MeFi Projects

In the past year or so, I've added several new translations and comments on games that have mostly been left out of the history of roleplaying, story games, fantasy games, etc. Highlights include seven classical mythology games from the late Renaissance (including the mildly LARP-like "Game of Ceremonies," in which players make sacrifices to Venus and Cupid), a translation of the novel Jeux d'esprit written in 1701 by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force (who gave a complete version of the collaborative storytelling game "Le Jeu du Roman," along with other games depicted in the novel), and trying out a new format, "Kriegsspiele, Parlament, and Prince Albert: light roleplaying in German, 1796-1893" (a blog post on parlor games and live action military-themed games with roleplaying elements).
posted by Wobbuffet on Dec 27, 2023 - 4 comments

Labyrinth of Night is a noir solo journaling game where you play as a private detective who's stuck in purgatory, wandering the city as you try to either wake up in your hospital bed or move on to your soul’s rest. It is played with a standard 52-card deck of playing cards. [more inside]
posted by icebergs on Dec 17, 2023 - 0 comments

"Monster in the Wilderness" is a solo journaling game about lying in wait for a hero who wants to come to your lair and steal your stuff. Play using random generators, or by building a house of cards.
posted by yarntheory on Nov 11, 2023 - 0 comments

A few months ago, I posted a rough translation of the rules to a collaborative fairy tale storytelling game more than 200 years old. I've now put that onto a Neocities site with many additional translations: a total of 5 variants of the same game re-published many times between 1801 and 1867, several variants of a game the same age that involves role-playing, and several variants of even older poetry and nonsense games related to the Surrealist game "Exquisite Corpse." There are also pages and translations explaining the history of the games' penalty phase, offering advice on running demos of the storytelling game especially using motifs from the earliest "secondary world" fantasy novel, and possible round-robin storytelling from the 1600s-1700s, as well as links to many additional sources for parlor games from 1551 to 1899.
posted by Wobbuffet on Aug 5, 2022 - 3 comments

I worked up a rough translation of one of the collaborative story-telling games linked in this post: Pre-Surrealist Games. It's called "The Impromptu Tale," and there's a lot to it that modern tabletop gamers may find familiar.
posted by Wobbuffet on Mar 25, 2022 - 0 comments

It feels like there's a Wordle clone for everybody nowadays. But I decided to go in a slightly different direction when I made DNDle, a game in which you try to guess the Dungeons & Dragons "monster of the day" by assigning values to its attributes and being told where you've got them right. [more inside]
posted by avapoet on Feb 16, 2022 - 2 comments

An old prototype SF game about mysteries, weird aliens, and managing your crew. [more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen on Sep 12, 2017 - 3 comments

A retro-inspired pro wrestling role playing game I've been working on, set in the territorial era of pro wrestling (the 60s-80s more or less). It's pay-what-you-can and will be forever. [more inside]
posted by zerolives on Jul 18, 2017 - 1 comment

A darkly amusing roleplaying game of goblin commandos in the armies of The Twilight Lord. Inspired by WW2 movies, Pratchett and Cornwell. Featuring goblin mayhem, satire and grotesquery.
posted by MattM on Mar 16, 2017 - 2 comments

Glenn Wichman is one of the three people who made the computer game Rogue, bits of which are visible in roguelikes (of course), many computer RPGs, and MMORPGs. We interviewed him today for the Roguelike Radio podcast.
posted by JHarris on Apr 20, 2012 - 1 comment

A generator for pulp sci-fi settings inspired by How to Host a Dungeon and the Dwarf Fortress world generator. You can view an animated description of the setting's evolution, pause at any time, and export a detailed description of the world as a text file. Direct Download (450 kB jar file). [more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen on Mar 13, 2012 - 1 comment

RPG Write is a tool to help you beat writer's block, by giving you RPG-style incentives when you write. We've all been there, stuck playing an RPG for a few more minutes, "just until I level." Many of us have been grinding that last bit of XP when we should have been writing! Rather than fight it, we've decided to cave to the compelling nature of RPGs!
posted by trunk muffins on Oct 28, 2011 - 8 comments