DEATH WAS THE ONLY ROAD OUT OF TOWN

EDIT: I sat down at my desk and found three errant paragraphs that I had neglected to stick to the game, and they're good paragraphs even though the game basically runs without them, so I have added them in to a new edition and replaced the old file. 

Written in collaboration with Alex Roberts.

THIS is the final of the 12 collaborations I had lined up over the last year, and: it's a real humdinger. 

(I want to do a proper post about what I learned whilst collaborating; it's been a really wonderful experience. And a challenge! But, like, for good reasons. So keep an eye out for that.)

Alex is probably best-known for STARCROSSED, a game where you play two people desperately trying not to kiss each other conducted through the medium of Jenga. She has Opinions about the inherent kink relationships present in Paranoia, the most recent of which I co-wrote, and as it happens I wrote a lot of the kink out of the mechanics by accident which might be why no-one's playing the damned thing.

Anyway. We thought it might be fun to make something explicitly about power in the way that Paranoia is about power, but also to allow some switching in there between the players and the GM. DEATH WAS THE ONLY ROAD OUT OF TOWN is what happened. It's a game about being relentlessly punished by the GM, but also about making them perform for you like a trained dog or completely undermine them when you spend the right tokens. 

(I quite like players surprising me, so giving them permission and indeed encouragement to mess with the GM is right up my alley.)

So: it's not a game about kink. But it is a kinky game, in as much as it's about playing with power and trust and respect, and I'm really enthusiastic about what we've ended up with. It was a blast to write with Alex and I hope I get to do it again at some point in the future.

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And now? Here's what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks.

- I'm going to finish the back pages, print the last three months' games, and mail everything out to those of you who are entitled to physical copies. Thank you all so much for your patience as I take three extra months to fulfill this.

- I'm going to have a think about what happens next with the Patreon. While I've had a cracking time working with other creative types, there's been a pretty significant drop in my Patreon takings - on one hand because the other artist gets half the money, and on the other because my total has been steadily decreasing as the year of collaborations has gone on. I want to make sure that I'm creating consistent, exciting content for all of you, and I want to go about that the right way.

- Then I'm going to develop the prospective back page EAT THE REICH into a full-length zine because a game about heroic vampires and ghouls sowing chaos by eating every Nazi they can deserves room to breathe. 

 That's all for now. 

Cheers!

- Grant