The first couple of things that caught my eye from my recently acquired Roll Big or Go Home bundle...
The Devil's Dandy Dogs
Available here for about £11 at time of writing. PDFs of 114 page rulebook, custom cards, character sheets, playmat for the cards, explanation of how to use the cards. Written by Shanna Germain, published by Monte Cook Games.
The premise of this game is that the PCs are hellhounds formed of the Devil's shadow, tasked with fulfilling his side of bargains with the damned and retrieving their souls in exchange. Neither of those things is ever in doubt; but the Devil is bored, and in each session, the Dogs are at his feet, at home, and collectively tell him a story about how, exactly, they fulfilled the bargain and recovered the soul. This is not a game of what the PCs did; it is game of how they did it.
Character creation consists of picking one of the ten archetypes, each of which has different abilities for you to showcase when telling the story. Actual play - if I can call it that - is about the players collaborating to tell a story; there are random elements, such as character traits you can roll against and the initial setup where the GM ("Diviner") lays out a Tarot spread of custom cards to inspire the explanation of who the damned soul is and what they want in exchange, but really this is just the group sitting around telling each other a story about a deal with the Devil. Dice are only rolled at key moments when the outcome would have interesting consequences of some kind.
I like this, and I enjoyed reading it; but I can't see myself playing it. It seems best suited to a small group of players and one-shots or short campaigns.
The King is Dead
Available here for about £11 at time of writing. 40 page PDF rulebook, written by D Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker, published by Lumpley Games.
The premise of the game is that the king of a mediaeval kingdom has died without an heir, and the PCs are young nobles of the five royal houses. The objective of the game is to exalt your house and ascend to the throne; you do this by building a hand of ordinary playing cards, with benefits for having face cards and multiple suits.
On your turn, you choose one of 11 sub-games, such as Chase, War, Stealing Time Together and so on; these range from enemies-to-lovers romance arcs to open combat, mass or personal. The first turn is always Intrigue & Muster, in which one of the houses does something to incite action; the last turn, The Coronation, occurs when every player has had at least one turn and one player wants to end the game, and crowns the new ruler. Sub-games are usually won by showing the highest card, or a specific type of card; they can result in you getting extra cards (up to a maximum of five), swapping cards with another player, or losing cards (down to a minimum of two).
The Coronation is worthy of further detail. The player with the most aces and face cards is the new ruler; the player with the most suits (or any who tie) are ascendant houses. Then, anyone with twos or jacks in their hand ("doom cards") may play them to show the challenges the new ruler faces in their first year in power; the final turn is narrative, and asks the players where they are at the end of this first year.
This is a largely narrative game of the shenanigans at court which create and break alliances in a civil war, with most of the violence happening offstage and all of it highly abstracted. It's explicitly aimed at a single short session with a small group of PCs. There's a lot of setting material buried in the text of the sub-games; places, organisations, houses and their assets.
I don't think I'd play this straight, but I think it would make a good setting, and I might use it as the framework for a more traditional RPG, with the PCs as the entourage of one noble and randomly-selected events.
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