Reviewing Random Games From the Trans Rights for Texas Bundle No.3: Pull Over I Need to Pee
Credits
Author: Ben R.
vaynor.itch.io
Review
~By Emil
So I recently bought the ttRPGs for Trans Rights in Texas Bundle and it has way more games than I will ever be able to play. Mostly I’m just opening up random files looking for interesting or useful stuff to put in my games. I have zero qualifications but Pull Over I Have to Pee has a cool premise and I wanted to talk about it. If you are just scrolling through the hundreds of games in this bundle it would be easy to ignore based on its cover and title. But you would be missing out on a useful tool for enhancing travel and exploration in your game. You can read the whole thing in less than 5 minutes. My players and I loved it.
Pull Over I Have to Pee is a tool for making travel more interesting. The centerpiece is a table for generating bathroom breaks and other pit stops. It’s not as silly as it seems at first. Travel is notoriously difficult to make interesting in RPGs. This game does a great job capturing the quirky people and places you see on a long road trip. It makes the world feel more lived-in and helps your characters feel like they are progressing through space instead of teleporting from location to location.
There isn’t very much to review except for the bathroom break table
There is really only one mechanic in the game. Use a deck of standard playing cards to randomly generate bathroom breaks on the table. 52 cards in the deck, 52 prompts on the table. Draw cards when you think it’s appropriate, then stop when you feel like you have had enough. If you are looking for more advice, it does suggest that you draw one card a day while you are traveling, or play through the whole deck as a worldbuilding exercise.
I think the lack of mechanics is fine for the most part. As written, the system works perfectly for travel. Draw one or two cards for flavor during an otherwise boring trip and you are golden. However, it’s a bit monotonous if you are playing a stand-alone game or doing a longer session for worldbuilding. If you wanted to play through all 52 cards I think the game would benefit from some additional mechanics. Maybe a cool-down phase in between card draws.
OK, but the table is great, though
I had some friends over so we ended up drawing cards and just reading prompts to each other. Even without a predetermined setting we were all totally engrossed for about 90 minutes. The prompts are thoughtful and well designed. Each prompt has two parts, a location, and then a question about an event or a quirk you discover while you are there. The locations are evocative but open-ended enough to fit into any setting. The questions do a great job of inspiring RP moments. Everyone naturally wanted to draw cards and flesh out locations even without any mechanical incentives. I think what caught me the most off guard was how eager everyone was to RP in the world created by each prompt. We started out just looking at the cards. Then we ended up spending 20-30 minutes in each place with fully fleshed-out characters. Everyone was inventing NPCs and giving each other story arcs. We went on an absurdly long quest to acquire some back-ordered parts for a bathroom door. We smuggled kybur crystals across imperial borders. And saved a small town from an invasive plant species. None of this was really planned. Just looking at the table inspired a great Sci-Fi setting that we all wanted to play in.
My one small gripe is about the organization. The table is broken up into four different sections, one for each suit in a deck of cards. However, none of the prompts in each section are related to each other, or different from the prompts in any other section. I would have loved it if there was more of a sense of progression or variety. I think it would have helped with structure in a longer game if each suit had more of a distinctive flavor.
Conclusion
Pull Over I Need to Pee isn’t a game so much as a delivery system for a random bathroom break table. The upshot is that it is a fantastic table. If you are looking to spice up your travel with an interesting and thoughtful minigame, put this bathroom break table into your game. If you are looking for a stand-alone world-building game with an interesting perspective, you might need to add a little bit more structure to make this game work.