#200 word rpg challenge

[heelycular-manslaughter]

game i made for the 200 word rpg challenge but ended up being like ~300 words. sighs. kicks ground. rips hair out until i bl

Standoff at the Edge of Memory

2 players, 1 coin

You are a hunter being hunted by your prey. 

One player is the Flipper, and one is the Caller. 

There are 6 bullets. The bullets are split between each player. There are 6 rounds in game, the last round presents the final standoff. On a private piece of paper, draw 6 circles representing scenes, assigning bullets to scenes of your choice. The other hunter cannot know your order. 

Scenes:

 Each scene with at least one bullet on it is a Cross. Scenes that you have a bullet on make you a Hunter. If your opponent has a bullet and you don't, you become the Hunted. 

If both players have a bullet, the round is considered a standoff. The flipper flips a coin, the caller calls the result. If the caller is correct, the player with the least amount of bullets left dies; if the amount is equal, you both survive and run away.

If neither of you have bullets, you do not cross paths. On these empty rounds, players flip a coin; if the caller is incorrect, they are no longer the caller, as players' roles switch.

The Final Standoff

Players flip a coin

Each time the Caller has been Hunted, they have planned more for this encounter; increase the Situation by 1. Decrease the situation by 1 for every previous standoff.

Situations:

-1: Correct call leaves both alive, incorrect kills both

2: Correct call leaves both alive, incorrect kills caller

3: Correct call kills both, incorrect kills the caller

4: Correct call kills the flipper, incorrect kills the caller

5+: Correct call kills the flipper, incorrect leaves both alive

If there is only one hunter on the final scene, they flip a coin, the Hunted calls it. If correct, they survive.

If there is no hunter on the final scene, you cross paths, exhausted. You leave your prey alive.

[dreamerinsilico]

I Understood the Assignment (a collaborative-yet-adversarial narrative RPG for 2-3 players)

Dramatis Personae:

The Questor: You must complete the objective.

The Contrarian Forces: The Questor must be stymied (or enabled, while appearing to stymie).

[Optional] The Narrator: You frame the actions of Questor and Contrarian, arbitrating their conflict according to the Genre. 

Roll 1d6 for Genre:

Comedy

Tragedy

Satire

Romance

Horror

Parable

Any player may propose a Quest, or the Questor may roll 1d3 to assign one:

A MacGuffin shall be Retrieved

A Lover shall be Wooed (or a Suitor Rebuffed) (or Friend Acquired)

A Rival shall be Defeated

If there is a Narrator, once the terms are agreed, they set the scene.  Otherwise the Questor describes the beginning of their Quest, and play continues to the Contrarian.  (Narrator comments again each turn after Contrarian.)  Players should endeavor to tell the most engaging and genre-accurate story about the pursuit of the Quest that they can.  If there is a Narrator, they should provide genre-appropriate context for the actions described by Questor and Contrarian, and adjudicate the outcome of conflicts if Questor and Contrarian do not agree who won an interaction.

Contrarian “wins” a comedy/satire/romance Genre game if their enablement was agreed to be the most interesting contribution.

[bagf1sh]

"Fusion Core," A Short Game About Mechs for 2+ players

One player is the mech. One player is the pilot. Any remaining players are HQ. (If there are only 2 players, come up with HQ's orders together.)

Players need: at least one d4, notepaper.

Roll for the mission goal: 1. Sabotage 2. Assault 3. Theft 4. Defense

Roll for the target: 1. Belligerent 2. Artifact 3. Outpost 4. Diplomat

Roll for what the pilot wants: 1. Family 2. Love 3. Safety 4. Home

Roll for what the mech wants: 1. Destruction 2. Destruction 3. Destruction 4. Destruction The mech is a weapon. It wants to do its job.

When on missions:

HQ gives an order.

Pilot attempts an action. Will action follow orders? If not, HQ will find a new pilot. Will action further mech goals? If not, mech will not respond. Will action further pilot goals? If not, too bad.

Mech carries out the action. Roll a d4. 1. Great Failure: +2 breakdown 2. Failure: +1 breakdown 3. Success: +1 score 4. Great Success: +2 score

Repeat.

At 5 score you win! Describe how you extract victorious.

At 3 breakdown you lose. Describe how you let everyone down.

Permission is granted to archive this game!

200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

[cosmotheo]

Grogjuice Quest

Grog thirsty. Grog want Grogjuice. Get Grog Grogjuice.

1. Make choice on paper. Grog or UnGrog.

2. If Grog, roll 1d10. That how thirsty Grog are. If Thirsty reach 10, Grog die.

3. If UnGrog, roll 3d10. That how much Unthirsty you have. Unthirsty make Grog Thirsty go down 1. If UnGrog reach Unthirsty 0, UnGrog die. UnGrog cannot Unthirsty when Grog Bash.

4. Grog Bash Enemy. Enemy Bash Grog. Enemy have 3 life. Grog roll 1d4+Thirsty to Bash. Enemy roll 3d4. Higher number deal 1 damage. Damage make Thirsty go up 1.

5. UnGrog make Grogjuice. Need 10 Grogjuice per Grog. Enemy body make 3 Unthirsty, or spend 2 Unthirsty to make Grogjuice. After, body vanish.

6. When Grog fight, UnGrog can make Bet at God. UnGrog Bet how Thirsty Grog have after fight. If Thirsty within 1 of Bet, gain 2 Unthirsty. If Thirsty 2+ from Bet, lose 2 Unthirsty. If exact, gain 2 Unthirsty, 2 Grogjuice.

7. If no Grog left, lose. If no UnGrog left and not 10 Grogjuice per Grog, lose. If 10 Grogjuice per Grog, win.

[rednightmare18]

It's not even about the vindication of calling a ship, okay. It's that the supposedly anti woke studio wrote about 3 million words of medieval fiction centering the relationship of the two main characters who are in most ways (or in all ways if you follow the obvious canon momentum of the story) meant for each other, as counterparts who help each other survive the great travails of their lives and who challenge/complete the other to become fuller, braver, kinder people. It's so clear these two people are soulmates, platonically or romantically, something observed consistently by the world around them and by themselves.

Except their society (feudalism, Catholicism) dictates that they are intended to be completely incompatible by nature and divine law. Not just for the obvious fact they are both men, but they are separated by what is arguably an even steeper chasm of social class. Their existence even as friends utterly spites, interrupts, and threatens feudal order right down to its theological and philosophical roots. They should not see each other as human and yet.

It's the fact that they do. The fact that the entire story has been about this--that these two protagonists fit together, undeniably, and grow to love each other fiercely (a love that deepens superbly from their knee-jerk playful puppy-friend-love in kcd1 to something selfless and mature by the end of kcd2). And they do so despite the immense opposition by their world, their social circles, their faith, and indeed their fandom.

And yes, it really does fucking matter that all of this culminates into a deep onscreen romantic love (if you get out of the way and allow it to) between two fandom-beloved male main characters (not just side characters rammed in for an optional gay romance but THE main characters of the duology; the "you" as in the player character and your erstwhile dick-jokes bro you have perhaps grudgingly at first been invited as the audience to love) in a historical fiction story that has been wrongly touted by the worst of our contemporaries as the holy grail of cultural conservatism.

Holy shit. Warhorse -- y'all. I'm sorry I doubted you. So few game writers understand how love works and indeed how people work, let alone translate it so well onto the screen.

Calling this an "optional romance" is not technically incorrect, I suppose, because it's true you can opt out and choose to remain platonic friends. But this language feels like a disservice, as if Henry & Hans's romance is a typical RPG wham-bam fanservice makeout with a minor fan fave character who never interacts meaningfully with the player again. Or as if it's a Bioware-style "give this NPC the right gift and do their side quest and you get to see a jankly ugly-bumpin' montage" situation.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is so very much not that. The "main, optional" romance scene in question is just one consummation event of two people who have been growing up and falling in love in front of us over the course of some 200-300 (or god knows how many) hours. The fact these protagonists openly love each other is very much not optional.

This is, sincerely, groundbreaking storytelling in this medium and this genre. How fucking cool that we all got to see it now.

[goblincow]

CATS or What Is This RPG or Setting The Table

So I just heard about CATS courtesy of the good folks in the PlusOneExp discord server. CATS was written by Patrick O'Leary for the 2016 200 Word RPG Challenge.

It's nice and short (200 words even) and it's a compelling formula for the classic What Is This TTRPG segment that warrants a page at the front of every good RPG book.

I find it particularly interesting that this is imagined as a micro-RPG in its own right, a table activity for the start of game night that sets out to address what I have always found to be the most painful aspect of playing any TTRPG (besides tedious and arcane character creation rituals – I'm looking at you 5e PHB 👀): the friction that arises from players having discordant, conflicting, contradictory or incompatible expectations during play.

We can formulate the basic strucure of CATS in a variety of ways: Concept/Aim/Tone/Subject Matter, What/Where/When/Who/Why/How, Premise/Overview/Goals/What You Need, etc. all of which can be applied in two immediate directions:

In a What Is This RPG section, these are just codified methods for teaching the player/reader (more of my thoughts on the player/reader here) how to read and communicate everything that comes next in a way that's both more focused than a blurb (which might basically constitute the Concept/Premise/Hook) and more comprehensive than an elevator pitch.

As a launchpad for table play, these structures guide the conversation to establish the pillars of the shared fiction, and I especially appreciate CATS for the fact that it ends on Subject Matter. It could be the consequence of a tortured acronym, but having set the stage in every other way it seems appropriate to hop into safety tools as the final as the final negotiation before play, once all context is provided but nothing is yet set in stone.

That's all he wrote on CATS.

In THE PERILOUS PEAR & PLUM PIES OF PUDWICK I wrote a conversation guide to the meat of the adventure on pg. 11, following an introductory segment of the game that functions as a session 1 prologue of sorts before delving into the hexflower "dungeon" microsetting, inciting incident et al. It's interesting for me to look back at the way I structured this from the perspective of CATS.

If you're curious about TPPAPPOP and want a sneak peak of what you can expect, here's that segment from pg. 11, Inside The Tree:

Resources: the insects of the tree live in darkness and have varying weird diets – you might decide that tracking resources like light and food is important, or maybe at this scale adventurers can survive on the honeydew, leaves and strange meats that the insects eat. Sights and Sounds: footsteps might sound like earthquakes, voices like distant thunder. What are the twitches and mannerisms of the chittering language of insects? How does artificial light disturb the denizens of the tree? Setting and Tone: to adjust the game to your group's preference, you might lean into the existential conflict of intruding on and potentially dooming these fledgling societies, or downplay the crawling horror of an insect world to allow its cuter side to shine through.

[toy-dragon]

Nobody Can Find The Opening Band

-----------

A 3-6 player game.

The crowd is starting to get anxious. Although they came for the headliner, the opening band is late. Show can't start without them.

YOU are all members of the opening band, having a moment of crisis. Rumors, fame, and stress are tearing you apart.

Together, describe your band, your instruments, yourselves. Decide on a name and your shared history. Everyone gives a rumor about every other player that strains the band.

Everyone rolls 2d6 4 times.

These are now your stats for

RELATIONSHIP

DEDICATION

TRUST

STRESS LEVEL

The person with the most musical experience goes first. Choose another member and confront them about a rumor you've heard.

They will choose either RELATIONSHIP, DEDICATION, or TRUST to reason with the other member and roll 1d100. If they roll-under the stat, then they succeed on smoothing the issues the rumor causes and subtract the difference from their STRESS. Otherwise, they add that difference to their STRESS. Play continues to the right.

Once STRESS reaches 100, the member quits the band. That member describes why this will kill the band in the long run.

Once every rumor has been confronted, describe how the band changes forever.

------------

This may be archived off-site. Excluding title and archival statement and ending bit, this was 200 words exactly. I wanted to do something a bit bigger group-wise and more pvp-adjacent while hitting 200 words exactly. This will be my last entry for me this month, so let me know if you play either of mine because I want feedback on them.

Tumblr 200-Word RPGs 2023

Last November, we did an informal game jam for folks who wanted to write something for Writing Month, but would prefer to write fewer than fifty thousand words of it. You can find the complete list of participants for that event in this post here. There's also an off-Tumblr archive of entries whose authors gave permission for them to be preserved here, if any of those links turn out to be broken.

Last year's collaboration went over well enough that I thought we might dust it off again this year. To be clear, this is just for fun – it's not a curated jam, and nobody's judging winners or handing out prizes..

If you'd like to throw your hat in, just follow these steps:

Step 1: If you're unfamiliar with 200-word RPGs, read a bunch of last year's entries (linked above) or browse the 200 Word RPG Challege archives at https://200wordrpg.github.io/ to get your brain-meats properly configured.

Step 2: Write your own 200-word RPG. If you're not sure whether you have 200 words or not (and with RPGs it can genuinely be difficult to tell!), you can use the word counter at https://200wordrpg.github.io/wordcount to check.

Step 3: Reblog this post and append your 200-word RPG.

Step 4 (optional): Please indicate in your post whether you're okay with having your 200-word RPG archived off-site for posterity – if you don't say anything one way or the other, I'll assume the answer is "no".

(As before, as a courtesy to anyone who's creeping the notes, please restrict non-200-word-RPG commentary to replies and tags until November 2023 is over – let's make the actual games easy to find!)

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

20 Questions for (Fanfiction) Writers

Tagged by @serbarris thank you!! :)

How many works do you have on ao3? 20 published! don't... just don't ask how many are on my computer hard drive.

What’s your total ao3 word count? 187,071. I'm going to be honest guys I did this with a calculator from my 'Works' page and only after the next question did i remember the 'Statistics' page exists and i did not have to do all that.

What are your top five fics by kudos?

Fallout from the Fade | DAI | 780 kudos F!Hawke x Fenris; 90k; In progress/hiatus: what if Hawke manages to survive being left in the Fade, but then has to deal with the aftermath? -- My angsty longfic darling, my outlet for cliffhangers and torment. This fic is on "hiatus" in that I have decided to stop posting chapters until I finish writing it to the ending. But it's not abandoned, just secret progress only due to the Agonies and Horrors and all that (grad school).

Provided it tied you down first | DAI | 527 kudos F!Trevelyan x Solas; 17k; Complete: Solas & Trevelyan have to go undercover in a Tevinter sex dungeon, and Trevelyan can no longer hide her secret desire for Solas -- what? yeah. i wanted to try writing porn for the second time and just looked through the kink!meme prompt list until i found a funny but challenging one. sometimes the fun of writing is taking something unbelievable and working backwards like, ok so what WOULD it take to actually lead to this otherwise out of character situation? also i ran out of birth control and became Compelled to write something horny. to everyone who asks for a sequel i'm sorry i went back on the meds too fast.

Lost to Night | DAI | 227 kudos Solavellan; 11k; Complete: Solas and Lavellan slip away for some alone time after the events at the Winter Palace, but before the party really ends. -- Obligatory Halamshiral hookup fic. This was my first attempt at writing smut, i would do things somewhat different now but I like the fic. The most important thing of course is the Angst is still in there.

Less a man than a wild cat | DA2 | 263 kudos F!Hawke x Fenris; 15k; Complete: Hawke & Co are out drinking while Fenris is away on business, but then a grey cat with white markings that look extremely familiar turns up hissing at Anders and demanding attention from Hawke. -- this is the closest thing to fluff I'lll ever write, probably. just some silly fairytale style fun.

Letters to Fenris | DAI | 200 kudos F!Hawke x Fenris; 1.6k; Complete: a selection of letters that can be found in Fenris' room, after Hawke leaves to help the Inquisition. -- Short & sweet, my favorite hobby is making readers smile and then punching them directly in the gut. Yay!

What fandoms do you write for? Dragon Age and Mass Effect (look... i know I only have one ME fic posted, but I did write a lot more than that. just never shared it). For me personally... fanfic is most interesting when it's for exploring customizable characters & their relationship to the world of the setting. Or the NPC characters in a world that's shaped by the choices of the player. I've never really gotten into fanfic for things like books/movies/tv for this reason, just rpg's.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Hoooooo so like... i do wish i was the kind of author who thanks everyone who leaves a comment and replies thoughtfully within a reasonable timeframe. I wish it!!!!! however the 6-12 months after I started writing fanfic, pretty much every weekend for me looked like this:

stay up all night Sunday writing a chapter

Once finished writing, reward myself with respond to comments on the previous chapter

post the new chapter at 4am with minimal edits if any

sleep for 2 hours then drive to the USGS office, get in the fieldwork SUV, and take a Car Nap on the 6 hour drive to Death Valley or wherever

spend 5 days wandering the desert measuring plants with NO cell service or internet

return to Civilization covered in sand and sweat on Friday, terrorize the locals of Vegas/Moab at the grocery store, and spend 1 day recovering and checking the internet/reading all the comments left over the last week/getting filled in by friends on whatever internet memes i missed while away

now it's Sunday again and repeat this entire process

Anyway this got me in the habit of like... commenting was something i did only after i finished the next update, rather than as people leave them (since I only read them in bulk when I got home). like as a reward to keep me motivated to finish the next chapter so i can talk to people back!! and it's been 3 jobs and 10 years(🙃) since then but the habit persists. but then if it's been more than a month the last update it feels like i'm Too Late to reply anyway so i often don't. idk! maybe part of it's also that i take a LONG time between chapters nowadays bc of Life, so, i am also hiding from the fact that i'm not ready to post the next bit yet. like if i don't reply maybe you can't see me spending 7 hours per day on tumblr wasting time, and be mad that i'm not writing. i know i'm the weird outlier about a lot of fanfic things and processes haha. i do love getting and reading people's comments, sorry i'm so shit at addressing them!

What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably Reunion, my pre-DATV release (so no spoilers) Solavellan one-shot where I wanted to make myself as sad as possible imagining a potential outcome for them. What's worse than one half of your ship dying? Maybe both of their psyches getting locked together and one subsuming the other, so what remains is neither fully the individuals or someone new, just a shattered amalgamation left to cope with all that.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Staring at this like. do i ever write happy endings?? probably the Fenris-is-a-cat fic, but even that i left kind of open. i think my Hawke-deals-with-Leandra's-death fic has a pretty hopeful ending, but the fic itself is a grief exploration, so...

Do you get hate on fics? Every now and then someone leaves a comment like "I'm so sad this fic was abandoned" which, is not really a very motivating way to phrase that. and i've only really abandoned like 1 fic, i consider the others just "perpetually on the back burner", but once you get past a year with no updates I don't blame people for the assumption. my writing and hobbies are on a geologic scale rather than the fast-past biologic scale of the rest of fandom. sorry to make this about geology again.

Do you write smut? Yes... though I've only published 2 pieces and have a 3rd currently being posted. A dozen or so more exist but don't yet have fully fleshed out stories to put them inside lol (sorry Rookanis...). whoops!

Do you write crossovers? I have not. Actually wait, one time I wrote like 2000 words of Mass Effect x Animorphs in a tumblr reply and then the page refreshed and i lost it all and the Murderous Rage about that was too overwhelming to rewrite it. someday though...

Have you ever had a fic stolen? I don't think so. I don't think my writing is popular enough to get noticed like that. Though I also write more than I read so if it did happen, I probably would never notice.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes! Both Fallout from the Fade and Letters to Fenris were translated into Russian by a very kind reader :)

Have you ever cowritten a fic before? Nope. I think I'd be pretty miserable to collaborate with. I don't even use beta readers for this reason.

What’s your all time favourite ship? Listen. I know this is my dragon age blog for dragon age things but I'm breaking character for a moment here. for all my love of sollavellan and shakarian and fenhawke. My real otp is FitzChivalry Farseer x The Fool from the Realm of the Elderlings series by Robin Hobb. these books broke me. they changed how i think of storytelling and how i think of love. i cannot emphasize how insane the relationship between these two characters is, and i read the last trilogy AS IT WAS RELEASING, i waited YEARS for the resolution #iykyk. there is no greater love story in my heart than this one. "is it actually gay" it would take me 10 years and 10,000 words to answer that don't worry about it just trust me and read them. yes there's 16 but that's not relevant just read the first trilogy at least and if you have the brainrot you'll be happy for the rest and if not you can just stop there and be satisfied with a solid fantasy story.

now. i do not actually read OR write fanfic for this series. this is because it does not need it. to me the frustrations and agonies and disbelieving joy i get out of FitzLoved are part of what makes it perfect. I have basically nothing to add that is not already covered in the books and the ending, to me, is perfect.

this is the second time ive used this image in 3 days AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN as often as needed!!!!!!!! until everyone in my life gives in and reads them

What’s the wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Of things I've somewhat posted: the Trevelyan x Corypheus fic i got off the k!meme randomly-generate-a-pairing-and-situation post. I wrote a chapter or two more, realized it was shaping up to be Way too long to actually commit to at the time for crack-treated-seriously, and it's been backburner ever since. I would like to go through and sketch out something that is at max 15-20k so i can put a cap on it because i DO think it was really fun as character exploration for Corypheus who is otherwise a CRIMINALLY underutilized villain. he's great ok. the timing in DAI just... doesn't do him justice. also his best dialogue is locked to the Templar route which almost everyone else in the tumblr DA fandom skipped.

Of things i've never posted, a ME: Andromeda fic focusing on the relationship between Ryder & Sam. I got like--15k? or so into that and again realized it was gonna be a 100k endeavor for something probably no one but me would read, due to weirdness and tiny number of people who stayed active in MEA fandom. so i tabled it for a future ME obsession period that has not yet come to pass.

i'll also sneak in here my confession that I now have over 20k of words written for Rookanis and yet have not posted anything to AO3/only a 500 word snipped to tumblr. and probably several of these starts/sections will never get fully formed fics. but i DO intend to finish and share... something for them at least.

What are your writing strengths? I think I am pretty good at building tension, and making the reader feel invested enough to be sad/stressed/nervous when i want them to. my favorite compliments are often the ones like "i don't usually care about this character/trope/whatever but you sold me on it" because that's a harder target than someone already invested.

What are your writing weaknesses? Editing and then sharing it lmao. I'm GREAT at writing as in typing a bunch of things all in a row. everything after the process itself is done? not nearly as interested. I also have a hard time transitioning between sections/scenes and tend to overwrite the in-betweens to get from bit to bit--something that could probably be fixed more in editing if i bothered to do that part.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic? I think if it's more than a few short phrases or single sentences you can guess from context it can get annoying, reading wise. if there's some sort of in-line translation or hover-over-alt-text that makes it nicer. however i do write this anyway myself bc i love the idea of lost language/reverting to old habits or selves/etc too much, so like, just because it's kind of annoying to have to read through doesn't mean i think people shouldn't do it/it's not worth it. i sure won't stop.

First fandom you wrote for? Dragon Age: Inquisition lol. the first fanfics I ever wrote are still on my account. i wince at them now, but i think it's nice to have that proof of my progress/growth there. i don't need my AO3 to be a greatest highlights reel, just an archive.

Favourite fic you’ve ever written? Like Teeth Against His Heart, my Solavellan DAI-era prose poem weirdly formatted ficlet ♥︎ (on tumblr as the zine pages here, and on AO3 here). I am slowly Marinating the Trespasser & DATV sequels to this in my heart, but it will be slow to get them fully formed on paper.

whew 20 is a lot and i talk too much, this got long oops! Anyway tagginggggggg @baejax-the-great @m-m-m-myysurana @sageadvice @songofamazon @loquaciousquark @genjyoandgojyoandhakkai but i love reading writing-meta stuff like this so if any followers wanna do it, go ahead and do so & tag me so i can read everyone else's too :)

[sabrinahawthorne]

Introducing: RULE

As you may have noticed, I have been possessed this month with an inexplicable urge to complete @200-word-rpgs challenge several times over, submitting four entries to this year's jam. For the record, I'd like to apologize to everyone whose notifications I've been cluttering about it. This will be the last one, I promise.

As it turns out, I didn't actually complete four entries - I completed six. Once I had finished OATH, I realized that this was a golden opportunity to not only get back in the saddle and do my job, but also to put out a first edition of an old idea that's been stuck in the back of my works-in-progress folder for years now. So I resolved to complete this: RULE, a collection of grim fantasy games which can be played together or separately.

This idea is one of my oldest, dating back to when teenage me first learned of the World of Darkness, and was struck with the idea to do that - which is to say, a line of standalone games which can also be run together - but using high fantasy concepts instead of urban fantasy staples. Thinking on it, I have no doubt that other authors have tackled that premise long before me (and if you know of those efforts, please point me in their direction). But what can I say? I know the space I like to play in, and this was a real treat to put together.

Oh, and David - I leave it to your discretion how exactly you'd like to treat this little fugue state of mine, in regards to the jam. Archive all of my entries separately or together, or just pick one and make that the "official" one. I don't have a strong preference.

For those seeing this release and noticing that I haven't mentioned CLASH! in several months - I'm sorry for the delay, but please don't worry. It's not exactly smooth sailing behind the scenes, but all of the problems that have been stopping me up are eminently solveable, and once the new year rolls around I promise to have information on the state of the game. The project isn't abandoned; it'll just be a little while before I feel comfortable showing off a new version.

[toy-dragon]

New collection release! I've taken all my entries for the 2024 200 Word RPG Jam on tumblr and put them all in one nifty document with low effort cover art. Just like I did with 2023's entries. It is 100% free, just like on tumblr and its predecessor. Enjoy!

[cavetalesz]

I know the @200-word-rpgs challenge has already been over for a while now, but I just came up with a new TTRPG that happens to fit in 200 words!

Mistrial

A game for 3 players One of you is the Suspect, one is the Officer, and the other is the Judge. The Suspect is accused of:

1d6

Eating

Stealing

Defrauding

Soliciting

Plundering

Shooting

1d6

a hamburger

the Eiffel Tower

an octopus

a fairy

a treasury

a billionaire

In advance of the trial

The Officer may make up any evidence they report to have found at the Suspect's home, and write it down on a piece of paper.

The Suspect may, in secret, roll a dice, flip a coin, or choose whether they are guilty of the crime.

The Judge may browse social media.

The trial

The Officer argues the Suspect is Guilty, and can refer to the evidence, the Suspect argues they are Innocent.

When the Judge is bored, they may end the trial and pronounce the Suspect Guilty or Innocent. If the Suspect is found Guilty, they go to jail for life. If they are pronounced Innocent, they walk free.

There are no consequences for the Officer.

[sunmaea]

I had a wonderful (albeit slightly stressful!) time participating in the Notebook November event designed by @astorythatwritesitself. The aim of the challenge was to fill up a notebook over the course of November.

I opted to use one of the many, many notebooks I had in my stationery crate. My notebook was A6 in size and had about 80 pages (I think). Thankfully, those pages were fairly wide-ruled!

I actually began scribbling in my notebook on the 11th of November. It quickly became clear that I wouldn't be able to complete the book if I fastidiously stuck to only using it for plotting stories – which had been my original plan – so I tried to be flexible. That turned out to be much more fun and, interestingly enough, much more productive.

I completed the notebook on the 30th of November. Here are some of the pages (be awed by my dodgy handwriting):

A bit more about the photos:

The notebook itself. I think it came as part of a pack of three. I remember it being fairly cheap

A word search puzzle featuring a few fruits. Solve the word search and look at the remaining letters to find a secret message...!

A bit of poetry. I had fun using different colours. I've typed up the two poems to make them easier to read

Some strips of metallic washi tape. I also used a paper puncher to create some teeny hearts from the washi tape

A snippet of my initial plans for Four Choices, my 200-word RPG. It was so good to write this out by hand as I edited slightly more than usual

A snippet of my word count tracker for The 3-Day Novel, a challenge where I wrote 50,000 words in less than 72 hours. It's definitely one of the most ambitious writing challenges I've undertaken to date!

I hope to take part in Notebook November again next year!

[strixludica]

Developing a 200 word RPG - log 1: concept

Something that's always fascinated me is the world of competitive fighting games, especially those very open to the development of "tech" like Smash. I've decided to try and make a 1v1 ttrpg that simulates those thrills.

At a fundamental level, I intend to simulate fight thus: each player character has a number of moves to choose from, and a state which determines which moves can be taken. This state represents things like stance, positioning, and other such factors.

Each turn, both players choose a move and reveal it at the same time, rock-paper-scissors style, and the state of their character (as well as their remaining hit points) changes depending on both the move they chose and the one they received, with some outright countering others.

Something that I already know is that, although most moves will be completely deterministic, I want a few to be able to succeed or fail based on a dice roll: these will represent the extremely high-skill techs, the frame-perfect inputs, the desperate gambits that can turn the tables of a fight and make the crowd go wild, IF you can pull them off.

The hardest challenge with this idea, as I see it, is to come up with a system for creating characters that is balanced, decently varied, but still simple enough that an opponent has a fair chance at figuring out your character mid-fight.

[200-word-rpgs]

Tumblr 200 Word RPGs

This is a sideblog for the informal 200-word RPG jams organised by @prokopetz each November.

Next Event

2025's event will run from from 2025-11-01 through 2025-11-30; a link to the submission thread will be placed here while the event is active.

Past Events

2024 – Tumblr thread | Offsite archive (forthcoming) 2023 – Tumblr thread | Offsite archive 2022 – Tumblr thread | Offsite archive

Submission Guidelines

Each entry should be a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer. Coming in lower is fine, though you're welcome to try to hit 200 words exactly if you want an extra challenge.

This is an informal game jam; entries are not curated or judged, no eligibility rules are enforced, no winners are chosen, and the organising parties explicitly refuse to define the terms "word" or "RPG". If you wish to participate, you can follow these steps:

Step 1: If you're unfamiliar with 200-word RPGs, read a bunch of previous years' entries (linked above), or browse the 200 Word RPG Challenge archives at https://200wordrpg.github.io/ to get in the proper headspace. (Note: this blog is not affiliated with the 200 Word RPG Challenge; its archives are provided for reference only.)

Step 2: Write your own 200-word RPG. If you're not sure of your word count, you can use the counter at https://200wordrpg.github.io/wordcount to check. If you disagree with how this tool defines "word", feel free to use a different counting method – adherence to the word limit is on the honour system anyway.

Step 3: Reblog the current event's main post (linked above when an event is active) and append your 200-word RPG in the reblog. Please do not submit your entry as a reblog to the post you are reading right now.

Step 4 (optional): If you wish to provide any author's notes on your entry, please place them under a "Read More" break to make it clear which part of the post is the game and which part is commentary.

Step 5 (optional): Indicate in your post whether you're okay with having your 200-word RPG archived off-site for posterity – if you don't say anything one way or the other, we'll assume the answer is "no". Please state this separately from any more general discussion of sharing or remixing permissions; don't make us guess!

Note: In previous years, we'd requested that folks refrain from discussing entries on the submission thread in order to avoid making them hard to find. Since we have a dedicated sideblog this year, that request is not being made this time around.

[prokopetz]

I decided to try to make something for the 200-word ttrpg thing, and settled on using a deck of cards, but it turns out that you can do a lot of interesting things with a deck of cards that doesn't easily fit into 200-words and I am spending way too much time and effort on this and I just wanted you to know that this is entirely your fault.

(With reference to this post here.)

That's kind of the whole point. A one-page RPG really "wants" to be 300–400 words; fitting one into 200 words and having it still be complete and playable is hard, at least if you want to do a good job. To the extent that the 200-word RPG challenge has any purpose beyond fun, it's to give you the chance to exercise your skills as an editor and technical writer, which are areas where a lot of folks in the indie RPG sphere could use the practice!

[strixcattus]

NaNo Update Day 30

And the sun sets on the last year I'm doing this challenge...

Overall total words: 53899 % over 50k: 7.8% Daily word count: 1779 Average daily word count: 1796

Fics worked on (overall): The Hare (The Magnus Archives) (most if not all new words will be scrapped and moved to cold storage), On the Outside, Looking In (In Stars and Time), From Beyond (short original work) (temporary title) (probably going to be stuffed in cold storage as well), Cabins and Corvids AU (Slay the Princess), various 200-word RPGs, various other offsite writing projects Fics worked on (today): On the Outside, Looking In First line (OtOLI): You simply nod through it all, exchanging glances with the rest of your party. Last line (OtOLI): The Craft exhaustion will no doubt catch up to them sooner or later, but you’ll all be staying in the House for a few days so they can recover and so Boniface can send a letter to their sister once communication starts back up post-Curse, so you’ll be well-equipped if anything happens.

Chapter titles: Act VI

Best day: Nov. 15 (2876 words) Worst day: Nov. 6 (1667 words)