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Just Three Minutes • 2018 rpg

Raymond Webster • ideaswithoutend.wordpress.com

One player is a mighty hero, with amazing powers - but they only work for three minutes. Write four down in secret. The hero is also BIG, STRONG, can FLY and shoot LASERS.


The rest play villains menacing the Earth. They each write a part of their MASTER PLAN in secret, with one initial COMPLICATION.


Both sides reveal and read out their choices.


Start a three minute timer. Our hero must describe how they save the Earth in this time, narrating their actions without stopping. Every time they use one of their POWERS, they mark it. Each time they describe how they solve a COMPLICATION, the villains mark it. Once all COMPLICATIONS are solved on a part of the plan, it is discarded. If all parts of the plan are discarded after three minutes, Earth is saved.


The invaders must watch the timer, and also make sure our hero doesn't:


        VACILLATE: Too many hesitations or pauses.

        DEVIATE: Describing pointless actions to stall for time.

        REPEAT: Using a power that has already been marked.


If they think they have caught the hero out, they stop the timer and add a COMPLICATION to one of the parts of the MASTER PLAN before resuming.


Author Comments

A game inspired by Radio 4 panel show Just a Minute, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, any and all stories where the last minutes before a bomb explodes take forever, and specifically Ultraman shows (where the three minute timer idea came from).


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