Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game PAX East Demo Impressions

Kaiju are running amok and you must contain the threat!

Disclaimer: I am currently backing the project on Kickstarter. That will have no impact on this review of our playtest at PAX East.

I must confess that before I get into the meat of this impressions article, I am relatively new to the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) genre. The system I know the most is Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition both as a player and a DM (the person who runs the game). The only other TTRPG system that I've played, albeit briefly, is Pathfinder's 2nd edition. That being said, the more the video game space continues to nickle and dime their customers (which is hypocritical given my adoration for D&D while Wizards of the Coast continues to nickle and dime its customers) and continues to not respect the time of the player, I find myself gravitating more toward the TTRPG genre. Currently, I have games lined up with friends to try out the Fallout and Ghostbusters systems.

Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game is set in the Kai-Sei Era where humanity has been forced to adapt to kaiju roaming the planet. You play as a member of G-Force, a military unit made up on humans to deal with the kaiju and stave off any destruction that comes their way.

The Playtest

We had a table of four: myself, a brilliant content creator names Oehrchen, fellow Dad Wabba and a random player named Kevin. Our DM (deck master in this game) was Ellen, the Head Editor at IDW Publishing. She laid our four, our of the available twelve, pre-made characters for us to choose from. I chose Jackson "Jackhammer" Johnson, a very gruff, rage filled tank character that had a large seismic jackhammer as his weapon of destruction.

The Character Sheet

A standard character sheet. I played as Jackson "Jackhammer" Jones.

Your character will have four main stats: Coordination (dexterity, agility and reflexes), Mindfulness (tenacity, communication and intuition), Intelligence (researching, problem-solving, planning) and Strength (stamina, health, brawn).

All four of these main stats are represented by the suits in a deck of cards. At our time of playing, spades was Coordination, hearts were Mindfulness, diamonds were Intelligence and clubs were Strength. The suit is important and I'll touch on that during the "Action Economy" section. Your character will also have abilities, gear, traits and bonds that you can add to your main stat bonus to help achieve your desired outcome.

The Mechanics

As I mentioned in my opener, I am used to D&D style dice roll games. Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game is entirely card based system where you use playing cards to control your fate. Each player takes five cards off of the top which go in your hand and considered your Destiny Cards. Destiny Cards and be used to help resolve challenges for your character, but are discarded upon use. A player can only receive more Destiny Cards has a reward for completing a challenge.

Once all Destiny Cards are in the hands of the players, the rest of the deck is used as the Chance Deck. These cards are used to help (black cards) or hinder (red cards) the players during challenge rounds. The DM also has their own cards as they continue to build time on the Crisis Clock.

Unlike systems like D&D and Pathfinder, Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game uses a clock mechanic every time a round of actions are completed. As the clock start to hit thresholds, things happens in the world. The actions can help the players, or in our case, it can bring upon some kind of humanoids that are trying to claw our faces off. The Crisis Clock is a great job to build suspense as our 4-man squad tried to meet our objective.

These will either save your life or end it.

The Action Economy

Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game's action economy is quite simple: you choose to do either an action or an assist. We were playing the starter set and I am not going to go into specifics because I don't want to spoil anything for folks, but our job was to go to a G-Force base and find out why the clean-up team's comms went dark.

We arrived at the facility and immediately are DM asked the standard TTRPG question: "What do you want to do?" My character, the big ole brute, went investigating for bodies. Our de-facto captain, Cordell Newton (played by Chen) wanted to use his scanner to see if he could pick up on any movement and do a wide sweep of the facility. Hawk, our resident hacker (played by Wabba), wanted to send his drone to assist with the sweep and our Doctor (played by Kevin) wanted to use his Kai Sei scanner to see if there any significant spikes of Kai Sei energy, which may imply a kaiju is near.

Once you've stated what you want to do, the DM will choose the main stat is falls under. Let's use our character sheet for Jackhammer as an example. As we moved throughout the facility, we came across a door that was locked due to security protocol. Jackhammer wanted to put his seismic jackhammer where the doors meet and try to jack it open.

I would start with my strength modifier (+5), then choose one ability to help. I chose strongarm (+4), a piece of gear which was my seismic jackhammer (+5) and up to three traits that Jackhammer can use. I chose shortfuse, manual labor and no problem too big - all giving me a +3. I am currently sitting at a +17. This is where the Destiny Cards come in to play. I can choose to burn a card from my hand and add it to the score. If you choose a card with the same suit as your main ability - it is an automatic +10. In this instance, any club would give me +27 overall while any other suit would just give me the number on the card.

Once I've made my decision on my Destiny Card, I pull the top card from the Chance Deck. If I pull a black suit, I use that number to increase my score while a red card will decrease my score. Once the result is in play, the DM will choose what happens based on the challenge's "score to beat" and the story moves on.

Once all four players have finished a turn, the DM draws a Crisis Clock card and we move to the next round.

Overall Impressions

I was at a table with three new TTRPG players, two of them joining me because they were my friends and just wanted to make me happy. Both Chen and Wabba came away surprised at how much they enjoyed playing the two hour PAX demo of Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game. Once they were comfortable with their characters (and some roleplay prodding from yours truly), they started to really dive into the creative side of TTRPGs.

The system itself is pretty easy to understand and I felt the first challenge round really did a good job proving how easy and surprisingly versatile, the system is. The story was fun and engaging while the Crisis Clock really puts you on the edge of your seat. Every time our DM drew a card and gave us our number, we waited with baited breath. There was one point where she drew a two, announced our timer has moved up to 22 and looked at the Crisis Clock sheet on her DM screen. A smile crawled across her face as she nonchalantly stated "You don't really recognize any changes". It is moments that like that will make Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game a wonderful time as players have to strategize their actions while also thinking about a kaiju, maybe even the big one, crashing through their building and causing chaos.

Admittedly, I left a lot on the play mat because TTRPG systems need to be experienced. We did have combat, which I won't discuss because of spoilers, but the combat system closely monitored the action economy system. There are rewards (winning a combat encounter) and cost (losing one) as well as a willpower system that is used as your HP.

If you want to back the project, you can check out their Kickstarter that ends on April 2, 2026.