#TWEENHEIST: A Dystopian Social Media RPG • 2019 rpg finalist

@ROLLINKUNZ • https://www.rollinkunz.com/

Corporations have taken over.
Algorithms control all.
You are plucky tweens, heisting the Sociosphere before the world burns.


Tweet a CHARACTER SHEET. Pin it.
Sheet contains:
NAME
PICTURE
5x VERBS (character's SPECIALTIES)
3x EQUIPMENT
#CREW NAME


Form players into 2+ CREWS.


The LEADER of one Crew starts by quote-tweeting a gif of the LOOT to be heisted from the Megacorp, plus descriptions of its location and defenses.
(Include Crews with hashtags.)
(#TWEENHEIST.)


Below, they comment a 4-option POLL: 
"This job's gonna take..."
WITS (most retweets)
SPEED (fastest reply)
CHARM (most comments)
STEALTH (least likes)


Included Crews comment on Poll with their characters' ACTIONS. Each must contain a Specialty.
Players may like / retweet ONLY Actions which their Equipment could affect!


When Poll ends, the Action that fulfilled the poll-chosen WIN CONDITION is the TURNING POINT. 
Ties favor Poll's player.
Actions that don't match the Win Condition's "flavor" are only partially successful.


Turning Point's player comments on Turning Point with updated situation and repeats the Poll.


Continue playing!


Heist ends when a Crew gets away with the Loot!
Loot's worth equals number of votes on its most popular Poll.


Each Leader gets to start one heist.
Most Loot wins!

Author Comments

NOTES:

• Equipment and Specialties are meant to evoke a whimsical malaise about the near-future. Think Ghost in the Shell via Tank Girl or Papergirls. (I’ll keep an example character sheet pinned to my Twitter for a while.)

Keep in mind while choosing them that you’ll need to include a Specialty in each of your Actions (these are the verbs your character does!), and that you’ll only be able to help / disrupt other player’s Actions that you can affect with your Equipment. So variety is key! (Don’t worry, though- anything goes in the dystopian near-future, so if you decide all your character carries is bubblegum, a Yu-Gi-Oh collection, and a pair of techno-Heelies, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure something out.)

• Sometimes picking a Crew’s Leader happens naturally; if not, a great rule of thumb is to use the player with the fewest followers. It’ll give them a fun little bump in exposure. Or, hey, give it to the artist in the group!

• The Polls are the main mechanic that moves the story forward. If a player comments on a Poll with a clever Action, and the Poll chooses Wits, that player’s Action is fully successful. If they describe a wholly un-stealthy Action that wins on Stealth (receives the least likes), the Action is only partially successful. What that exactly means is up to the player. Though this is organized as a crew-versus-crew competitive game, it’s really a collaborative storytelling effort.

• The player whose Action wins the Poll gets to reply to that Action (the “Turning Point”) with an update of the heist’s situation, adding whole new elements into the scene. They repeat the standard Poll on that new situation, and the game continues as before, with all players commenting their Actions on the new Poll.

• Speed’s Win Condition is stated as “fastest reply.” It’s usually pretty easy for the Turning Point’s player to get the fastest reply, so there’s a caveat: Speed goes to the fastest reply that’s not the Turning Point player. Ties still go back to the Turning Point player.

• Liking is a player’s main way of disrupting another player’s Action (by making it less Stealthy); retweeting and commenting are their main ways of giving a fellow crew-member a boost (by making their Action Wittier or more Charming). Retweeting and commenting can lead to more likes, though, so checking in on that Poll is important.

• I’m fully expecting (hoping for) players to use every social media trick at their disposal to win a heist. DM groups, setting Polls at odd hours, figuring out how to wrangle their followers to help, etc. Nothing is off limits; the Poll is the great balancer. (No one has the social media clout to always make an anonymous internet poll go their way.)

It’s all meant to have a chaotic, hacking-and-counter-hacking, heists-going-sour vibe!

• Ending a heist means having a player win a Poll using an Action that describes them getting away with the Loot, which ALSO matches the “flavor” of the Win Condition. For example, if the Poll chooses Stealth, and a player describes swapping the Loot at the last minute and sneaking down the sewer access, AND that Action gets the fewest likes, that player’s Crew wins the heist!

• When a Crew wins a piece of Loot, take a look at the number of votes the most-voted-upon Poll in the heist got. That number is the Loot’s value in future-credits! This way, all Crews can have a turn starting a heist, and you can compare their total Loot at the end of all of them.

Here’s a link to the Google Docs version, which I’ll update if need be: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mblmwrtHGlIzURQNQfr_baE0ba15k4eZinQAREpfj8A/edit?usp=sharing

Here’s a link to a pdf of the current version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rkCZuy4TkErOVcwADjH28aNiYQawkkoG/view?usp=sharing

Thanks! Have fun!

Discuss this Entry