Keeton's Journey is a pressure cooker for role playing

Keeton's Journey is my favorite game that came out of the Free RPG Blog's 2013 Harder Than Granite competition. The contest inspired me to write about different entries for a week and I saved what I think is the best for last. While it does make some interesting use of dice, it is the structure of the game that makes me appreciate Keeton's Journey.

In Keeton's Journey, one player plays a wandering medicine man named Keeton who travels from village to villages, helping them deal with mysterious supernatural life forms called yokai. One player plays Keeton while everyone plays villagers. While Keeton is there to deal with the yokai, the problems will always be intertwined with the secrets and lies of the villagers.

It's based on Mushishi, a manga I've never read. However, Keeton's Journey does remind me of Dogs in the Vineyard, Princes' Kingdom or Kagematsu. In each case, an outsider has come to solve an isolated population's problems with a strong focus on character development and story.

Setup for the game is quick and straightforward. You'll need a regular pip die for every villager and some paper and pencils. At the start of the game, the villagers come up with a rough description of the village and their roles in the village. They also need to each come up with an important secret they keep.

Gameplay has a fairly strict structure. Keeton has an introductory scene with each villager. Other villagers can appear in that scene but it is that player's spotlight scene. There is then a second round of scenes, heightening and escalating there situation. The outcome of these scenes will determine if the village can be saved, with the game ending on an appropriate epilogue.

So, here's the mechanics. At the start of each round, all the dice will get rolled. At the end of each scene, a die will be used to determine a dramatic revelation or action that will end the scene.

It gets even more interesting that that. It doesn't matter what the number is, per se, but what kind of picture the pips form. Two and three represent the Path, pushing people forward. Four and six represent the Box, when people close themselves off. Five is the Crossroads, tough decisions. Lastly, one is the Loner, isolation.

In the second round, choosing the Path or the Crossroads means you reveal your secret. Choosing the Box or the Loner means you keep your secret. At the end of the game, if more people reveal their secret, Keeton is able to deal with the yokai and save the village. 

Yes, that means that the dice rolls will determine if the village is saved or not. And guess what, that doesn't matter. That isn't why you play a narrative-driven game like this. The reward of a game like Keeton's Journey is how you tell the story and a well-told tragic ending can be immensely satisfying.

Part of this is because, outside of the restrictions of the dice, there is immense freedom in what kind of story you want to tell. There is only the illusion of restriction. Instead, the structure in a narrative game helps guide you and keep you focused. The structure is a tool for you to use.

In other words, Keeton's Journey is the kind of game I've come to really enjoy after discovering and exploring the world of indie RPGs.

I like how Keeton's Journey is well designed for a low prep one-shot that still has room for deep and meaningful role playing. With just two rounds of scenes an experienced group of players could finish a game in three to four hours. Less experienced players, I'm guessing two to three hours. (Less experienced narrative players will probably have shorter scenes) I can even see breaking it down into two little sessions with ease.

Keeton's Journey isn't brilliant, although the dice symbolism is a really good idea. It is a game with a structure that I know works and creates some really great story telling. It takes many of the lessons I've learned about indie game design and story telling and puts them in a tiny, pocket-sized pamphlet, perfect for a one-off night of gaming and story telling.

http://www.thefreerpgblog.com

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/keetons-journey

A Flask Full of Gasoline is also full of crazy awesome

A Flask Full of Gasoline is one part genius, two parts machismo and eight parts unbridled lunacy. If you ever wanted the perfect RPG based on movies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch with a chance at folks ending up in the hospital, this is your game. On the surface, it's a really funny spoof of RPGs. However, beneath that is some interesting design choices.

Before you play, you're going to need to get a bunch of shot glasses, some matches, a bottle of 190 proof grain liquor, a pile of bullets and a hip flask full of gasoline. Character sheets consist of writing down five things that make your character a badass hard case.

Dealer sits everyone down at the table in any order they choose. Sitting farther away from the dealer is a disadvantage so this is blatant favoritism time. Everyone gets a shot of grain liquor and sets a bullet face up in front of them.

Here's the mechanics. If you want to do something or you don't like a decision the dealer made, you flick your bullet at the dealer's bullet. You make it, cool. You get your way. Miss, lose one of your badass traits, which are also your hit points.

Don't want to lose a trait? Fine. Take a hit from the flask of gasoline to show you really are that tough. In case you didn't know it, ask any idiot who tried to syphon their neighbor's gas tank and is now at the hospital, this is a REALLY dumb idea. Put you in the ER or the grave dumb idea.

PVP is handled by flicking your bullet into the other guy's shot glass. Miss, you drink your shot. Make it, you get your way and they have to drink their shot, bullet and all. Beats chugging gasoline but not by that much. 

Dealer hands out match sticks for doing awesome cool stuff. End of the game, whoever has the most matches gets to burn down whatever they feel like. Whoever has the least has to burn down whatever the group votes on. Better hope it's not your ma's caravan with her in it.

A Flask Full of Gasoline consists of three little pamphlets. Main book, dealer's guide (which is mostly how to play head games and mess with people but does include NPC rules), and a sample adventure. Taken as a whole, it's a hysterical read and amazingly over the top madness crammed into 24 little pages.

However, The last page of the adventure includes alternate rules to make the game something you could play without people dying. And that turns the whole thing on its head.

Fill the flask with grain liquor. Fill the shot glasses with vodka. Swap out the bullets with candy. Boom. Instead of a parody that could kill someone, you have a functional game based on pub games.

Yeah, I'm actually looking at a Flask Full of Gasoline as playable game. Deal with it.

Here's the thing. Over the years, I've played a decent number of games of Dread, the one with the Jenga tower. Swapping out dice or cards for dexterity games does work and it adds a completely kind of tension and excitement to a game.

Don't get me wrong, even with the alternate rules, we're looking at a fast and silly game where everyone is going to get hammered. Seriously, how good do you think your candy flicking skills really are?

At the very least, A Flask Full of Gasoline is definitely worth a read. You could stand up on the stage and just read the rules and have everyone rolling in the aisles. However, with the alternate rules, I can see the right crew of people having a lot of fun with it. It would be a light, silly, sloppy game that would require designated drivers but people would have fun. 

http://www.thefreerpgblog.com

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/a-flask-full-of-gasoline

Heist Aces lets you live out your heist movie dreams

Heist Aces is not only a card-driven roleplaying game where the players are a team of crooks planning out an Ocean's 11 style heist, it's one where the players help the GM design the adventure. 

It also happens to be the winner of the 2013 Harder Than Granite contest at the Free RPG Blog. And, I can see why. It is a well-designed game that has also has a solid layout. While I do have a few questions about some of the rules, it's a pretty impressive job for an eight-page pamphlet.

The core of the game is built around a deck of regular playing cards, with each suit reflecting a different plot element. Spades represent sneakiness, diamonds represent braininess, clubs represent skills and hearts represent force. Each character gets one plot device for each suit, plus another random one from a random draw.

The game is broken down into two parts, planning and the job. 

The GM draws random card and that is going to be the job. The rules don't actually state that the suit of the card determines the nature of the job but I'm taking that as a given. The GM writes down the nature of the job on a Post-it note and sticks it on the card.

The team now does the legwork, investigating the job. You do that by drawing a card and adding an element to the job based on the suit. Write it down on a Post-it and add it to the job card. There is a time limit to this, though. For every 15 minutes of real time that the team is investigating, the GM gets to draw a card that they can use as an obstacle against the team.

Players start out with no cards in their hand. You get to draw cards by using your aspects or plot devices during the job. I'm pretty sure that you get draw cards for using aspects of the job that was developed in the planning stage. The rules don't explicitly mention that but it makes sense as a way of rewarding the players for developing the job and penalizing them for taking too long.

The GM puts obstacles in the teams way by discarding a card and using that suit to define the obstacle. If a player can discard a card matching that suit, they completely handled the obstacle. If they discard a card that doesn't match the suit that matches the color, they get a yes but result. Something still goes wrong and the GM gets to draw a card. If you can't even do that, the whole job falls apart.

You can also resolve the obstacle by discarding your entire hand. Of course, that's not only going to leave you in a bad state but it's going to make you work harder on building up your hand. But every time you have to reshuffle the deck, the GM gets draw a card for every player.

There is a lot that I like about Heist Aces. I really like all the players work together to put together the adventure. That means that you can just sit down and play because the set up is an active part of the game. I also like how the narration and the mechanics or so tightly tied together. The players have to actively create a story in order to get cards to handle their problems.

However, there are some gaping holes in the rules. I know that part of that is because the contest restricted the layout to an eight-page pamphlet and 24 hours to design the whole thing. Still, I had to make some assumptions on how some elements worked, as you probably noticed.

One of the biggest holes is what kind of hand does the GM start out with? Do they get a starting hand, like one card per player? Do they start out with an empty hand and build it using aspects of the job? The rules do describe how they get bonus cards but they need some kind of hand in order to get the obstacles rolling.

The list of obstacles also look like they're supposed to relate to specific suits, which I assume they do. However it was not explicitly clear, although me being colorblind might not of helped. (Like, were they in black and red?)

That being said, these gaps in the rules can be addressed with some fairly simple fixes. The structure of the game is clear enough that it just requires a few Band-Aids, as opposed to a major overhaul or heavy house rules.

And I do think that the structure of the game is sound. More than that, I really like how everyone gets to design the adventure and how tightly the role-playing is tied to the mechanics.

Heist Aces has a lot of potential in one tiny little pamphlet. I've already recommended it to the number of my old gaming buddies back east.

http://www.thefreerpgblog.com

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/heist_aces

Looking forward to someday getting lost in The House of Unusual Size

The House of Unusual Size is not my favorite entry in the Free RPG's Harder Than Granite contest from back in 2013. (That's a toss up between Keeton's Journey and A Flask Full of Gasoline) It is, however, the game I think I'm most likely to play.

The game is set in the ancient mansion of Ezra Keeton that was built atop a mountain and undoubtably built into the mountain. In a twist that feels like it's straight out of Lovecraft's Lurking Fear, the Keeton family vanished long ago, perhaps into the mansion.

The players wake up alone and without any memory in the mansion. As the game progresses, they must explore not only the mansion but who they really are. In the end, they must find each other and escape from the tangled labyrinth that is the mansion of Ezra Keeton.

The players start off with a blank character sheet. As the game progresses, the story will let them define a positive quality, a flaw and their connection to the Keeton family.

The House of Unusual Size is a GM-Free system, something that I have come to really enjoy. The player to the left of the active player serves as the GM for that player. They flip a coin, with heads being a positive scene and tails being a negative scene. The scenes can include self-discovery and challenges and fantastic encounters. The other players help fill in details and play other characters or creatures who might be in the scene. You just flip a coin if you have to figure out if a character fails or not at doing something.

After everyone is figured out who they are and what they have to do with the Keeton family, there will be a climactic scene where everyone escapes from the mansion together. There is really no mechanic for everyone dying or catastrophic failure but, if the group wants to play a game like this, they should have no problem filling in those details.

Oh, make no mistake. The House of Unusual Size is far from a perfect system. The rules and the structure are so vague that I don't think it's new player friendly at all. I think it would would only work with a crew of players who are experienced with narrative games.

Frankly, the rules being so vague and requiring interpretation would normally be a game breaker for me. However, the sheer ease of pick-up-and-play and the degree that the theme lends itself to easy story telling makes the game appealing to me anyway.

If I am going to have a role-playing game that I can print out on one page, fold up, and put my pocket, I wanted to be one that can be pulled out and played at the drop of a hat. A House of Unusual Size pulls off the trick. 

After all, all you need are the rules, a coin, and a way to write things down. Spooky houses are a genre that is easy to run with. Heck, in a pinch, you could use rock paper scissors instead of the coin and memory if you don't have anything to write things down with.

I can see it being an easy game to play during a road trip, at a cafe, or Skype. I can even see playing it via conference call, although probably just to prove that you can. It would be easy to hack to make shorter, like having every scene add an element to the character sheet with the last round of play being the escape.

The House of Unusual Size definitely needs a group that's prepared for a strong narrative focus and one that can handle minimal rules. Despite that, I can see myself packing this tiny little RPG in my convention bag, just in case. It makes a great use of its theme, strong enough to carry the minimal rules.

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/house-of-unusual-size

http://www.thefreerpgblog.com

Alpha UNIX where uncertainty is the only mechanic

Alpha UNIX is a tiny little RPG with rules that are so simple they are barely even there. And it has a very strong theme that not just justifies those simple rules but uses them to elevate the theme.

Alpha UNIX was an entry in the Free RPG Blog's 2013 24 Hour contest. One of the requirements was that the designers couldn't include numbers in their game. Alpha UNIX takes that to a whole new level.

Take the Matrix and mix in a healthy amount of Groundhog Day. Then season to taste with Paranoia. Everyone is now inside the machine, the all powerful computer, forced to relive the day the computer was turned on over and over again. The players are rebels, trying to escape from the machine. They do that by introducing uncertain and doubt. 

There are no random number generators in the game like dice or cards. After all, numbers are the province of computers. Instead, players can do anything they want to, as long as they say it in an uncertain manner.

If they say anything as a certainty, they reaffirm the reality that the computer is creating. They give power back to the computer and the computer can use that power to punish or delete them. 

Basically, Alpha UNIX is an advanced version of the party game where you're not allowed to say the word 'I' or 'the'.

I'd be interested in trying Alpha UNIX to see how well this approach to minimal mechanics works. I have played systems that were this light but not like this. If it works, I can see it being a handy game for car trips or playing via Skype. 

I'm sure it won't work for some groups and, frankly, I don't know how well it would work in general. But I do think it's a brave design that is cleverly linked to its theme. 

http://www.thefreerpgblog.com

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/alpha-unix

Blind bidding and the Prisoner's Dilema as the basis for an RPG

The kingdom is at war and the king lies dying. A power struggle has begun between the rightful prince, the supreme general and the the resourceful bastard son of the king. One of them will rise to the throne but war might destroy the kingdom before them.

Make the King is a tiny RPG designed to be played with exactly three-players. It was part of the Free RPG Blog's 2013 24 Hour contest. What makes it interesting for me is that the mechanics use blind bidding and a variant on the prisoners' dilemma.

Each player starts off with two mugs, one full of black chips and the other full of white chips. Two empty mugs sit in the middle of the table, one for each color.

The players will take turns playing the king, calling the other two characters to the king's deathbed. The king will ask questions, asking the two of them of the wars going.

After they give their versions of the situation, which will probably be completely conflicting with each other, the two players bid on who's version of the truth is real.

Each player can bid up to half of either their remaining white or black chips. If they both been wanting to, the larger bid wins. The winner gets the losers bid and their bid goes into the mug on the table designated for white chips. Black chips always beat white chips and both bids going to the mugs on the table. If both players good with black chips, the higher bid wins with both bids going into the mugs on the table.

Well there are rules to make sure that everyone gets to play the king twice, the game ends when one of the mugs on the table is full. If the white mug is full, whoever has the most white chips left in their personal stock, they become the new king and describe how they win the war. But if the black mug is the one that is full, the kingdom has lost the war and been conquered. Everyone loses but whoever has the most white chips is the scapegoat.

On the one hand, the board gamer in me likes the simple but tight auction mechanic with the twist with the end. It's simple but it works from a mechanical standpoint. It reminds me a lot of games like Terra and High Society. It isn't a proper prisoners' dilemma but it reminds me of it.

On the other hand, what I don't like is that the role playing isn't really tied to the mechanics. It doesn't matter what you do in your interviews with the king or what kind of story you create. This is a game with a real winner and loser and that is solely determined by how well someone works the auctions. That really isn't a winning point for a role playing game for me.

I've seen mechanics that make more sense in board games used in RPGs before. Mars Colony and Dread come to mind. But in those cases, they were married to the story and helped drive it.

Still, to be fair, Make the King is an entry in 24 hour contest. It had some interesting ideas. I don't see myself every playing it but I did have fun reading it.

http://www.thefreerpgblog.com

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/make-the-king