200 Word RPG Challenge

This summer I made a commitment to play more games with the local RPG scene. There is fortnightly game event called Slur Your Role put on by Nerd Louisville at a bar not far from my house. I have been volunteering to run games there. The event is pretty Dungeons and Dragons focused because that game is so popular (no shade), but I have been trying to bring alternatives to the table. So far I have run CAPERS from NerdBurger Games, Lacuna by Momento Mori Theatricks and a couple weeks ago I ran three of the games from this year’s 200 Word RPG Challenge.

I heard about 200 Word RPG last year and when the competition went live this year, I not only submitted a game, I applied to be a reader. I read about 60 submissions and recommended my favorites to the actual judges. Some of the ones I selected were, indeed, among the finalists. The whole process was enjoyable and being part of it made me feel all the more like I am part of this industry. I wanted to promote the Challenge and bring this brand new games to the table. Titles of the games are links to the 200 Word RPG site. Do go read the games, as they are all only 200 words!

Of the three winners we did not play Sidewalkia! owing to it being a game for outside voices and it being one of the hottest weeks of the year. Instead, we played PSYCHIC CHILDREN ON THE RUN FROM DANGER. This was one of the games I’d read and picked to be a finalist. I liked it because of the resolution mechanism. To use their psychic power players guess the next card which will be drawn from a standard deck of cards. If they are exactly right they have complete control, if they are less right they have less or no control. It worked great with five players at the table watching each other’s card draws and really playing up the theme. One thing I was looking for in the games I selected was the possibility to play the game over several sessions. This one delivered on that idea. No one was ready to stop after an hour, but I had to move on.

For Dear Elizabeth… I brought the required paper, pens and prompts (things like “death,” “courtship,” “visitor”). It’s a two-player game, but we simply paired off writing letters only to our partner. I was least sure about this one. All my players where modern guys in their 30s so playing a young 18th century woman wasn’t exactly what they might have come to a game night for. Once I explained it and handed out the materials and once they were sitting in their corners drawing their prompts and responding to the letters they got from their partners, they all took to it. More than one person said it was much more enjoyable than they thought it would be. When we summarized the letters at the end I was happy no one had brought in aliens or zombies. It was all decidedly 18th century issues.

Our last game of the night was #WinterIntoSpring. It was, I assume, intended to descend into a bit of a mess and take on elements of farce. Maybe not, but that’s what happened for us. The idea is to splint into two factions and roleplay fashion vloggers before and after a revolution with one faction replacing the other as the dominate faction between the two rounds. Magazines are cut up and made into paper dolls to represent the changing fashions. The group decided our factions would be “machine overlord sympathizers and human freedom fighters.” Then I revealed the two magazines I had brought along were a bridal magazine and a fly fishing magazine. Silly mash-ups and hyperbolic descriptions of the fight against the machines ensued. What more could one want?

I’ve loved being the one to bring the not-at-all-D&D to the scene this summer. I think playing games with more strangers has made we a better game master. I certainly feel stretched by the experience. Add to that the additional stretch of putting a few different 200-word games on the table in one night and I feel very pleased my table seemed to enjoy themselves. I plan to participate in the 200 Word RPG Challenge again, and I hope I can also bring next year’s winners to an audience.