24 Hour RPG

1KM1KT is the official mirror site for 24HourRPG.com. Project participants may submit their work for online publication and view archived 24 Hour RPG submissions.

The 24 hour RPG Project is basically the budding and professional game designer’s equivalent of a triathalon- You put your body, mind and spirit through some major punishment in a race against time, in this case to develop a full, working, playable role-playing game within a mere 24 hours with other peers. Like a triathalon, there’s no “award” for winning; Rather the award is in itself to participate, test yourself, overcome the challenge at hand at your own pace and skill level, and share in the brief glory with your peers. Learn about the history of the project and its creators at 24HourRPG.com

A super hero is a lot like a Squid. In its natural environment, its sleek, sleek, strong, cunning, and graceful. But when you really stop to look at them, they’re really kind of disturbing and otherworldly – the implications of their abilities are like tentacles splaying out in unknown directions.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – who watches these powerful unlicensed vigilantes and cleans up after their rampages?

You, of course, as an agent of the Headquarters for Enforcement & Registration of Observed Supernatural.

Of G-men and Supermen is a 24 hour game I wrote for the 1km11kt.net contest, on the topic “Power Squid”. It casts the players as government agents keeping tabs on the rising population of super-powered individuals in 1958 America.

As one of the contest judges, I can’t win, but as an activity done for fun – I think it came out well.

The game is based on a standard deck of 54 (including jokers) playing cards.

The G-man in the window sighed, adjusted his hat, and lit another cigarette. As the menthol feeling filled my lungs, I realized that it wasn’t a window, but a mirror. Damn. When did I get so old? It seems like just yesterday that I was a kid enjoying his comic books and now I’ve got gray temples and a conservative tie. When did this happen?

Oh yeah – when those comic books came to life.

A lot of people are willing to call them heroes, and that is not wholly wrong. “Comics” do pluck falling airliners out of the sky, and stop ice ray wielding whack jobs.

But we have taken to calling them “Squids”. Because they’ve got tentacles that reach into everything, making our life pretty complicated. After all, they’re vigilantes, who refuse to reveal their identities, and become involved in the law with no certification or training. Their authority issues from the fact they can break what seem to be basic laws of physics, much as the Reds rule by the barrel of a gun.

What does it mean to have faith in god when you see miracle workers every day?

If a so-called hero wanted to level an entire city, what could we do to stop them?

Well, our organization for one. We might not succeed, but out agents would try their hardest anyway. To do any less would be un-American.

Everyday we get our orders from Mr. Keeton. Everyday he seems ten years older. It can’t be easy to direct an agency like this when his twin brother is one of the people we watch extra closely.

I have to wonder who is the hero in this amazing tale. Is “Normal” Keeton ultimately the white knight charging down chaos and disorder? Or are these people to be taken at face value, and Keeton himself the villain?

Insectum is a 24 Hour RPG challenge entry by Dennis N. Santana. It is a game that takes its inspiration from both the story games and the action games by incorporating classes, combat and magic with Scenes, Story Arcs, Tokens and much freedom for the Game Master.

It is also a game about bugpeople! In this fantasy roleplaying game, you take on the role of a human being in an odd fantasy society where everyone has traits derived from some insect or another. Characters have the power of hormonal and pheromonal supernatural abilities to help them achieve their goals & whatever their goals may be is up to the one writing the story!

This RPG was written through a thunderstorm, on the fleeting battery of a laptop during a blackout (in google documents that refused to save because the internet was out) and I like to think that makes it special. Enjoy!

Bug-People?
This game assumes that the character you’re playing is basically a human with some insect traits, rather than an actual insect or an “anthro” insect walking around on two legs.

This is done to simplify the game’s rules – while you can probably accept that a human with insect wings and clawed feet can stand on two legs, see like humans do, smell, taste and so forth, it is probably much more of a stretch to believe a bulky rhino beetle can do so, whimsical as that might be. It is also much easier for a Game Master to apply his common sense and logic in a game of humans with bug traits, than it is in a game of talking bugs. Rather than complicating its rules, the game assumes you’re playing bug-people. So you’re not really playing a butterfly – you’re playing a human being with butterfly wings and antennae.

These Bug-People (referred to from here on out as just Insects) wear clothes, have two eyes, stand on two legs, and have mouths, talk, and act like humans would, even living in a fantasy style society. How you visualize your character, however, is up to you, and the society your insects live in is up to your Game Master’s story. There is a section below that talks about such concerns, primarily to Game Masters.

Insect Society has many types of Insects and 4 Castes: Warrior, Servitor, Scout, Noble. All insects can be a member of any Caste, with some prerequisites. All Insects have two special powers, pheromones and hormones. These act as the magic of the game. Hormones are focused on helping or healing a creature, and Pheromones harm or influence a creature. Some creatures learn more of these powers, or are focused more on them, depending on their Caste.

Badass Presidents is an RPG about playing super-powered American Presidents as they fight against cthulean space horrors, Evil Jesus, and reborn deities in a post-apocalyptic world. Need I say more? No? Good.

Badass Presidents is a game of playing American Presidents who are sufficiently badass. The world has been destroyed, overrun by mutants, evil deities, and horrors from beyond the stars. As an American President, what can you do but dust off your knuckleduster and get ready to kick some ass.

Badass Presidents is a role-playing game, and additionally, one designed in 24 hours as a part of a contest. Therefore, the reader is cautioned in that when reading the content that you are about to behold, keep in mind that you got what you paid for. If you paid money for this document, you should find who sold it to you, and beat the crap out of them for making an idiot out of you.

A game where you bring part of your own life into the game and then fictionalize it. You play yourself at a seance trying to connect to the spirit of a dead friend with whom you still have issues. The spirits are fictional versions of living people you know, and with whom you have a problematic relationship.

Bring reality into your game, and perhaps game into your reality.

Players: 3 or more
System: Rough Consensus
Need: Pencils, drinking glass, and a large piece of white paper

Written as part of The 1KM1KT / Free RPG Blog 24 Hour RPG Competition.

The document is supposed to be printed as an A5 booklet, therefor the blank pages.

Welcome, oh Seeker of the Dead
This game is about relationships – dysfunctional relationships. We will each bring one problematic relationship from our lives into the game, and in game it will be transformed into a fictional relationship to a spirit.

We will perhaps be able to resolve the issues of the relationships by contacting the spirits at a séance. Hopefully reliving the past and speaking to the dead will help us resolve our issues with the once living. Time will tell.

Before we begin let me first summarize the game we’re about to play. Then I’ll go into more detail about how you do specific parts of the game, and finally we’ll have time for an example and some
advice.

The Great Hamster Rebellion is where pet shop residents meet the Boxer Rebels. The Hamster Republic has been invaded by the robotic Mekaton, and only the mysterious and wise Master Keeton can lead young kung fu hamsters to victory!

For a thousand generations, the hundred tribes of the Hamster Republic lived in peace among themselves and with their neighbours. The Syrians lived alone as was their way, and the Dwarfs lived in small villages as was theirs, and popularly-elected Rulers supervised the happiness of all the tribes. All were content with their lives, living off the land.

Then came the Mekaton. They were autonomous machines from elsewhere, and the hamsters had never seen anything like them. They built massive installations and labyrinthine cities, and mined the earth for minerals to build more like them.

At first, the hamsters tried living peacefully alongside the Mekaton. There was plenty of room for everyone. Ruler Titus even adopted some Mekaton customs. But then, the land started to become poisoned and the waters polluted. The Mekaton were deaf to the hamsters’ complaints. The hamsters grew restless, but wherever their unrest boiled over to violence,
the force guns of the Mekaton made short work of their opponents.

It’s the 1950s. Or is it? You have the eerie feeling that you are being watched, that you are really a character in a B-movie.

And you don’t like the way the Directors look.

It’s time to find the Producer and get some answers.

It’s the ‘50s. Oddly, you can’t quite remember the year. You’re a pretty ordinary person, maybe just a tad better than the average joe, with a pretty exciting life. You’re a jungle explorer, a gangbuster, a private detective, a heroic scientist.

There’s just one problem: you swear you’ve seen this all in a movie.

You can’t quite put your finger on it, but reality just doesn’t seem to add up anymore. Maybe it’s the gaps in your memory; you don’t feel like you have a real past. Maybe it’s the way you suddenly “remember” someone you feel you’ve just
met. Maybe it’s the occasional moments of lost time. Or maybe it’s the way you can sometimes predict what’s about to happen, because it seems to be part of the “plot formula”.

There’s also more eerie evidence. The feeling you’re being watched. The way everything seems to be connected. The way the universe seems to conspire against you any time you try to “break the plot”. And those strangers in the shadows…

Whatever it is, you’re going to get to the bottom of it. And you know Keeton hasthe answers…

After nearly four years of procrastination, here’s my first stab at the 24-hour RPG challenge. Haven grew out of a desire to re-examine a setting that featured in a friend’s homebrew game back in the late ’80s. In the interests of simplicity, I used a coin-toss mechanic that I think serves its purpose pretty well. Unfortunately, I barely scratched the surface of the setting before running out of time, so I plan to go back and flesh this one out in the near future. This, then, is Haven: a collection of largely unrealized ideas, fairly traditional game mechanics, and unnecessarily spiffy layout.

The Premise
Haven takes place in the star system of Tau, containing many fantastic places and inhabited by several sentient species, and surrounded by an impenetrable barrier field. Several lifetimes worth of adventure await in Tau, but the ultimate mystery is this: who cut out the system from the rest of the galaxy – and why?

Resourceful started out as a treasure-hunter game, but it evolved to place more emphasis on resource management and could be used for a lot of things–with some work. This 24-hour version has some obvious gaps and flaws, but should surprise you a bit with stuff you haven’t seen before.

This is a game about resource management, strategy, outwitting the GM, and telling a cool story to justify all the stuff you want to do with game mechanics.

OR

This is a game about adventurous types out looking to recover lost artifacts, mighty weapons of power, and ancient relics. The default setting of the game is a soft sci-fi post-apocalyptic world where high-tech items may still exist in ruined cities, forgotten bomb shelters, hidden compounds, or remote and inhospitable wilderness regions. You can also send people looking for treasure in the pulp age, or on distant worlds, or in a fantasy realm if you like. Most of the setting stuff is just window dressing that will affect how things are described but not how the game mechanics work.

The game is written for a group of 3-6 people, one to GM. Someday I will add rules for one-on one play. You will need pencils, paper, ten-sided dice (at least 3, maybe 3 per player), and some kind of chips or beads or markers in four distinct colors. (You could use several decks of playing cards, treating each suit as a color.)

Beltaine is a 24 Hour RPG I did well over a year ago and never got around to posting. I think the card-based mechanic has some untapped potential, and I plan on revising the game and linking the suits more closely to the setting (after all, the point of using cards as a randomizer is to do things that dice can’t easily do, right?).

Beltaine is a game about the Faeries and creatures of Celtic myth living in the modern world. It’s being put together quickly as a part of the 24 hour RPG project, and will hopefully serve as a springboard for a cyberpunk-and-Fae game I hope to write later.

The faerie courts are dangerous places, socially and physically, and it is easy to fall from favor. The safest thing to do when one does so is to go into exile on Earth. Some, like the Fomorians, live in permanent exile on Earth, either in hiding or disguised as humans. Fae on Earth often interbreed with humans, and their half-faerie children typically remain behind.

Edge of the Century is my second 24 Hour RPG attempt. I didn’t get as much time to work on it as I’d wanted to (about 4 hours, total), but I think it’s still playable. The game has some innovative narrative mechanics (at least I hope they’re innovative) and a fairly unique, but fast, character creation process that’s also very narrative. Have fun!

The edge of the century draws near, as does the life of the great Queen Victoria. In America, the Native tribes have been decimated, and the frontier declared closed. England is beginning to lose her Empire, though for the moment it is safe. In the cities, women shout for the right to vote, workers strike for a living wage, and anarchists gather in secret with Das Capital in one hand and a bomb in another.

In Europe, ethnic unrest and a complex web of alliances will soon burn the continent in a war many men think will be good. They say that Europe has gone soft and weak and needs a war to make it strong again.

And underneath the calm, stoic Victorian facade, madness coils and twists, waiting to erupt. Secret societies meet, calling on spirits of the dead and ancient gods. Curses lay upon families, waiting to drag them down into madness, or worse.

Central Resolution Mechanic inspired by “dukereg” on the “Opportunity Pool” thread at http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-384462.html