BREAKING NEWS!! Jam is a tabletop RPG jam about storm chasers, night crawlers,  or muckrakers.

Rules

• Write a short tabletop role-playing game. ‘Short’ should ideally be under 10 pages, and no more than 20 pages, though legibility & accessibility are ultimately more important than page count here. If you feel your page count isn't representative of the game, go ahead and submit it. 1-20 pages is the target, not a hard and fast rule.
  • It should be a full/standalone game, and not a module for an existing one.
    • Being standalone means that the game can be played by itself (with accessories like pen, paper, dice, etc.). A hack of an existing game is allowed as long as you include all the rules needed to play it.
    • Hacks of pre-existing games are 100% allowed to be submitted.
  • The writing and design should be done within the 2-week period of the jam but you are free to come up with ideas beforehand.

• Your game must incorporate elements from the news, headlines, or exploring journalists or journalism in a TTRPG.
  • These guidelines are meant to inspire creativity and push games towards a certain direction, not be overly prescriptive, if you want to make a game about blogging, or you feel is adequately 'news adjacent', go ahead and make it.
  • Consider how to mechanically include stories, news, and exploration as journalism. Again, these suggestions are more for inspiration than prescription, a good faith effort to engage with the themes and style of the Jam is the most important part.
• Have fun!
  • Don't push yourself too hard. There are lots of game jams going on, and it's totally okay to take a break.

Additional guidelines on writing about real people

• Follow these guidelines if you have decided to write about:
  • Consider the audience of whatever topics you want to explore. Are your journalists sneaking in to North Korea? Breaking the next #Metoo? Great! But use your head. Make sure your content does not break any laws or contain truly obscene material eg. pedophilia. 
  • Hate speech is not permitted in jam submissions, in any form. Don’t use, promote, or normalize language that intends harm based on the rights and respect of physical and mental ability as well as racial, cultural, national, gender, and sexual backgrounds. (edited from the itch.io TTRPG forum Code of Conduct).
  • use content warnings. adult material is accepted if labeled as such. no porn or gore.
  • do not leave negative comments. if critique is asked for, provide it respectfully.
  • have fun and don't overwork yourself. simple and small is better.