I love the direction that Dream Askew took dice-less, GM-less RPGs. The distributed setting playbooks are evocative and the token economy does a good job of encouraging players to put their characters in tough situations. That said – I’ve found myself wanting much more structure around narrative arcs and this holds true for the the broader Belonging Outside Belonging (BoB) family of games; they’re great at steering decisions in the moment but there’s scant scaffolding to help with overarching story.

There’s an ongoing jam for hacks of Riley Rethal’s new game Galactic 2e, which is BoB meets Star Wars. I’m using the jam as an opportunity to explore how to add more plot structure to a BoB game. My submission, which is currently in rough draft, does a few things:

  1. It pares down the setting and character setup steps to a minimum
  2. It has a template for creating a threat and antagonist to overcome, as well as a flaw that the players can exploit
  3. It organizes scenes into a three act structure with each act in a new location
  4. It has specific scene suggestions for each act

My hope is that this helps players tell a super focused story within the BoB framework. I did a quick playtest last night and, while there’s tons of room for refinement, I think I’m on the right track!

You can check out the raw work in progress and I’m happy to hear feedback. I’ll probably do at least one more rev on it and before moving to layout and polish. I’ll post here when it’s finished!