively fishing and picking berries.” “That is not to say that you cannot do those things – the campaign book’s drafts include mechanics for the Deserted Fairground’s games, for example. But sometimes people fight in Neopia and as a beta test, we need to know if the mechanics we’ve come up with work around tables in the wild.”
“I think there’s maybe some confusion in people taking this as a presentation of all we’ve got, rather than just a slice of stuff we’d like feedback on to improve”, they add. “That’s almost certainly on us for not properly managing that expectation.”
The unfinished nature of the playtest has, however, also been an area for critique. Social media posts on Bluesky show that the original Google Doc was missing Perks content, instead providing the text: “This work has not been paid for by John Taylor of Geekify”.
Geekify later addressed this on the Neopets Kickstarter page, saying “some internal drama occurred with one of our more recent hires, and he had a misunderstanding about the work, and we had some mutual miscommunication about it. It’s regrettable and we hate to see him go, but the outburst on public documents was also not a great way to respond.” Currently, the Perks section of the playtest document says it is “under construction”.
Wargamer has reached out to this Reddit user to verify that they are part of the Neopets development team. We have also contacted Geekify for further comment, but we have not yet received a response. It is currently unclear when backers will receive a finished copy of the Neopets TTRPG.
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