Let's Go Steal an Ending: the Genrenauts TTRPG

Dive into worlds of genre fiction to find and fix broken stories and protect the multiverse from devastation!

A multiverse of stories. Repetition and iteration of narrative, each genre world playing out its common tale types. Archetypes and tropes smashing up against one another and making tragedies and happily ever-afters. 

But like any system, sometimes entropy takes hold, and a story breaks down. When that happens, the Genrenauts step in to fix the story. Because if they don’t, the dissonance from the broken story ripples over and changes Earth on a fundamental level. (Science Fiction world goes off-track and scientific innovation stagnates, exploration halts; Fantasy world goes off-track and xenophobia rises, cultural rifts widen).

That's why you're here, rookie - to get the stories back on track before the breach can spread.

Let's Go Steal An Ending is a multi-genre ttrpg about exploring dimensions where genre and narrative conventions are fundamental laws of reality. 

Play a heist crew of story experts tasked with finding and fixing broken stories to protect the multiverse. 

Find and fix broken stories across worlds of narrative while dealing with red tape and office drama between missions. 

Based on the r/Fantasy "Stabby" Award-finalist series by Michael R. Underwood.

Stories are breaking harder and more often. Travel between dimensions carries greater risk than ever, and the Genrenauts are stretched to their limits. You play a new team recruited to answer the interdimensional crisis as they try to protect the multiverse and keep their home from being warped beyond recognition by the tsunami-level ripples crashing across dimensions.

Let's Go Steal An Ending is a full-length Forged in the Dark role-playing game for 3 to 6 players (most recommended = 4-5). 

The game includes:

• 7 playbooks based on the role your character plays within the story heists (from the Face and the Hitter to the Improvisor and the Dramaturge),
• 8 playable story regions (including subgenres like Space Opera, Epic Fantasy, Romantic Comedy, Vigilante Crime, Detective Mystery, Suuperheroes, and Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland ). Chose the regions that comprise your team's beat as well as establishing the thematic and tonal palette of your campaign. Every region has a selection of Pillars representing narrative centers of gravity, each modifying the rules of the game. Some pillars represent toxic/cynical trends in a genre, like the Iron Age of superhero comics or the history of imperialism and colonialism in Space Opera.
• Campaign options to vary structure and format. Will you play a brisk job-of-the-week episodic campaign, a zoomed-in serial campaign with longer missions and a single season plot, or a combination of the two where you bounce between missions while developing a season-long story arc?

Will your team face adventure and intrigue in the worlds of Action, Heroic Fantasy, and Spy Drama or make sure that whimsy and wonder persist in the worlds of Romantic Comedy, Science Fiction, and Cozy Mysteries? Find and fix broken stories across worlds of narrative while dealing with red tape and office drama between missions. 

Touchstones
TV: Leverage/Leverage: Redemption, Quantum Leap, Timeless
Film: The Last Action Hero, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Blazing Saddles
Comics: Planetary, What If?
Games: Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined, The Strange

Access the current draft of this game by becoming a patron at $3 or up at Patreon.com/michaelrunderwood. A playable in-progress version will come to Itch.io soon.

Blades in the Dark™ is a trademark of One Seven Design. The Forged in the Dark Logo is © One Seven Design, and is used with permission.

This work is based on Blades in the Dark (found at http://www.bladesinthedark.com/), product of One Seven Design, developed and authored by John Harper, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).