You can find the Second Guess System here!

Join the Gamenomicon Discord to discuss Second Guess and more.

Second Guess games like One White Eye or The Date explore a wide variety  of topics from horror to romance and potentially anything in between. The central conceits are that it's a one page solo game, utilizing a d20 based journaling system, and twist character perceptions as they go, which you can read more about in the excerpt below and in the SRD itself. 

That said, a large part of the fun in a jam is seeing how much you can push the boundaries! Take the framework provided here and embrace the setup provided or do something new and make it work for high combat fantasy, duo games, or more.

NEW FOR 2022: While SGS was initially designed for solo games, it has also seen a duet entry. If you have an idea for a way to expand it even more, have at! Let's really bend things and see what the Second Guess can do!

Whatever you do, make sure you tag @the_gamenomicon on Twitter so we can see and share what you've made.

Welcome to the Second Guess Jam! 

Our rules:

• Use the Second Guess System Resource Document (SRD) in some way. There's a lot of leeway to this as we expect you to push the boundaries with new ideas, but please maintain some connection.
• Be mindful of your content. Remember that this is a hard world and we don't have any need to make it harder. Safety tools can be difficult to fit in a single page game, but we would love to see interesting ways to do so when possible. Regardless, stay away from topics that are cruel, bigoted, or intended to bring harm.
• Lastly, know your worth! Don't at all be afraid to charge for your game. 

About the Second Guess System:

This one page document serves as both a guide and a template for crafting SGS (Second Guess System) games.

Initially crafted  while musing on an Edgar Allen Poe Inspired setup for a game that came to be called One White Eye, I later wrote the following explanation of my thought process:

This also came quickly with the realization that a game of such narrow scope really only needed to be a single page. Thus, the system would have to be short and tight as well. As mentioned, I've been researching a great deal of Wretched and Alone games over the past few months. It's a great system and setup. I only had to figure out how to strip it down in size as 52 prompts is a great deal to fit on that single page. I needed a smaller number, but still needed some random determination to change the flow of the game. And thus, a d20 with twenty prompts.

Of course, one of the best features of W&A using a deck of cards is that it eliminates the recurrence of the same prompt more than once. With a d20, this is a problem, unless you institute a reroll each time you get a number you had previously used. But a simple reroll felt narratively and mechanically flat. Where's the risk or reward in this game? How does it end?

Which lead straight to the idea that the game won't stop you from rolling the same numbers and prompts, but it will twist what happens. Everyone lies all the time. They lie to each other and the lie to themselves. What if each time you rolled a prompt over again you had to admit to something that you had lied about previously in that prompt? Surely someone imprisoned like this has been lying about something.

From there, we just add a quick d6 roll and an escalating tracker of your Dread which must be beaten or elsewise you succumb, and there you have it - a game!

Check out the full document for a little more insight into the core factors that make up a Second Guess Game such as uncertainty and quite possibly, inevitability.