B-Sides: Experimental Games, 2011–2017

RPG Anthology by Hyperfictive

Sixteen experimental games from the years when things got complicated.

The second volume of B-Sides covers 2011 to 2017. The games get shorter and stranger. Some are about the designer’s life in ways he didn’t fully understand when he wrote them.

Volume 2 includes:

• Identity Poems: four role-playing poems where you play yourself, using your real history as the playing ground
• Do You Want To Interact With Me At All: two games about connection between strangers on public transit, one played at a table, one played for real
• The Patriarch’s Head: trace a murdered patriarch’s missing head backwards through time
• Proof of Concept: a solo game with an imagined dream creature, strange encounters, and a piece of paper you burn at the end
• Night Air: camp followers preparing for a night’s work at a siege, talking about everything except the men they serve
• Dream: a solo dice game where you keep aging and explaining why you never did the thing you wanted, until you die
• The Elf Archaeologists Are Saying Hurtful Things About Your Skeleton: exactly what it sounds like
• A Thousand Years Under the Sun: a map-drawing civilization game spanning a millennium on the steppes
• Aggressive: a custody dispute where the ex is silenced whenever anyone says “now you are being aggressive”
• …and seven more

As with Volume 1, each game includes the author’s notes. About what he was processing, what he was trying to build, and why games turned out to be a good way to think about complicated things.

About the author: Matthijs Holter is a Norwegian game designer known for Archipelago, Society of Dreamers, and A Thousand Years Under the Sun.

B-Sides: Experimental Games, 2011–2017 is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.

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