My 200 Word RPGs

Hey there! Long time no see. Well, kind of.

I've got to be honest about something. Despite all the iterations on the D&D worlds I've done in the past, I got burned out once again. I might write an article on that later, but tl;dr of it is "too much magic". So I've been lately browsing minimalistic RPGs, while also trying to make some.

For the last three years, I have participated in the 200wordRPG challenge. My games were far from popular or good, but it was a good exercise for me since my homebrews tend to have overly wordy features. A limitation of 200 words is surprisingly confining, yet something that doesn't feel like it takes a long time to write. Besides, it takes even less time to read. Unfortunately, this year the challenge has been canceled, meaning I would either have to wait until 2021 to post these, or I may as well just post them right now to share them with you all.

So the plan is simple then! I'll post each ruleset, and then give my design notes, as well as anything I couldn't manage to fit into the rules. These are my three 200 word RPGs that I made.

(Note: Only the Deviants one is a submission of mine. While I could share the other two, I doubt they're worth your time.)

Deviants

Deviants is my last entry so far, and it's a Lasers and Feelings hack inspired by videogames like Prototype and inFamous. It's assumed to be a superhero game, where the player characters are superpowered individuals, each controlling their own element. The big catch here is that the more injuries you sustain, the harder it is to use your powers until you run out of those. It also uses a choice of a roll between 2d6 and 1d12, because I feel like if you're rolling a die in a system like this, some variety can be nice (although either of the options is optional). When it comes to my goal of making a very simple superhero game that's light on rules and even has some worldbuilding, I think I succeeded.

What do you mean "video isn't made up of particles"? Oh well...
Enjoy your power, by Supermare

On the flip side, this system would be super easy to break by choosing your Power to be 2, and choosing a superpower that is useless for most situations, like controlling magma since few cities are near to an active volcano. This way, you could be an average schmoe-Joe who's good at everything, which is certainly a flaw of this system.

Overall, it's meant for short superhero games with an extremely easy character creation process and some assumptions regarding the setting. I'm not surprised that it won nothing, especially seeing how much competition there was last year, but I'm kind of proud of it nonetheless. If I had to fix anything, I would probably remove the "sleeping for 8 hours" line, because it's too wordy and unnecessary for this game. I would probably use those words to ask the players to choose something that's commonly found in their environment if I figured out how to use few enough words for that.

Shifters and Robots

I know that Among Us is all the hype lately, but this game was really made way back around June. The premise of this game is that there are two shape-shifting aliens blending into a group of robots, trying to find each other. It's a hidden roles game akin to Mafia, One Night Werewolf, Bang!, Town of Salem, or indeed Among Us, but with a twist. All roles are hidden, so the shapeshifters will have to try not killing one another, and instead if possible figuring out who the other one is. If they manage to reveal their own role and challenge the other shifter, they get an instant victory, otherwise at least one must survive until everyone else runs out of bullets. Because unlike most hidden role games where players have to vote who gets eliminated, here that responsibility is in the hands of each player. Anyone can choose who gets eliminated, but only once. Do you save your bullet and run a risk of someone being randomly eliminated, or will you choose to do so right now?

Design-wise, I wanted to make a different-feeling hidden roles game, where the majority is more antagonistic towards the minority rather than how it usually is (for example, with the few mafiosos knowing each other and eliminating the majority of players). The whole formula has been boiled down to a bare minimum so that the variants could try out something experimental, so I'd say this is pretty nice.

This one was actually even playtested, and I must say it's a surprisingly fast-paced game. I could see this catching on if I played it more often with more groups of friends. There are even four variants that are not mutually exclusive included to bring the challenge up for the entire group. Now you have two bullets, and/or an unknown number of shifters to look for, or need to make fast decisions. And while "mandatory cardboard robot heads" sounds like a joke, it could make a hidden roles game that much more challenging to play by obscuring everyone's faces.

I would recommend the trial music from Danganronpa for the faster version, and once the game is over, listen to some Porter Robinson, but that's just silly ideas.

Twists and Tales

The last 200 word RPG, for now, is Twists and Tales. It's an experiment on my side because I found the idea of having diceless RPGs neat and wanted to try my hand at making a minimalistic one myself. The gist of it is very simple: when you try to do something, anyone can try to make you fail, and you need to thus expend points in order to succeed in the thing you were trying to do. It's super generic, the GM is optional, and anyone can make you spend points, possibly regaining points if it's an in-character hindrance. I feel like with some testing and maybe even changes, this one would be great for online environments, where die rollers are not always readily available, as well as for beginner groups or groups that just seek a simple storygame RPG.

My goals of having a minimalistic general use GM-optional diceless RPG have worked, but it comes at a cost. The ruleset is pretty bland, which makes it open for any scenario but at the same time, some people want it to work for something specific. The three stats I'm still not so sure about. And overall, this game promotes an adversarial gameplay loop where the player characters are encouraged to be douchebags to each other, getting even rewarded for it. It could be great for drama, but I'm afraid of this ruining friendships. Then again, I have very little experience with storygames and drama RPGs where players are encouraged to play against each other, so I can't tell for sure.

The one thing to tinker with is the numbers. Currently, the scene goes on until either everyone agrees, or you run out of all the scenes. You can regain points other than Twists, but not Twists, which means that you get at most 10 x number of players Twists that you can use on various complications. In a 4 player game, this would be 40 complications for a single scene, spread across 4 characters. At the same time, the minimum number of complications would be 20 - if everyone expended one point at the same time, plus the one left out person also expends their points on things. If I had to compare it to a system I'm familiar with, in D&D at 5th level as a martial class you make 2 attack rolls on each of your turns, let's say you get attacked twice, and the combat lasts 3 turns. This translates to a total of 12 "Twists" to resolve, just for one character. Which makes me feel like I'm on the right track here.

That's all I had to share with you all for today. I hope to get back to the Villainous Cookbook, got a couple of villain ideas on the back burner ready to boil sometime soon, as well as some other ideas for articles. Life just has a way of keeping me busy, which means it takes me a long time to type all this out. I just had these games ready and wanted to share them somewhere, so I figured I may as well share them here with anyone who reads this.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!