The Idea

Tabletop RPGs are undergoing a fundamental shift with the rise of online streaming. A curious phenomenon has been observed – and eloquently described by Kate Bui (@ArmyOfMeat); people are now playing tabletop RPGs having never read the rules, but merely learned by watching games performed, much in the way that folk games, card games, and 'classic' tabletop games are taught rather than learned.

This game jam is my (@andyberdan) attempt to cultivate that phenomenon.

For social media purposes, please use #UnwrittenRPG to talk about the jam, so I can find all you beautiful people later.

The Jam Rules

• Analog games only (board game, card game, tabletop rpg, story game, larp, etc, etc)
• Rules are not allowed to be posted in any written form.
• Rules are not allowed to be posted in any image
• It is encouraged for rules to never be posted in any permanent form.
• Games should be communicated via Actual Play recordings or game sessions after the rules have been explained to players.

Those players should be encouraged to share the game if they so desire, acting from memory and their own notes (which should also never be shared)

So, if I can't write down the rules, what should I submit?

• Contact information to the author or other individual teacher
• Contact information for a play group or other group teacher (discord? forum?)
• Game session reports (blog post? text file?)
• Game session audio recordings (podcast? audio files?)
• Game session videos (youtube? twitch?)

Wait, doesn't this mean that my game might change?

Sure. That's kind of the point. Oral traditions means that stories are alive and change with every telling. A primarily written culture stagnates some of those creative aspects, as can be seen from the history of Icelandic Sagas, recorded from a particular skald's telling, as well as the erosion of First Nations culture (sometimes through deliberate cultural destruction, sometimes through language disuse). And I'm sure there are other examples, but I'm no anthropologist.