GM: NO. PREP: NO. FISH: GO.
this is cool enough that i have literally no idea how to talk about it. i made a game & a book of that game & now it's being sold somewhere! sweet!!here's the print + pdf bundle! they probably look better than these ones because these ones travelled a lot more & have spent several months with me rather than in the loving care of the professionals at IPR. you can also get just the pdf on itch.
the book is:
- 29 pages long
- abt 25% rules, 25% play examples, & 50% tables
- the first print edition of any of my games & has an exclusive cover that will never be printed ever again bc i fully lost the file so i literally can't
the game is:
hook, line, & cyb3r, a GMless, zero prep, “powered by go fish” cyberpunk shenanigan generator. you play this game by playing go fish. it’s fast-paced, goofy, neon fun, designed to get you playing in minutes.
you don’t need a GM because the cards and tables help GM for you. dice set your characters up and lay out the circumstances, so you can focus all of your creative energy on figuring out how they pull off the impossible. the nature of randomness and hidden information means your characters will be in situations way zanier than anything a sapient non-table entity would find reasonable to throw at you, so you can really flex your inventive and cinematic solutions.
the who
you are shadowrunners, bounty hunters, or some other type of high tech dystopian gig economy adjacent freelance criminals for hire. you probably live in the same city, or at least frequent the same forums. you might even have a history— it's always fun to have a history— but any allyship you share is tenuous or circumstantial. there are only so many creds to spread across so many jobs, and it's a dog-eat-dog fish-blade-fish game-set-match business out here. your only loyalty is to yourself, your bottom line, and maybe the crew who helps you maintain those things.the how
after generating some characters, complete with That One Job that they all happened to be hired for a few years back, you’ll start a standard game of go fish, with the usual goal of trying to collect the most books.the job
each book represents a successful payout from a heist, bounty, body guarding gig, white hat security breach, or whatever absurd thing someone with deeper pockets than you needs your services for.the intel
each suit of cards represents a pillar of intel you need to pull off a job: the client, the objective, the opportunity, and the “in”. intel is privately generated each time a card is “fished” from the deck (with the help of an extensive series of tables). by the time you’ve assembled a book, the four cards in it have picked up a wild spread of facts that you get to weave together into the narrative of how the heck your character pulled this thing off.the tables
every piece of information you need to create has a table associated with it to help get inspiration and ideas flowing. as someone who loves storytelling games but often feels that they don't provide enough support to make play accessible on low energy or weird brain days, i really wanted to make sure this game had a lot of it. everything from character creation to detail creation during jobs to the ending montage has something that takes input from dice or cards or both to give you a helping hand in makin stuff up.buy the book now on IPR, or the pdf on itch.
psst to canadians: shipping from the states is pretty rough. i have a few copies that i can sell, & the overall price will be way lower bc of lower shipping. check out my sidebar for contact info & i'll reserve you a copy, & or check out my itch in the new year when i'll put my remaining copies up for sale :~)
