DedBoi

You wake up dead. It’s a lot to take in, but there’s no time for philosophising - you’ll need to travel between Earth, Heaven and Hell to figure out whodunnit, how dunnit, and why dunnit. A game about death, levity and finding out hard truths. Waking up dead sucks, but at least you're in your own bed. This is your bed, right? DedBoi is a solo role-playing game where you investigate not only your own untimely demise, but also try to figure out who the hell you are. Traverse hell, heaven and earth in search of answers to your questions. Sometimes, answers you don't want to hear. From the award-winning creator of Be Like a Crow, Punk is Dead, and All Night Breakfast at The Midnight Owl comes an introspective game about death, life and self-discovery. Before you get too excited, it’s worth saying this up front: you start the game on the back foot. Actually, worse than that. You start it dead. 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! If you like nerding out on this stuff, here are the specs for the zine: - A5 format (148mm x 201mm). - Inspirational artwork throughout. - Saddle-stiched (stapled). - 350gsm matt laminated cover with spot-uv effects (oooh! fancy). - 115gsm uncoated inner pages. - Roughly 40 pages (inc. covers). The zine is printed locally in the UK.