The first 5 pages are taken up by the usual list of kickstarter backers, random acknowledgments, and legal stuff. Only thing to actually note here is this little quote:
Disclaimer:Any similarities between monsters depicted in this book and monsters who actually exist are purely coincidental.
Har har. Judging by the page numbers the sample should take us halfway through Chapter 2. We miss out on everything from the cities of "Sea-addled, Washtown, Holly Woods (wait that one isn't even a pun), in addition to the Monsters, Spells, and Pantheon. Apparently opposing The Don's faction there appears to be the "Anti-gang" and "Communal Party". There are some "haha this is a real thing but its in a game now" stuff like Arnold Swatzinager and the Wizard of the Coast expies.
Now we get into the text. I had vaguely been hoping this would be a more even-handed saterization after hearing the faction names, but the About This Book killed that hope. Why did I write this book? I was bored. Then I liked the setting and thought maybe it'd let me
punch up and
make a difference. This is followed by a
trigger warning: This book contains GUNS SLAVERY OPPRESSION VIOLENCE AND MORE! Talk to your GM for a session to make sure that you don't get triggered and have him remove things that would ruin this game for you poor little guy. There is a pointless HHGttG reference and a paragraph asking the reader to complain to them if they arn't inclusive enough.
Next page: The Forward. It can be summarized to "Autism on the concept of Satire", for a full page. It promises to break up echo chambers and bring people together but I'm not holding my breath. You know a book is going to be funny when it spends so much time explaining what funny is and why it is important to be funny.
Chapter 1: Shirtless Trump Goblins doing that flag raising thing. Overview: What is Murka?
Its America. Said in a paragraph of vaguely silly "we're the land of explosions who invented freedom" that you've seen before. Its at least vaguely patriotic and brings up some positives among the sillyness.
How will you survive in this world gone insane, where father fights son, friends fight one another, and everyone is offended?
So The Don is elected King but decides to call himself The Don. The country is divided. Politics across the nation is dominated by cities, there is different weather (including a Sharknado reference), industrialization is causing Green Lightning to set half the nation on fire.
Current events:
Orange man bad.
ICE Expy is arresting people
Seattle and Holly Woods are succeeding
Magitech used primarily for social networking
Trump is declaring war on foreign nations
Bad economy means that people are poor and do crimes. They're called The Weary in case that comes up.
Past Events (AKA history):
Basically starts out as just history, except the British expy discovered it for some reason. The Indians get nature magic (naturally). There is a second sharknado reference for some reason. Indians get genocided. They're is an unironically awesome picture of this world's George Washington:
But overall...its just American history with some vaguely silly name changes.
I do love the art though.
And it continues on like that. The American revolution happens but Washington is named Wash. Manifest Destiny happens but its called Manufactured Destiny instead. If you're the kind of autist who thinks something having a vaguely different name is funny you could possibly find this hilarious. I'm not one of them. For some reason slavery gets pushed back to making railroads instead of just always being there. Murca updated the not-quite-guns into guns in a sidebar. The Civil war happens over slavery. It turns the South into aggressors who invaded because Not-Lincoln freed all the slaves in the North after they already succeeded. The not-British turn into the Not-Nazis presumably just so we don't have to make another foreign empire. The Not-Nazis bomb not-Pearl Harbor so Not-America invades Not-Britian. They discover a not-nuke and unleash it on the enemy, it summons demons and makes the area uninhabitable. There was a not-holocaust and the not-nazi-scientists get hired by the not-Americans. Not-Russia has a revolution and there is a Not-cold war. Not-Stallin is a mage king so magic becomes a metaphor for communism. It is vaguely pro magic/communism. Magitech becomes a thing. Presumably it was already a thing since they had magic guns and magic nukes, so I'm not sure how this was a change. Twitter is a magic bird. Facebook is a thing. Wikis are libraries.
TLDR: You could have just said "History was the same but with silly names and magic" and you'd be done. I'm pretty sure none of this is ever going to come up in play until you get to the modern stuff.
Anyway, Trump gets elected. We Live in a Society (Their words). His supporters are:
1. The creatures he made himself pictured in the other guy's post
2. Racist human supremacists
Which is weird since he isn't human but whatever.
His opposition is the Communal Party. Aka commies. Its vaguely supportive of them but pictures them as naive.
The Shadow Kingdom: "Queen Killary's" deepstate. They burn her not-emails and make her enemies suicide themselves.
Anti-Gang: Antifa. Takes orders from Killary. "While they're not entirely wrong..."
The Weary: Poor people. Not sure why they get a fancy title or are considered a faction.
Now we get into Stereotypes. I'm sure this will be fun. Most people are
white human with human privilege. Tradition VS progress is a thing. Some people want gun control.
The snowflake society thing is kind of clever.
There are not-cops. Progressives don't like not cops. Americans eat a lot of food. Americans think success is cool.
We're now 25 pages in, and what have we learned? This setting is America but with magic and funny names. A lot of this felt like unnecessary fluff, especially given that it is essentially just real world events with tiny changes and the occasional dry joke.
Chapter 2: Electric Ghost Tesla with that one guy from League of Legends or whatever. The art has been consistently good.
Now time for PLAYER OPTIONS! Are you ready for the background choices?
Undergrad but with two As: You went to college and are now in a massive amount of debt. This is your class feature. The people you are indebted to might save you so you can pay it off.
Lawyer/Judge: You're a lawyer, judge, paralegal, or intern. You can fill out paperwork and find legal documents. Or you can pick an alternative where rich people like you.
Redneck but we used a different shade of red: You can shoot guns and speak Southern. Class feature is you can take advantage of southern hospitality.
The Illuminated: Artificer alternative. You can channel the spirits of long dead Artificer's, presumably what Tesla was doing in the chapter picture. You can pick a number of magic/ magic like powers based off of who you are channeling from a list. There is a boring name change for each American scientist. Karver lets you work with plants, Kolt lets you work with firearms, Tezzla lets you shoot lightning...this game
really likes blatant name changes for an unfathomable reason. They're are pages of these with their rules.
Barbarian Alternative: Gainz. Peak satire is changing the spelling of something. Gym barbarians - or as the game calls it "brobarians or babearians". Class features: Can make steroid "brotien" shakes. Makes anyone who eats it rage, turns Brobarian's rage into a "roid-rage". Roid rage gives three bonuses in return for getting you poisoned after it wears off. You become proficient in heavy armor and can use all non-Reach weapons one handed.
Well the art is still on-point.
Bard Alternative: Warrior Poetry: Its rap. You get a fancy dagger that only seems to exist for a bad joke and can slightly increase some things that get cut off because I'm at the end of the previews.
All in all it kinda forget it was about Trump after all the other stuff got tacked on. Which is probably a good thing given that not even the crazy fans could take 200+ pages of Trump fan fiction.
I'd like to end it there, but I also got my hands on an
earlier sample. From a simpler time. No history lesson here. Trump just lied his way into office with false promises, twisted his followers into monsters, and wanted to build a wall. So to recap Orange Man Bad. Here we can actually see the stats of the monsters used. "Haha the trump goblin is armed with a hamfist! Because he's hamfisted!" "Haha the trump goblins are loud and obnoxious and narcissistic and in an echo chamber!"
But the art was always good.
Overall it feels like they started with a bland joke, "What if Donald Trump was the bad guy in our DND campaign? No...what if he was
all the bad guys in the DND campaign?" then decided that putting real things into a DND game was a money maker and just did that to fill the rest of the pages. The artificer alternative felt like a homebrew from a completely different thing given how much screen time it got compared to the "Haha our barbarian is a body builder". If I had to guess at the rest of the content, we'd be looking at "Haha its Hollywood but in DND isn't that wacky"? for all the Holly Wood content, and essentially the same for the rest of it. Despite basically ripping off history the narrative isn't that well put together. They pretend like trains are some fancy new thing when they're history has steam trains existing hundreds of years ago as a major plot point for example. Or the fact that Donald was voted in legitimately (which it hammers in) when he doesn't seem to have any support among the population.
In the end its biggest sin is it just isn't very funny. Its hard to make a funny RPG book. Unlike when you're playing the RPG the jokes have to work consistently. Like how RPGs act as a setup to stories instead of telling a story, funny RPGs have to act as a set up to jokes instead of telling jokes. And its hard to be funny with just the setup to a joke. This book ends up resorting to just making jokes. If you tried to play it the jokes would get old fast since they're already told. Yes, we get it; the bad guy is smelly and dumb and looks like Trump just like it was 30 minutes ago. Yes, we get it; the barbarian is a weight lifter stereotype like he was last session. The game already told the joke and jokes get less funny every time you hear them. Even if you thought the jokes where funny in the first place it would fade fast.