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Too Many Bones: Undertow
A dice-building RPG that turns missed rolls into a backup plan.
Designed by Josh Carlson and Adam Carlson · 2018
If you want a tactical co-op RPG you can finish in an evening and tinker with forever, this is a great way in. Just budget a session or two for the rules to click.
Best for: Solo and two-player gamers who love building a character and rolling dice with real decisions behind them
What it is
Too Many Bones: Undertow is a co-op dice-building RPG from Chip Theory Games, and it's a standalone, so you don't need the original to play. You pick a Gearloc (Undertow gives you Duster, an assassin with a wolf, and Stanza, a bard), then build that character up over a series of encounters by adding and leveling skill dice. Every fight plays out on a chunky battle mat with poker chips for everything. The core loop of growing a hero is the real draw.
The catch
Here's the honest part. The rulebook is rough. Players consistently say to read it, watch a video, then read it again, and they're right. The first session or two you'll be flipping pages mid-fight. It's also heavy, around a 5 out of 6 on complexity, and the base box is built for one or two players. Want three or four? You're buying extra Gearlocs. Dice luck is real too, though the backup plan softens it by letting banked misses trigger effects.
Who it's for
Once it clicks, though, it sings. The components are the best you'll handle in this hobby, the dice decisions actually matter, and you can run a full character arc in an hour to three without committing to a sprawling campaign. People who love min-maxing a build replay the same Gearloc over and over, just changing what they level. It's for solo and two-player folks who want tactical depth and don't mind a steep climb to get there.
What other players say
This write-up is grounded in real reviews and player discussion, not just one opinion. A few worth reading:
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