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By the Book • 2017 rpg
Isle In The Heavens • https://twitter.com/IITHGames
A cooperative role-playing system for 3+ people.
Necessities:
- a GM willing to cook up a bizarre story on the spot, and
- a book they have read.
Setup:
The GM turns to the last page of proper text. The number of letters in the last word become the 'target value', against which actions are checked for success.
Also on this page, the GM looks for both an adjective and a noun they like.
The game:
Welcome to the adventures of “Paige Master and the [adjective] [noun]”.
The world is once again at peril and only Paige Master and her friends can prevent the worst by defeating/finding/(...) the eponymous McGuffin.
To resolve actions the GM deems 'non-trivial', turn to the next page, beginning with the first page of proper text. If the length of the last complete word on the right page is within +-2 letters of the target value, they succeed. Once a game, players may decide collectively to reset the target value to the last checked word.
Narrate successes and failures collaboratively - in dubio pro reo!
Every player starts at 10HP - with each failure deducting 1HP - and is removed from play after reaching 0HP.
Win by finishing your story!
Author Comments
My thanks go out to the “Oneshot” podcast for reminding me how much fun RPGs are and @McFunkypants for making this contest show up on my radar.
A short heads-up concerning this game: There was no playtesting done AT ALL, so I expect this to be quite the unoptimised mess. It was mainly written because I had this concept, of a game basing everything around a single book, in my head for the last 3 hours and thought it would make a fun entry to this contest.
A small example, if you really want to play this game but found the main entry too confusing: Based on my copy of “Brave New World”, I could treat my players to the tale of “Paige Master and the Dark God”, with a target value of 4 - meaning that actions would succeed, if I turned over to pages where the bottom right word was between 2 and 6 letters long.
