You’ll be able to play the Adventure Time RPG in D&D 5E

The upcoming Adventure Time RPG will be made compatible with D&D 5E and other systems via a series of rules conversion supplements, its designer has confirmed.

Announced last month, the Adventure Time RPG will adapt the beloved Cartoon Network show into a tabletop RPG set in the world of Ooo, home to Jake (the dog), Finn (the human), Marceline (the vampire) and more.

The core rulebook will be based on an original gameplay system, Yes And, that makes use of a pool of six custom dice for a beginner-friendly approach to resolving skill tests. Players roll a single Yes/No die based on the difficulty of the check - the colour and related success probability of the die modified by any relevant traits - to check whether they succeed, with a second And/But die adding potential complications to the result.

While Yes And will be the intended way to play the Adventure Time RPG, designer Matt Fantastic told Dicebreaker that the game’s upcoming Kickstarter - currently due to launch later this summer - would include a number of zine supplements that convert the game to other existing systems.

“I think Yes And is awesome. I think it's great. I'm really excited about it, I've been having a ton of fun playing it. To a large degree, you make the stuff you want to play. But I'm not also so hubristic to feel that this is the best system for everyone. And that everyone's gonna say, ‘This is the absolute best way to play an Adventure Time RPG,’” Fantastic acknowledged.

“And so, we do still want to be able to have people that are fans of the Adventure Time property, but really want, say, a crunchier game or really want to do something in the style of a system that they really love - we want to make that accessible to people.”

Among the systems confirmed to be supported by the rules conversion supplements will be 9th Level Games’ Polymorph system - which powers the RPG adaptation of board game Return to Dark Tower and indie titles such as Rebel Scum and Mazes - and Wizards of the Coast’s hugely popular Dungeons & Dragons 5E.

“Yes And is designed to be easy to pick up and easy to kind of hit in the margins. It's not a whole effort to learn. But, hey, you want to just play a 5E one-shot Adventure Time story? Awesome. Here's how you do it. Here's the math. It's pretty straightforward,” Fantastic said of the 5E supplement, which they described as “a little bit of a thicker volume” compared to the Polymorph zine.

The supplements will help guide players to including elements of Adventure Time’s fantasy land of Ooo - such as its inhabitants and creatures - as well as planned adventures for the game, in their D&D and Polymorph campaigns by translating the Yes And system’s colour-coded dice rolls to 5E’s d20 system or Polymorph’s use of various polyhedral dice.

“The idea is to make it accessible to anybody that wants to play around in it, and to kind of meet people where they are,” Fantastic said. “I think when people get a chance to play more of the Yes And stuff, they're going to enjoy it. And they're going to like it. But, at the end of the day, some people just really want that crunchy tactical system. And we're not that, but - especially with something like this where it is this IP, it's Adventure Time - every single person that hears Adventure Time: The RPG, I want to be excited and able to play it. Whether or not it's using our system, or adjusted to whatever else.”