Questionable Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Some of my tabletop games of dubious, but technically possible, playability. Soon to come: GUNMOLE, YOU are an Accursed Heretic, Vibe Caster, and more!
Electrocist
Finally, a game that dares to ask the real questions: what if electricity was ghosts?
And not if ghosts were electric, that’s a cop out. In Electrocist, every electrical device is inherently haunted and very possibly hates you!
In this imminently unplayable tabletop roleplaying game, you are a newly (probably forcibly conscripted) member of the Bureau of Electrical Entity Survelliance (BEES) and ready to go beat up some unruly spirits! You as a player are ready to start rolling dozens of eight sided dice, the only type of dice you’ll need. Just be careful not to call the GAZE of the ELECTROVORTEX upon ye!
The design of Electrocist was inspired by the many government forms I’ve had to fill out in my life. They always put those weird pale color boxes behind things like that will make up for the smudged ink that makes the little number labels hard to read. These boxes don’t have any labels, and are also not madatory to fill out or risk what my brain has convinced will be life in prison, which means I’ve already got a leg up on the competition.
The mix of boxy serifs and practical fonts were MAXIMIZED for a FUN and ENGAGING sheet that’s also easy to read and fits on one double-sided sheet of letter sized paper. Size was a big concern; I try to keep my games as small as possible when I can, so keeping the information concise as well as clear and easily understandable was a priority.
Urban Capitalist Hellscape Debt Simulator
A proper half-page game, UCHDS is a game about making money and probably losing morals. It was born when I spent about three hours looking at packs of ten sided dice and went, “huh, I wonder what the best way to roll as many d10s as possible is.” This. This game is.
While you attempt to pay off your debt in any way possible, the GM works to help you pay it off faster by sending violent thugs after you! Just like real life.
The design of UCHDS is very minimal in nature, inspired by warning labels, those weird “YOU WIN” spam letters, my college 8AM class notes that featured too many bullet points and formatting and not enough content, long forms when the person who wants you to sign goes through them and highlights the actual important parts, and various other capitalist hellscape sources.
Because it was planned to fit in so small a space, the design was always going to rely heavily on how the text would be arranged and rather than decorative elements, and I wanted to keep it feasibly printable with minimum possible errors.
To my knowledge, Urban Capitalist Hellscape Debt Simulator has never actually been played, but if it were, I’m sure the game would play terribly. Just as god (me) intended!