Our 200-word TTRPG project has hit six months!

[packbat]

So, I don't know how many people are still thinking about the 200 Word RPG Challenge in 2022, but earlier this year when we were looking at our completely unused Patreon, we decided, "what if we started writing 200-word tabletop roleplaying games and posting them every month?"

And then we did! It turns out that it's just a really good format for us, and it lets us finish things in a way that we struggle to with larger projects.

Anyway, here's what we've posted so far:

1. May: maryland tornado warning, a mini-larp: an imitation of the experience of sheltering in place to wait out tornado warnings.
2. June: conspiracy in reverse: a solo fiction-writing game where you use an oracle deck to tell a story of someone uncovering secrets about themself.
   • The Packbats' playing card oracle system, which we invented before we had a tarot deck of our own.
3. July: as you would expect: a two-player game about one character visiting the dreams of another.
4. August: space to unfold: a freeform game about escaping a repressive culture and discovering yourself now that you're in a safe place.
5. September: talk about your lives: a letter-writing game: in which you tell each other about events in your lives, good and bad, and use those events to make up stories about events in your characters' lives as they also write letters back and forth.
6. October (today!): where things will happen: a worldbuilding game designed to set up the games that follow it with a setting that the players know and that has a few plot hooks to draw on.

We're hoping to finish out at least a full year, so, this is the official halfway point! Feeling optimistic about continuing - we have some bangers in the queue, I think.

...oh, and on the subject of mini TTRPGs: we also made a podcast pilot episode for a jam where us and our podner (podcasting partner) invented a roleplaying game to create the prologue to a YA creature horror story and then played it. It's an hour and fifteen minutes, and a copy of the post-recording edited version of the game is available on the page - feel free to check out either or both! (The jam was for The Podcast Mines, which is a delightful show about pitching podcasts but never actually starting any of them; our episode will likely be a part of their Episode 100 special that should drop tomorrow.)