Micro RPGs

Starwhales birthed the universe as we know it.

When a starwhale dies their body disintegrates, leaving behind a hot, dense heartstone that drops through the atmosphere and settles at the core of the gas planet that the whale called home. If left untended there, the heartstones of dead whales ignite the planet’s core and create new stars.

All stars are the products of dead starwhales.

Legend has it that if the heartstone of a dead starwhale is retrieved and returned to the upper atmosphere, it will summon the whale back from beyond death.

WHALESONG is a game for two players that takes the form of a back-and-forth conversation narrating a starwhale’s dive through the five layers of the gas giant, while interrogating a lost relationship. One of you will be the Starwhale, . The other will be the gas planet the whale calls home.

Over the course of WHALESONG you will learn to love, and grieve, and to allow yourself to move on.

This game was made possible by the support of my patrons on Patreon. For early access to monthly games, become a patron here.

Buy WHALESONG on Loot The Room

Buy WHALESONG on Itch.io

Scare School

Micro RPGs, Products 0

September’s Patron game Scare School is out now!

Buy Scare School on Loot The Room

Get the game on Itch

Scare School is a two-page RPG for as many players as you can get in a room together, inspired by Monsters University and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.

You are juvenile monsters in training to be Scarers. By day you attend Scare School, and by night you venture aboveground to do your Scarework assignments – tracking down targets, building Fear, and working together to pull off a Final Scare.

Create your monsters, do your Scarework, and try to beat your high score!

Scare School was made possible by the support of my backers on Patreon. Patrons get early access to games, exclusive content not available anywhere else, sneak peaks, and more. When we reach £200 per game in funding, all games released through Patreon will launch with Community Copies. At £300 per game, all Patreon-funded games will be released for free under a Pay What You Want model.

Become a Patron here!

Scare School is illustrated by Liz Gist.

Buy Scare School on Loot The Room

Get the game on Itch

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What’s So Cool About Magic Portals?

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What’s So Cool About Magic Portals? is a tiny little system for going through magic portals no matter where you are!

This is a hack of Jared Sinclair’s What’s So Cool About Outer Space? created for WSCAJam.

Buy a print copy, or print out the pages and stick them in a notebook to carry them around with you.

They’ve even got dice printed on the pages so you can literally play anywhere (Google might have a dice roller, but does Google work on the other side of a magic portal? Probably not.)

Buy it from Loot The Room.

Buy it from Itch.

Chicken And Chips

Micro RPGs, Products 0

I release a small game each month through Patreon, and this month’s game Chicken And Chips is out now!

Buy Chicken And Chips here on Loot The Room, or pick it up from itch.

Chicken And Chips is an existential road trip game about coming home from a night out and having a real craving for chicken and a kebab.

You’ve just been out out, on what promised to be an epic night.

It wasn’t.

Now you’re in the taxi, grumpy and absolutely leathered and – possibly – hungry. Some of you want to go straight home. Some of you will literally die if you don’t get a kebab right fucking now.

All the driver wants is for you to make your fucking minds up, not puke all over their cab, and for you to pay them at the end of the ride.

How will the night end? Who even knows.

Buy it here.

To get early access to monthly games, and the opportunity to receive exclusive print copies available only through Patreon, become a Patron today!

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Micro RPGs, Products 0

A couple of weeks ago I released a new party game for you and 1-5 friends who don’t want to be eaten by bears.

You are Leonardo DiCaprio or another non-bear humanoid just going about your day when a goddamn bear appears and tries to eat you.

Don’t let it eat you.

Take turns telling your friends exactly how the bear tries to eat them and then listen to them try to desperately avoid getting eaten. Then let the Jenga tower decide what happens.

That’s it. That’s the whole game.

You can buy Exit, Pursued by a Bear now from Loot The Room, itch.io, or DriveThruRPG.

The game asks players to narrate what they’re doing when the bear attacks, and provides prompts for situations you might find yourself in that could be ruined by a bear. Today I’m giving you another 10 prompts to use with Exit, Pursued by a Bear.

When the bear attacked I was…

Asleep in bed. (Tell us about the otherwise very mundane dream you were having that contained one very, very strange thing that seemed perfectly normal to you.)
In line to buy a Venti Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks. (Tell us why you go to Starbucks over local independent coffee shops, and why you hate coffee so much that you’d rather turn it into a hot milkshake.)
Watching Star Wars for the 8,000th time. (Who shot first?)
Listening to your least favourite album by your favourite band. (Tell us about the time you almost saw them live but fate decided that you weren’t going to get there in time.)
Playing Dungeons & Dragons. (Tell us why THAC0 should make a comeback in 6th Edition.)
Skinny dipping in a secluded woodland pond. (Tell us who you’re with, and why your clothes are so far away that you’re going to have to run away from the bear in the nude.)
Hiking in the woods. (Tell us why it’s 100% your fault that you’re currently being attacked by a bear.)
Watching Saturday morning cartoons from the late ’80s and early ’90s. (Tell us what your favourite cartoon was and why it should absolutely get a reboot once this bear attack is over.)
Shaving your legs. (Tell us why you were removing fur from your body, and why the bear is completely justified in attacking you as a result of this.)
Drinking a vodka martini during a game of poker at the casino. (Tell us why you felt like spending big tonight, in your best Sean Connery voice.)

You can buy Exit, Pursued by a Bear now from Loot The Room, itch.io, or DriveThruRPG.

The Wretched

Micro RPGs, Products 5

I’m proud to announce the release of The Wretched, a solo RPG inspired by the films and music of John Carpenter and the music of Nine Inch Nails.

The Wretched is a solo journaling RPG played with a deck of cards, a tumbling block tower, and a microphone.

You are the last surviving crew member of the intergalactic salvage ship The Wretched. Adrift between stars after an engine failure, your ship was attacked by a hostile alien lifeform. The crew are dead.

You thought you had won. You launched the creature out of an airlock, and that should have meant safety.

It didn’t.

The Wretched comes as a printable PDF complete with a unique soundtrack written and recorded just for the game. There’s also a print run strictly limited to 25 copies.

You can buy The Wretched from itchh.io:

Under The Floorboards – Character Creation Preview

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Some of you may be aware of a Kickstarter promotion running this month called Zine Quest, which encourages creators to launch short campaigns aimed at funding small RPG zines.

I’ve been hard at work on my campaign, a rules-lite game based on The Borrowers called Under the Floorboards, and the Kickstarter campaign is now live. I’m also very, very pleased to say that I hit my funding goal in the initial few hours of the campaign, and that we’re now heading towards stretch goals!

Under The Floorboards is a tabletop collaborative storytelling game for 2-5 players about tiny people living in a giant, hostile world, inspired by The Borrowers.

Build your family and the house in which they live, then embark on an expedition into the land of giants in order to collect the things you need to survive – without being seen.

The game uses a simple 2d6 system for conflict resolution and an easy-to-pick-up story-building system to help GMs build engaging scenes on the fly.

Under The Floorboards is a low-prep game designed for one shot play but with tools to enable campaign play over multiple sessions. The game provides locations, hazards, and tools to quickly design your own content to keep surprising your players, and is perfect for convention play or to keep on your shelf for game nights when your whole group can’t be there.

You can back Under The Floorboards on Kickstarter here.

As a small preview for readers of Loot The Room, here is the first section of the game’s character creation rules!

Character Creation

Pick your pronouns and give yourself a name. You can choose any name you like, but if you need inspiration you can roll 2d6 and pick the corresponding entry from the table below:

2d6	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	Willim	Yvonnda	Veronetty	Winder	Morgewn	Llewyl
2	Chrimm	Vediver	Jalc	Levilry	Chaser	Lecture
3	Floery	Glanidy	Percivie	Tripper	Ivy	Maunnie
4	Sponderisa	Henerica	Montygoe	Linney	Gwendolisa	Vany
5	Margrim	Ambode	Blod	Adelina	Clemdeary	Gwenllianda
6	Ril	Cydril	Stumble	Dangle	Bucket	Gwilym

Decide as a group whether you all share the same family name or whether you have come together from disparate backgrounds, then either pick one family name to share or choose individual names. You may also decide that your character does not have a family name.

2d6	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	Mouse-Hole	Squeaky-Stair	Rain-Pipe	Toy-Chest	Doll-House	Cavity-Wall
2	Boiler	Underbed	Shed	Plug-Socket	Bird-House	Bookcase
3	Clock	Pondside	Gutter	High-Shelf	Bell-Pull	Piano
4	Loft-Hatch	Garage	Chandelier	Porch	Back-Step	Rainbarrel
5	Eaves	Overmantle	Dog-House	Linen-Press	Shed	Windowsill
6	Stove-Pipe	Cellar-Door	Bird-Nest	Spare-Room	Chimney-Stack	Vanity-Desk

Family names for Floorboard Folk are generally descriptive, and reflect the area in the giants’ house where the family lives. Sometimes, of course, Floorboard Folk find themselves displaced and are forced to move. This may be because their home comes under threat – maybe the giants block up the mouse holes, or hire an exterminator who pumps lethal gas into the walls – or perhaps it is because they have been spotted by the giants and need to find a new home before theirs can be discovered.

As a group, discuss whether you live in the traditional home indicated by your family name, or decide whether you had to move somewhere else. If you have had to move, you should collectively decide what prompted this.

The zine contains:

All the rules you need to create characters and play Under The Floorboards
10 unique locations for Expeditions
12 Enemies and Challenges to populate your Locations
Tools to create your own Locations, Enemies, and Challenges
Guidelines for campaigns and extended play

Find out more and back the project here!

FREELANCE – A MicroRPG

Micro RPGs indiedev, rpg, ttrpg 0

FREELANCE is now available from the Loot The Room store or from itch.io!

Do work. Get Paid.

FREELANCE is an adversarial game of arguments, frustration, and ghosting for two players.

You are a freelancer who has done work for a client but you have not yet been paid, and the shifty little fuck keeps finding ways to dodge the issue. Your goal is to get paid or explode into a ball of impotent rage trying.

Buy it now from the web store!

FREELANCE is also available from itch.io, where there are also Community Copies available for those who can’t afford to pay.