A Quiet Night In

File this under 'Playsets That Never Were': it's one of two rough ideas for playsets that I toyed around with as additional content for Blood & Water but just couldn't quite make the concept gel. I think Nick Reynolds had the right idea in pitching a strong, distinctive setting for the game and going from there as usual, which is the approach I use myself at conventions now and I recommend to anyone else wanting to give a taster of the game to others.

Still, there's this...

The Best Laid Plans

Morgan, Tara, Walter and Jean share a house in an unassuming part of town: they keep themselves to themselves and have undemanding jobs that pay the bills. Also, they are not human: Morgan is a banshee, who is drawn towards the dying; Tara is a succubus, who feeds upon male lust; Walter is a djinn, who just can't stop himself from granting wishes; and finally, Jeanette is host to a legion of disembodied spirits who need to be contained lest they inflict great harm upon the world.

It's best for all of them if they have as little contact with the human race as possible, but's what best is not always what's done and compromises must sometimes be made. Tonight, they are all going to get very compromised.

This playset provides the complete resident's book for each of the above four characters, plus suggestions for the mediator to weave this into an appropriate narrative for a one-shot.

Nightmare Housemates from Hell!

My second full game is now available on DrivethruRPG: Blood & Water is an original, stand-alone game, not a PbtA hack or indeed a hack of or supplement for any other existing system. Here's the back cover blurb:

There’s this werewolf, a vampire and a ghost who share a house... but this is no joke. As it turns out, death is not the end for everybody, though it usually puts an end to your social life. Somewhere between being human and being a monster you’ll find the characters in this game: people who cannot return to the family they knew but aren’t ready to embrace the thing they have become. They say that blood is thicker than water, but when your own blood turns against you, you have to find a new kind of family, one who will accept you for what you are.

Mouthpiece

This is a short freeform ideally suited for 3 or 4 players in a comfortable location: some prep is required, but this can also serve as an excuse to bust out the art & craft skills of your group. If you use this as a lunchtime or teatime game, you can add culinary skills to the mix too.

Meet & Greet

Before you can play, you need to agree upon a situation the game will explore: something simple and domestic works best, but you can add genre elements to this in order to spice things up.

• Meeting the significant other's parents... and you're all vampires.
• A neighbourhood watch meeting... in a post-apocalyptic world.
• Tea after the weekly church service... for the Cult of Dagon.
• A baby shower... for the mother of The Foretold One.
• A monthly book group meeting... for superheroes and their sidekicks.

Saving Throw Down

Explicit Content Warning! This post is NSFW and contains explicit sexual references and profanities; it is not suitable for anyone under the legal age of consent and probably not anyone over the legal age either. Do not attempt to play this game with strangers or friends, or at all, really.

...

I think it might work with someone you were fucking, though.

Whores on the Orient Express

This game does for published scenarios what the porn industry does for Hollywood: it turns them into porn. That's the whole premise of the game, which is intended to satirize... something or other, I don't know; look, they can't all be deep, socially relevant metaphors because sometimes all you want is a good shag.