In honour of the Halloween season - and thanks to a tabled Vampire: the Masquerade session - @claireg and I built a monster.
A Modern Prometheus is a two-player tabletop RPG by Mitchell Salmon, built on the Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands framework. In it, one player takes on the role of the Scientist and the other becomes their Creation. Throughout the course of gameplay, the Scientist and Creation go head to head over a series of mini-games that are both philosophical and pragmatic, coming to define both the Creation, the Scientist, and the space between them.
This game is really well put together and a lot of fun! To start, it encourages players to define lines and veils to delineate the edges of safe play - always happy to see that baked into the book. The entire game is a mutual process, from character creation, to the mini-games, to the inevitably bitter end - they are all defined by one player asking another questions, with the recipient answering in character. In this way the players enrich the world according to their whims, answering questions and adopting new characters or moments as they emerge.
You could easily tweak for more or fewer roleplayed scenes to fill in the narrative, or keep it higher level and dive into the philosophy of every moment. @claireg and I wobbled between these approaches, as the mini-game in question fit the theme we were going for. We definitely did as the book encouraged and allowed ourselves to become quintessentially Victorian. We even took laudanum. This game offers a wild amount of freedom in defining the available world parameters, making it highly replayable.
Speaking of playable, A Modern Prometheus is easily played over the course of an evening. We spent just about four hours from end to end, covering eight of the available ten mini-games and with some generous ambling conversations throughout. Happy to see Bolsonaro lost the election!
A Modern Prometheus could also be adapted into a longer form, journalling game to great effect. Each mini-game consists of one-or-many prompts (depending on your interpretation). It could also be played solo this way, if someone has a hankering to torture their right hand with their left.
~10$ USD for a digital download (currency conversion unknown). It's on sale at the time of this post, down to a cool 6$ USD! Check it out here.