Dead Boi

Unlike many role-playing games, you start the game with no knowledge of who you are, meaning character creation is an ongoing process. As you investigate your own death, you also learn things about your life and your abilities.

Your story unfolds as you visit a dozen locations, look for clues, and piece together what you learn to build a theory of who you are and why you died. Dice and playing cards drive the events and encounters you have, but all other choices are yours. You might be dead, but you still have agency!

Things you will need to play DeadBoi:

The investigation phase is based on one of my other games, All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl (but with very different prompts), which itself leans on a heavily hacked version of Hints & Hijinx by Pandion Games. The main skill mechanic is Breathless, which allows you to assign one from an array of dice to each of your skills. Oh, and there's another twist: you will create your character as you play.

Ability Recall is a mechanic that enables you to set your skill scores. The first time you test any of your six skills, it will define your score for that skill going forward. But beware, you can't be good at everything.

Genre Bending. The prompts in DeadBoi are designed to spark your creativity and guide you in your investigations. However, they have also been designed to be setting-agnostic, meaning you can play DedBoi in any world you wish. Fancy figuring out how you ended up in an ancient Mesopotamian ziggurat? You do you! Or how about New York City in the 1970s? Or even a generation ship heading for Alpha Centauri! You get it.

The rules take about 15 to 20 mins to learn and, even better, you can understand them as you play. Jump right in as you read the zine!