Everyone starts roleplaying somehow. Maybe you were invited to a D&D table and the experience clicked. Maybe you saw it on Stranger Things. Maybe you saw a game on a shelf and worked it out for yourself.

What if someone could show you how it worked without going through all that? What if you didn’t need the full published RPG experience, just the basics? What would it take to hook a new player?

Goal

Provide a tool for an experienced gamer to show the uninitiated what tabletop roleplaying is, what’s fun or rewarding about the experience, what’s unique to roleplaying compared to other forms of play, gaming, and interactive art.

The experience should run no less than 10 minutes and no longer than 30. It should accommodate no fewer than 1 player in addition to a facilitator – no solitaire or zero-player games! – and scale up to as many folks as you think would enjoy a typical tabletop event.

Additional Thoughts

• Include as few or as many rules as you think are necessary.
• Think about the stuff so basic that maybe you haven’t thought about it for years…but may not be obvious to bystanders.
• Consider the audience you want to introduce. Is it adults? Teenagers? Video gamers? Kids? Your parents? Feel free to narrow the scope of your design if you think it’ll be more effective.
• Finally: this is your chance to be an ambassador for what you think roleplaying “is” to folks who have no preconceptions. What would you tell them if you wanted them to play again?

The Rules

• Submit your game as a PDF or text document.
• Keep it to a single sheet of paper (letter, A4, or legal). This can be two-sided. Feel free to be creative about how that sheet of paper gets used, but assume it will be implemented as a printed item.
• There will be no winners or losers. Just jam your heart out!
• The Indie Game Reading Club claims no ownership of any kind over the work. We will link to all entries here at itch.io and we will link to your entries at indiegamereadingclub.com. Feel free to charge what you want once the jam is over. We want to host the contest because it’s a worthy subject, not get involved beyond that.
• Members of the Club will review entries that interest us on the blog at indiegamereadingclub.com. This does not imply the games have won anything, just that we found an entry worthy of comment.

This Game Jam is specifically for material related to Tabletop Roleplaying Games. Video game submissions will be removed. Thanks!