Making a shitty one-page RPG called Oh Shit It’s the Killer. The premise is simple: you’re a high schooler spending the weekend in the woods with your besties. The Killer is there also. He is trying to the Kill you
I say shitty not to demean the quality of my work but because it’s less an exercise in good game design and more an attempt to induce paranoid internal conflict that turns into murder (in game of course). It has like three mechanics and one of them actively encourages you to murder the other PCs
Great news!
It’s done
I put like three braincells into this, so if there’s anything about it that outright sucks, uh. Sorry not sorry, L + ratio + let’s use the 1-page restriction as an excuse for any unfun mechanics
“What if there was a game about being a genre-savvy slasher protagonist murdering their way to the role of Final Girl?”
“Sounds cool when exactly does the PvP start”
“character creation”
With 10 point font I can fit the last mechanic I want to include, Gear, adding another layer to the backstabbing and manipulating mess that is character creation.
honestly a solid one-page RPG, and it isn’t another Lasers and Feelings hack, so points for that as well! I like the gradually ratcheting up difficulty, it is reminiscent of Pandemic.
the only point that feels like it needs elaboration is “multiple people can win by teaming up to defeat the Killer”. is this the same is the Final Stand mechanic, a skill check for each player? and is there a limit to when it can be triggered? otherwise the winning strat is blatantly to team up and attack the Killer as soon as possible while their power is low. horror-movie narrative logic says premature attempts to attack the killer should fail, but reveal something important about the nature of the threat. I suppose the narrator’s job is to forestall such an attempt by inserting as many skill checks as possible and offering bad decisions.
Yeah attempts to attack the Killer only truly work during the Final Stand. Notably, that’s also when throwing your buddy to the killer is a wayyyy easier option than making those checks
I can’t promise that the system math, like, works. I didn’t test it at all. For a more drawn-out and difficult experience you could switch to 3d6 + bonuses, keeping the three highest, have the Killer’s power range from 4 to 18, the difficulty of killing an ally be 11 (or 12 if you want to discourage infighting a little more, and the number the Final Stand begins at be 18. That’ll usually result in longer games with probably only one winner.
@that-house I could not stop thinking about this all day
(edit: updated image - minor tweaks)
This fucking rules.
