Participate

You are players in a game...

At the end, only one of you will walk away.

What will you discover about each other in the Arena? How long can you survive? What will you give up to leave alive? And will the reward ever be worth the cost?

The Game

Death Game is a narrative-driven tabletop roleplaying game when characters compete in a high-stakes battle for survival. 

Throughout the game, players will pick up different characters, struggling against all odds for victory. As the number of competitors narrows and the stakes grow higher, you'll play until one of you wins, and the rest of you die. 

During that time, you’ll build an arena, work out the rules of play, and grow attached to your mostly doomed cohort of competitors.

Why this game? Why now? 

Death Game is based on the battle royale genre of media properties. Films, shows and books like The Hunger Games, Squid Game, Battle Royale, and Alice in Borderland provided inspiration. Honestly, it seems to be a genre that’s made to be converted into a role-playing game.

The game has been in development since 2021, but it has taken years to iron out exactly how the rules should be structured; there are a lot of moving parts to balance. Now, it’s finally ready to be published.

Although the game is inspired by popular media, it takes a game-design genealogy from dozens of sources — from DCC funnels to map-building solo-games, to GMless games. Every mechanic has been magpie-picked by the author to build an experience that’s true to the genre and fun to play. We believe it's worth your cash and your time. 

So how does it work? 

• Create your arena through discussion around the table, and determine a gimmick by secret ballot. Decide the number of players.
• Create your competitor by assigning them a different size die for all three skills [d4, d6 and d8], and a background [d10].
• The GM creates some NPCs using the predetermined NPC archetypes.
• Then: play! You play over several days; at various points the GM can trigger an Arena Challenge. Even without Arena Challenges you still have to deal with other competitors.
• You're at risk of death whenever you make a Perilous skill check. When you fail a Perilous check, you roll a death save against an escalating number.
• If you do die, you get the opportunity to take over the GM’s seat while the previous GM takes over a previously existing non-played character. 
• You use the Arena Board, where you store information about locations, NPCs and ongoing clocks, to make that possible.
• Continue to play until there are only the same number of competitors as there are players. Then, a showdown is triggered in which only one of you leaves alive.

What do backers get?

When you back Death Game, you get access to both the core game and Death Game: Arenas. The core game includes everything you need to play: rules for character creation, arena building, basic play, NPC archetypes, item and secret tables, and much, much more. 

Death Game: Arenas includes two scenarios written by Laurie O’Connel and others written by our wonderful stretch goal authors. 

You’ll also get an Arena Board, a playmat which will help your group to organise information as you play. 

Are there stretch goals?

YES! Stretch goals will flesh out the Arenas zine with even more content for you to play with. 

• [FUNDED] At £3000, Kayla Dice will write a new scenario for Arenas. The Conrad Open Hospital is the cutting edge of private medical treatment where a select group of patients have been granted life saving medical treatment free of charge. There is of a course one simple condition. The only way to unlock an exit is for all but one of the patients to have been killed. The hospitals cameras broadcast the carnage to their donors — they have to turn a profit somehow, you understand. How far will you go to keep your new lease on life?
• [FUNDED] At £4000 wendi yu will write a fouth scenario for Arenas. wendi's keeping her cards close to the chest, but you know it will have something to do with identity politics and capitalism.
• [FUNDED] At £5000, Kristen Chin will write ANOTHER scenario for Arenas. The Urban Maw is a constantly shifting arena created by repurposing the wreckage of an Experimental Model City, run by a malevolent urban management AI. Deal with mechanical statuary, urban mimics, and the perils of hostile architecture. The city was built to be perfect but perfection was never intended to include you. 

JUST ANNOUNCED: £7000 Stretch Goal

Add a pop of colour to our game with Deathmatch! At Castle Von Glaum. In this standalone pamphlet scenario by our artist, Hodag, you'll play a gaggle of depowered superheroes forced to fight to the death by a maniacal enemy. Battle clones, evil supervillains, and each other in this high-drama, comic-inspired scenario.

We'll be printing it as a seperate pamphlet in full colour, and every backer will get a copy, adding a third element to our box of goodies! Deathmatch! At Castle Von Glaum will replace one of the scenarios written by Laurie O'Connel in the Arenas zine, which will also allow Laurie to focus even more on production values, developing the stretch writers' scenarios, and improving the quality of the core book even further. 

To hit this stretch goal and print a completely new pamphlet, we need to break £7k, which means another £800 in the last 24 hours. Can we get there?

The Creator

Laurie O’Connel is an indie darling whose work covers the wide, wide range of ‘weird’ to ‘unsettling’. His work always comes with a healthy side of social commentary and has a history of getting him sworn at by other authors who ‘wished they’d thought of that idea’. 

He’s most known for his works Lichcraft, a game about trans necromancers seeking immortality to reach the end of an NHS waiting list, and Hieronymus, a game based on the artwork of Hieronymus Bosch. He has several successful kickstarters, an ENNIE, and multiple writing credits under his belt.

This is a classic Laurie O’Connel game: a great one sentence pitch, sharp, stripped-down mechanics, and interested in finding out why we’re all so obsessed with this genre right now.

The Team

ART: HODAG RPG

Hodag RPG (@HodagRPG) has got a two day head start on you, which is more than he needs. Hodag's got friends in every town and village from here to Sheboygan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he has the Grail already.

EDITING: SAMANTHA LEIGH

Samantha Leigh (she/they) is a TTRPG designer and the owner of Blinking Birch Games. They're best known for their solo tarot game, Anamnesis, and their short-form videos on indie TTRPGs. Her previous editing work includes Skyrealms and ghostbox.

LAYOUT: LUKE EARL

Luke (@Aethercorpgames) is the mildly sentient creator behind the wildly underground RPGs Orchidelrium, Coiled.Spæce and Double D6. When not pushing pixels he’s commonly found singing his little heart out with a couple of local am-dram groups or being attacked by a small but ferocious cat.

STRETCH GOALS: WENDI YU

wendi yu "is" a travesti monster from Northeast Brasil who makes trouble out of words and images. She has a Master's in Contemporary Media and Culture, and is currently doing a PhD in the same area. She's made three TTRPGs so far, the latest of which is 'here, there, be monsters!', a response to monster-hunting media from the monsters' point of view. She’s also at times been a screenwriter, poet, filmmaker, designer, editor and sensitivity reader. In a Death Game, she's the one trying to unionize the players against the system. She’s currently wanted dead, alive or reanimated. For more info, visit http://wendiyu.carrd.co or @wen_di_yu.

STRETCH GOALS: KAYLA DICE

Kayla Dice is a TTRPG creator, dormant comedian, retired wrestler, begrudging podcaster and unleashed oddball living in London. She releases games as Rat Wave Game House, often focusing on themes of alienation and connection, and in 2023 she was named a winner of the Diana Jones Emerging Designer program.

STRETCH GOALS: KRISTEN CHIN

Kristen Chin (Yanahn) is a Malaysian game designer and illustrator based in the UK. She enjoys writing games about the fantastical, the uncanny, and the idea of society as a continually reconstructed entity (somehow this often circles back to urban ghosts). Her work can be found at https://yanahn.itch.io/ and on twitter as @KristenChin8