Vs the World

This is one of the earliest games I ever designed; I believe it is a reskin of the BESM system but I don’t remember either well enough to know for sure. It was intended to riff on the aesthetic of the Scott Pilgrim comics+game and provides a fictionalized and videogamey New York to play in, as characters constructed largely out of videogame references. In fact, almost everything in the game that isn’t just like a basic game mechanic is a reference of some kind.

I was about nineteen when I wrote this and had played maybe 4 sessions of roleplaying games in my life. It is not work I am particularly proud of but it is very old so I am submitting it here as part of Natalie Libre’s Unearthing Jam. As per their suggestion it is on offer here for $3, however if you are unable to pay that amount it can be downloaded freely from my Patreon, where you can also find better and more recent games I’ve made for free as well.

(CONTENT WARNING: This game contains numerous stereotypes of New York and metropolitan life in general, in what I can only describe as a teenager’s unskilled pastiche of GTA’s satire. There are insensitive portrayals of drug use, racism, sex work, and likely other things related to the urban setting I was trying to concoct).