The other day, I added a few assorted RPG-related items over on my itch.io page.
The first two are individual scenarios for Epidiah Ravachol’s game Dread, and the third is a set of playbooks for Jason Morningstar’s Fiasco (classic edition, which is available here, among other places).
The first Dread scenario is titled “Saigon Ex-Frat Apocalypse.” I wrote it in 2013.
“Saigon Ex-Frat Apocalypse” is a scenario for Epidiah Ravachol’s storygame Dread (available here). It’s about expat dirtbags living in a shared house in downtown Saigon who wake up the day after a ridiculous party only to discover that something has gone horribly wrong with the world. Countless signs, from the state of their house to the armies of vermin and the panicked, terrified people outside, indicate that something big is about to happen. Can they get out and survive?
Content Warning: vermin, frathouse dirtbaggery, cosmic horror, expat English teachers, and more. It’s horror, so it’s supposed to squick you out, but maybe check in with your game group before running it.
Also includes some notes about how to avoid colonialist and racist tropes and misguided stereotypes about Southeast Asian cultures.
The second Dread scenario is from 2012, and is titled “Talent Night.” I’ve written about it here in the past, and a slightly different earlier version is still available on my site as part of that series:
Talent Night is a scenario for Dread, set on the evening of a school Talent Night just a few months after a mass suicide pact among some students at the school leaves teachers and classmates shaken. Players take on the role of (notably imperfect) teachers struggling to survive a supernatural nightmare of judgment and retribution in the wake of this trauma.
Content Warning: Includes mentions of a mass suicide and potentially all kinds of corruption and abuses by teachers (as introduced by players in response to the character-generation questionnaires). It is a horror scenario. Use of safety tools and prior discussion with players strongly recommended.
Finally, I added a collection of Fiasco playbooks as a single set, ranging from having been created in 2012 to as recently as a few weeks ago, in early February 2023:
This collects several scenarios I’ve made…:
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- The Shire-ing: Features dirtbag halflings in a small village in the shire, doing what dirtbag halflings do. Designed to use the “Soft” Tilt and Aftermath tables in the Fiasco Companion. Inspired in part by Under Hill, By Water.
- The Acknowledged Guide and Lamp of Civilisation: Supernatural and social shenanigans among modernist literary, artistic, and occultist figures in Kensington circa 1912. Uses stunt dice (as discussed in the Fiasco Companion) for milieu-appropriate occult/supernatural events.
- With a Side of Kimchi: Set in an English-language cram school in Seoul, featuring foreign and Korean teachers, staff, and others in the neighborhood. Includes advice for playing in different time periods (1980s, 90s, and 2000s), as well as a glossary of useful Korean words and phrases, and some discussion of how the choice of setting facilitates play with a mixed group of Koreans and non-Koreans, specifically in terms of foregrounding shared cultural touchstones and references.
- Those Damned Goodies: Nerdy aspiring supervillains make trouble in a town patrolled by one or more virtuous, (super)heroic characters and their allies.
- Courting Disaster: Courtly intrigue with a streak of worse-than-usual stupidity, venality, and greed. In other words, what if everyone in A Game of Thrones was 40% dumber and 60% greedier?
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Though there’s no content warning for the Fiasco playsets, well… if you’ve played Fiasco, you can imagine how dark and horrid some of the options are. Not all of them, though, and the first one, “The Shire-ing,” is even designed for use with the “soft” Tilt and Aftermath tables in The Fiasco Companion.