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!)
Animal Audience
Core gameplay:
All players start as Animals. Once someone becomes a non-Animal, the round begins.
The non-Animal starts by greeting every Animal by "name", nickname, or term of affection.
They then set a timer (usually 5-10 minutes) and settle in.
During the non-Animal's round, they can tell a story, sing a song, complain about something, or otherwise freak out in some way they wouldn't as readily do in front of other non-Animals.
Animals can do whatever they want and respond however they wish, as long as they do not in any way understand the details or complexities of whatever the non-Animal is going on about.
When the timer goes off, the non-Animal either finishes getting ready and "leaves" (exiting the game), or gets sufficiently relaxed, and "bails" (becoming an Animal).
The round ends and another one can be begun by any player becoming the new non-Animal.
Safety tools:
Any Animal can "run away", and any non-Animal can "remember something and rush out".
If either happens, play concludes, any parties that need to be separated are separated, and all persons are checked in with.
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Please feel free to archive off-site! What a cool challenge.
