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You don’t happen to have a cat by any chance.
The Cypher System is a ttrpg by Monte Cook Games, that is exceedingly quick and simple to play, from creating characters to running adventures. It’s the basis of most of my ttrpg work here at Against the ’70s. I have a post explaining how the game works, and why I chose it, here. There’s a free rules primer from Monte Cook Games if you’d like a
I’ve created two products for the Cypher System, both of which are free to download.
Owns the Road: Ttrpgs allow you to be whatever you can imagine, but it’s usually some kind of organic biped. What this game supplement presupposes is: what if you were a car? One that could think and talk and, if necessary, run people over? If this sounds like something that’s right up your street, then download Owns the Road and give it a test drive.
Struts: The mid-’70s. Mirror balls, glowing multicolored dance floors, polyester suits, and most importantly: boogieing, a.k.a. getting down. Characters in an Against the ’70s game are familiar with disco culture, but only one is truly of the culture. If you’re someone who Struts, you’re so in tune with your body and the rhythms of the world, you can shake your groove thing, catch the eyes of the beautiful people, and give an extra-dimensional corpse-stealing alien a knockout punch, all at the same time. And never muss a perfect hair on your head. You can download it here.
Fear of the Unknown is a horror ttrpg by Thomas Eliot that allows a GM and a group of players to improvise a horror movie in a single session. The GM (here, called the Oracle) is intended to improvise the monstrous antagonist at the table. But if you’re like me, and want a net under your improvisatory tight rope, then you’ll want to check out my series of Monster Playsets. A Monster Playset is a sheet full of questions (and optional answers) to consider before or during the session to help sculpt your Fear of the Unknown game to better simulate a microgenre. Each playset also includes microgenre specific tables for failed Investigate and Face Peril moves. The instructions and overview for all Monster Playsets can be downloaded for free here. (There’s also a free Fear of the Unknown quick start that can be found here.
The first playset is called Modern-Day Dracula, and it’s intended to help create a Salem’s Lot or Fright Night style scenario on the fly. You can download the playset here for free, and the overview for the playset, which includes an explanation of the microgenre being explored, new rules, and a deeper dive into the questions in the playset, can be found here.
More playsets this year, for such microgenres as killer insects, the first day of a zombie apocalypse, on the ground with a city-demolishing kaiju, and a special one to emulate the horror films of Lucio Fulci.