Inhuman Conditions Review - The 5 Minute Blade Runner RPG

okay so i hope to show with that intro how the wrapper that this game is served in is like a greasy fast food burger meaning that you want to gobble it all up before you even know exactly what it is if you brought out a big old bunch of cool two-player games for you and a friend to play i would be amazed if they didn't say that one as soon as they saw this weird oblong machine and luckily for them they picked a treat as what's inside is full of surprise tension and existential horror but what you have here is a weird box not just in its presentation or gameplay but in the specificities of who you play it with and how you play it so disclaimer this game might not be for everyone but i think it is most certainly interesting and unique so with that in mind what's it all about in a nutshell in human conditions is a game that models an intense interrogation between an investigator and a potential undercover robot where you'll be playing what the designers call conversational judo you are an investigator your task is to do your job cleanly efficiently and with as little unnecessary murder as possible in this interview you'll be the one pitching questions trying your best to disarm your opponent and understand who or what they are you are a suspect your task is to get out of this interview intact and not sent to a robot processing facility where they turn human-like robots back into the toasters they evolve from in your interview you will likely be convincing the interviewer that you are a regular person and not at all any kind of robotic being by answering a barrage of catch 2049 questions we start each interview with a job given to the suspect to give them an overarching character for the game perhaps they're a maker of false animals or an amateur wrestler then a topic plucked by the suspect from this deck small talk creative problem solving what about moral failings or threat assessment the investigator takes a pile of these prompts and the suspect draws a catalyzer giving them their true identity an identity that will be tailored specifically around the topic picked it is your job as the investigator to find out exactly what is on this suspect's card by the end of five precious minutes where you'll stamp them as either a robot or a human you can either pursue your interview by following the prompts that you've got in front of you very very strictly or you can freewheel specific lines of inquiry based on the responses given trying to peel them open like a chat satsuma but what are they trying to hide behind those zesty orangey layers perhaps it might be a clockwork orange on that catalyzer card the suspect knows exactly what they are if they're human they just want to get through the interview and not get stamped as a robot what could be simpler well if you're a patient robot you want exactly the same thing it's not all that easy for the patient robot though on their catalyzer card they're going to have a very specific conversational error that will prevent them from answering questions in very specific ways that are determined by the scenario you're playing and navigating that for five minutes it's gonna be a hot summer nightmare for a very slight and potentially spoilery example imagine yourself having a small talk conversation but not being able to express any opinions only facts on top of this if you accidentally or purposefully do the error that you're not meant to do you have to perform the penalty exactly once and whilst these might not seem so bad like swearing or taking your hands off the table or insulting the investigator they are glaring hot no-no's that the investigator will be keeping their eye on throughout the entirety of your interview but oh no there's another kind of robot what if you're a violent robot in contrast to the patient robot specifically not being allowed to say things in an interview the violent robots specifically have to say three things during an interview they are called their drives and again they're tailored to the specific scenario if they accomplish all of their drives during the interview then they murder the investigator slamming their hands down on the table to signify that it's over the problem is the drives are a bit weird imagine having a small talk conversation with someone but you have to mention an animal in response to a question three times make an animal noise and do the penalty twice and as the investigator you're just trying your best to work out exactly what you're up against each time with your personal victory just determined by getting it right the grid of possibilities looks like this it's a mess it's a horrible grid but it is a grid on which the two of you shall dance a conversational tango tango orange specifically it is simply excellent this relatively simple rule set turns a perfectly normal conversation into dense complex sticky airflow where every single word has the capacity for analysis and over analysis like these penalties as an investigator you can find yourself overlooking them relatively easily and as a robot you can find yourself slipping into them sometimes accidentally and you can do that as a human as well and it means that you're second guessing every single word but you've not got time to do that because the potential for a violent robot means that every single word is a step closer to a potential horrible violent death and the tension just ratchets higher and higher inside the package of a conversation which i find anxiety inducing enough as it is and five minutes it just whips by and then at the end you have yourself one last question the final nail in the coffin or stab in the dark where all the conversational cul-de-sacs finally terminate are they a human or a robot the mad lads went and made the voigt camp test into a board game but i think that in human conditions his party trick is that it lifts the deduction of a social deduction game and drapes it over the core of role playing like a delicious frosting on a meaty cake but first speaking of delicious layers we haven't even discussed how ferociously the rule book and set dressing pursue the goal of total immersion into this thing i'm not talking about how the visuals do this necessarily but what the visuals are kind of baked into first of the production on the box is absolutely gorgeous but i haven't talked about these weird components that come with it like these things that i've been messing around with are stamps that you slam down onto these forms yeah forms with a kind of judicial righteousness the art design is absolutely incredible and i adore the way the game surgically folds outwards into a surface that sits between the two of you and not to mention there's also an app that does a hell of a lot of work in having an atmospheric timer if your regular one isn't immersive enough and this is on top of the dozens of little touches in the rulebook at the end of your interview once you've filled out all the fields on this form and correctly or incorrectly stamped it with what you think they are you hand it to your opponent and you extend a handshake if they're a human they'll give you a handshake right back but if they're a patient robot they'll do it in an obviously weird way that betrays their robotic nature which is the cherry on the top to this weird atmosphere the two of you have created for the last five minutes you know my favorite thing that can happen here is if you falsely stamp your opponent as a so satisfying as a robot when they're not you have to brand yourself with the mark of shame as an investigator and then use the back of the form to write an apology letter to their family dear mrs jones sorry that i thought your son was a toaster please accept this and that's not even mentioning the entire startup phase that i skipped earlier to keep this whole thing terse where the suspect has to follow a calibration maze that the investigator has the answers to if they're a human they have to do a complex little maze but if they're the robot they've got all the answers already also in that phase there's a lovely step where the suspect has to complete the penalty three times for the investigator which both sets the boundaries of what the penalty encompasses but also draws you into the power dynamic of the world that you're sitting in and oh my goodness there's so many other things that i could talk about like the fact that if a robot murders the investigator they get to stamp the form as many times with whatever stamps they want to show that they've done it and oh my goodness it's all so thematic and so juicy and of course if you play this over discord or skype or zoom there are other thematic touches that will get you in the zone just as well as the physical copy like that apology that you'd have to write to an incorrectly robotized suspect you now do that on social media which is embarrassing and kind of hilarious and also in that handshake that you were gonna do at the end of the round if you were both human on skype you hold your hand like this to show that you're a human and the robot just doesn't return it which is amazing and if you're a violent robot you scream at the camera to show that you're a horrible violent robot and you've just broken your programming and now is probably a great time to mention that all of this you can get it as a print and play online for free this whole lavish production you don't even need to bother with it if you just want to give it a whirl with some friends in lockdown and all of this just gets you in the zone apologies for spending so much time on this but i think all this stuff is so deeply important because the game wants you to fully embrace the situation your character is in because if you don't doggedly subscribe to what's happening in front of you all the time then the game just collapses in on itself like a house of post-it notes in early games i found that not sticking to these jobs completely doggedly throughout the interview meant the game falls apart if your opponent is a robot so the game wants to get you into the role-playing space as quickly as possible and what better way to do that than employing these lush decadent visuals it's the fastest way to instantly get those synapses firing and i think that leads nicely on to the main point i want to talk about towards the end of this video and it's the one thing that i think in human conditions does exceedingly well i want to talk about how inhuman conditions handles the cringe so i think it's pretty clear that inhuman conditions is a wonderful game if played at peak role playing and that's the trouble because trying to get people into role-playing is often like trying to coax tom waits out of a dive bar most great rpgs that i've played have only scratched the surface of that greatness because people are just trying to get over their own interior sense of social embarrassment so are bashedly living in a fantasy world and i think most role-playing games or most role-playing gamers struggle with the cringe hell even i have not managed to quite get over it and i almost exclusively play solo rpgs thing is i think in human conditions juicily combats this with a smattering of tricks its strict five minute time load means that no session will ever outstay its welcome if you find it unsatisfying just move on to the next its job system makes onboarding into role playing incredibly easy because it's so so much easier to act a job than a character and then the potential for silliness means that you can take it at whatever tone you fancy inhuman conditions might be the perfect onboarding into role-playing at large offering chunky nuggets of instantly exciting character-driven gameplay that unlock people's potential to exist in an imaginative space in short sharp repeatable bursts i suppose the big negative of inhuman conditions isn't necessarily a criticism but more of a practicality it's very easy to have a two-player game night over something like watergate or calico or curious cargo but in human conditions it's a bit of a hard sell because a two-player interview sparring match isn't necessarily going to be everyone's idea of a good time and that inflexibility means that i'd maybe shy away from recommending it broadly but if this is the kind of thing that you think you'll get a lot of time out of then go right ahead although having said that i do have a couple of serving suggestions if you think it might be the game for you may i recommend playing it with three it's how we played it at all shucks and performing to an audience even of one is great plus you have the added positivity of that other player being able to focus solely on the conversation kind of unrelated but i also adored playing this game without revealing who was what at the end in your series of interviews it made the whole procedure feel very papers pleasey and a little bit like her story or other kind of weird interrogation video gamey things if only you could play it with more than two turns out there are a bunch of extra scenarios in the back of this rulebook like calibration night at the robot factory the great debate and two roombas and a broom that last one designed by alan gerding himself these can scale your game to 4 6 or 20 players and offer some wild new ways to use this box so naturally i have tested all of them at the correct play accounts for the interests of this review i didn't that would be illegal and that's in human conditions a game that is wonderfully distressingly thoughtfully unique and if you want a truly bizarre addition to your collection then it is absolutely worth a look and if you're unsure you can always give it a go on zoom with some pals and that is the end of the video congratulations citizen you have reached the end of this shut up and sit down video review if it pleases you leave us a like and maybe a subscribe or listen to the shut up and sit down podcast it's on spotify and soundcloud in other places have yourself an acceptable day

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 107,187

Rating: 4.9576521 out of 5

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Tom Brewster, Blade Runner, Blade Runner the Game, Inhuman Conditions, free print and play, RPG, roll playing game, blade runner rpg

Id: pLR6yGVJs0Y

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/PityUpvote]

Looks like another game that I LOVE the idea of, and would hate actually playing.

Edit: After this review, Tom Vasel's criticism makes a lot of sense, being a human is not interesting. You want to be seen as a human, but there's no restrictions to how you can act that would make it difficult to come across as human. I'm sure it's interesting for the interrogator, though, are they human, or just a very convincing robot?

[u/PBrown1224]

I can’t give Inhuman Conditions high enough praise. It is so excellent.

But to be clear - this is not a game. It’s an experience. If you don’t feel comfortable roleplaying and can’t get into taking on the job as the interviewee, or the power of the interviewer, then I don’t think this is the experience for you. That being said, this is also such a curated, fine tuned and short experience that if you’re not sure if roleplaying like this is for you, this is a great way to dip your toes into the water.

Also, HUGE support for the game designers Tommy Maranges and Cory O’Brien. Tommy was a part of the team that put out Secret Hitler as well. Their model of making their games completely free and PNP to everyone and then making this lavish, over the top production still at a reasonable price is amazing. I’m excited to try whatever they come out with next and will gladly give them my money so they can keep up their work.

[u/SkabbaTheHut]

Like some others have said, I love the idea of this. Even bought into the kickstarter. And while it was fun to play, it's definitely not... amazing.

I will say, though, roleplaying is a lot of fun even when you're human... Paranoia can strike you as the interrogator which can be quite hilarious.

But I think this is one of those games where it requires the player to do a lot of the heavy lifting. The components you get are simply a starting point for your imagination. Most definitely not a game for everyone. But if you and a buddy enjoy riffing off each other and roleplaying (some of the roles you can potentially get are genuinely interesting) then you might enjoy it!

[u/I_Nut_In_Butts]

Damn I love this guy. Great addition to SU&SD

[u/nailernforce]

Good vid. The ending might be one of my favorite ever. (Except "I don't want to close my eyes" from Matt's last review)

[u/soullessgingerfck]

Do electric Toms dream of androids in Inhuman Conditions?

[u/NanchoMan]

Bought it before you bastards could steal it from me

[u/Bluestank]

How is this game for more than two players? We have a "quaranteam" of 4 people that frequently play these kinds of games (Funemployed, Snake Oil etc). Seems like it would be fun to take turns playing, or I heard there are variants with higher number of players. How does that go?

Edit: ok sorry he touches on it briefly at the end of the video, but I still would like to see what people's thoughts are.

[u/[deleted]]

I demo'd that game at PAX unplugged last year and I thought it was pretty cool