There's been some interest in Nowhere Home lately, so let me tell you a bit about it.
Nowhere Home is a storytelling rpg about formerly human monsters. Cast out of human society, they travel together in search of somewhere to call home. Perhaps that 'somewhere' is more 'someone' and their only home is each other...play to find out!
Nowhere Home is diceless and optionally GMless. Each player can use their monstrous power to solve a problem once per session, or trigger their weakness to use it multiple times. The core book comes with four premade settings ranging from quasi-medieval fantasy to spacefaring adventure. Players are equally welcome to make their own! The first time I played, we were pretty much The Croods but with weird powers.
You can find Nowhere Home on Itch, or nab a physical copy here (there are also misprinted copies for a discount!)
A diceless hack of Lasers & Feelings and other games derived from it. Much like Lasers & Feelings itself, my rationale behind this is that it's basically the simplest form of dicelessness that I could implement which could still produce the same spread of results as actual dice.
Instead of using dice, each player draws a 6 by 3 grid on paper, and labels the columns with the numbers 1 through 6. "3" is the maximum number of dice you can roll without help, since in Lasers and Feelings you roll 1d6, "+1 if you're prepared and +1 if you're an expert"; in a game which uses 10 sided dice and you can roll up to 4 of them, it would be 10 by 4.
Each time you would roll one or more dice, you instead choose unchecked grid square(s) and check them with a pencil; the column number is the "dice result". At the beginning of each scene/session/playthrough/whatever (defined by the game, or by the GM if the particular game has no particular opinion on such things), or when you run out of empty grid squares, you refresh, erasing all the check marks.
If you're asked to check more squares than you currently have unchecked (i.e. you'd roll three dice, but your grid has only two unchecked squares left), you check all of the remaining squares, then immediately refresh and check the remaining square(s) from the newly-blank grid.
When one player helps you, the player helping you checks off a square from their grid. Discuss with the player helping you which number to select.
Diceless Lasers & Feelings by Delilah H. Smith is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (I don' t feel comfortable making this kind of derivative work with CC0 since that's more permissive than the license of Lasers & Feelings itself.)
Let me tell you how much I love The Tulip Academy’s Society for Dangerous Gentlemen.
About 8 years ago my brother Nick Smith (co-creator of The Magical Land of Yeld) created this ridiculous role playing game as an homage to both Ouron High School Host Club and our other brother Will’s obsession with fencing. In the game you play a student at the world’s most prestigious private school, The Tulip Academy. And not only are you a student, but you’re a member of the elite Society for Dangerous Gentlemen. What exactly the society does is up to the players, but might include hosting lavish parties, boat racing, building robots, rescuing princesses, espionage or time travel. And always fencing.
Because you play young Gentlemen you are always polite and courteous, and because you are extremely wealthy you can do absolutely anything you want. But instead of delving into the worst habits of the children of the 1% Tulip Academy encourages its players to be dashing gentlemen on wacky adventures, where helping others is the central goal, being charming and polite is expected and problems are solved with wit, science and fencing!
The game is GMless, instead relying on a strict structure, randomly generated scenes and NPCs (using an extensive series of hilarious tables) and simple playing card based conflict resolution. Th game plays well in 2-3 hours and is a perfect one-shot or fill in game.
The tiny book (only about 30 pages) is beautifully illustrated by Kayla Mayer.
I’ve played the game about a dozen times and have loved it every time. i think you will too!
Tulip Academy is currently available as part of the Yeld Bundle of Holding. its a great deal, so please check it out!
The Nowhere Home expansion is coming along nicely. Now at 25 pages (and still growing), it introduces optional rules for those who prefer more structured storytelling.
Character arcs for multi-session stories! Gain a reward each time you tick off a moment in your chosen arc.
A simplified character growth mechanic for one and two-shot games.
The option to play as a monster who was always a monster, rather than a human who has been turned into one. Deal with themes of isolation and the struggle for connection as you play a demon, fey, or any other inhuman entity you can imagine.
Insights, Secrets and Tension: new elements to encourage deeper group dynamics.
2-3 new settings to explore.
Don't own Nowhere Home? It's currently $1.99 USD in the Itch winter sale! You can check it out below and grab it at a great deal before the expansion drops.
A game of outcast monsters whose only home is each other.
My first ten or so years of role-playing were purely play-by-post: warrior cats and dragons adventuring on online forums and message boards (shout out to Darkflame the dragon and Coldstone the kitty.) There was one very memorable Fallen London role-play over email too!
I suppose the modern equivalent would be a game in DMs, or maybe a discord text channel. In any case, for various reasons, many people prefer to play games in written form! However, some game systems are difficult to utilise in this format.
Here are some games that make for wonderful text-based adventures. All are GMless and/or diceless, so there's no awkward halt while you wait for a GM's roll.
Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine is a diceless game I've been waiting to get my greedy little hands on for some time. It focuses on fantastical slice-of-life stories. This reddit thread has great advice for running it as a play-by-post game!
There are plenty of available adventures for this system too! Adventures such as To Rob Death's Dominion, A Pawn's Gambit and the creator's own Halloween Special.
For the Grail is a GMless and diceless game of Arthurian knights on a grand quest. While it was designed for physical play, I've been playing it online with a group of friends and it's a lot of fun!
Law Bringers is a diceless game designed for space fantasy adventures such as Star Wars, but which works well for pseudo-medieval fantasy as well. It's also completely free!
Lordsworn is a GMless rpg of tragic, broken warriors struggling to survive after the destruction of their god in a cataclysmic war. It uses 4-sided dice. When a player rolls these dice, they keep their results secret from the other players, making it perfect for this style of play. Each player controls three Lordsworn, providing a good variety of dynamics to explore during their travels.
Magica is a one-page rpg about magical girls. It is GMless but players use six-sided dice to resolve events. Also, each magical girl is secretly in love with one of the others. Messy fun indeed!
