fantasypunk #

There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen

This is a game about complex, troubled, wondrous, and broken people. The people who create problems and who solve problems, and about how often both are the same people.

No one can guarantee that the rough-edged and jaded stories told here won’t be, in time, worn down by the tongues of storytellers into shapes perfectly smooth, rounded, and solid; that the people we cared about here won’t be turned into paragons of strength, wisdom, or virtue who always seem to figure out what to do, or always get the specific help they need when they get stuck.

But until then, let’s look at what burdens those complex, troubled, wondrous, and broken people carry, how they crack under their weight, and how they fill those cracks with lead and gold.

What is fantasypunk? #

fantasypunk is a narrative roleplaying game of incredible and fallible characters, the way they approach the world around them, and the burdens they carry.

Together we will weave tales of wanderers, travellers, the found and the lost, the seekers and the runaways, the people they meet, the friends they make along the way, that change and are changed by them.

To play fantasypunk you’ll need:

• a player to be the Giramundo, or GM, a kind of host and guide for the game;
• a group of 3 to 5 players to be the Bearers, the main characters of our Tale. You can stray from that range, but I can’t promise it will work as well;
• at least one six-sided die (d6), although at 5 or 6 of them is better;
• writing materials, analog or digital, whatever;
• the basic rules for this game as a reference;
• about 3 or 4 hours to play together: have breaks when necessary;
• a safe, welcoming, comfortable environment to play, physically or online;
• an agreement on safety tools, tone, and expectations for each session you play.

If you are looking for a game that focuses on building a collaborative story through light rules, that attempts to accommodate tales of characters expected to get into trouble they create themselves, and that expects a whole adventure arc to be completed between 4 to 10 sessions, roughly, this is an option for you.

If you are looking for a hypercapitalist murder-pillage power fantasy game, this is not it; there are incredible games out there that examine those fantasies, offering us different perspectives on them.

Alternatively, there’s that racist dragon game of colonization and gentrification owned by white billionaires.

If you choose to be a bigot, a racist, a fascist, a nazi, make yourself a favour and crawl back into the slimy pit you crawled out from, and stay away from anything I make.

After all, the real monsters are those who choose to be and remain monstrous.

You can get fantasypunk on itch.io.