It's a big time for William Shakespeare, right now.
- They maybe found a new portrait of him in England.
- A new movie about him comes out next week.
- There's a demo out now for MERELY PLAYERS, a multiplayer TTRPG for theatre nerds.
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All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
erely Players is a theatrical RPG in development for 3-6 players and a Master of Revels, where players take on the role of Shakespearean actors performing a play with life or death stakes for the King and Queen of Fairies and their court.
These intrepid actors are in a struggle for their very livelihood: the best of you will be granted gifts and adulation; the worst actor amongst you will be Queen Titania’s prisoner, trapped in the fairy world until they’re spent. Players will not only be acting through Shakespeare’s classic text, but also role-playing as the actors themselves, entering and exiting, waiting for cues, navigating stage fights, handling props, and trying to remember lines.
To create the tension of live performance, players will use decks of standard playing cards to determine both the difficulty of the performance and their success or failure on stage.
The DEMO focuses on the core loop actually reading of the play, with more setting and character/company creation information to come later.
