The plan was simple. Well... maybe it was a bit convoluted but the goal was simple: Convince the rubes of the town that the carnival was haunted so that you could execute your brilliant schemes undisturbed. It would have been perfect, despite a few minor setbacks and incompetent henchmen.
If it wasn't for one thing...
That group of accursed teenagers!
Those Wretched Kids! is a solo journaling/roleplaying game played with a deck of cards, one D6, a tumbling block tower, and a journal or recording method. The game is based on Loot The Room's excellent Wretched & Alone system. In Those Wretched Kids! you play a brilliant if somewhat unsuccessful entrepreneur that has developed a vaguely nefarious plan centered around an old abandoned amusement park. In order to have your plans go off without a hitch, you have to balance the artificial legend you created to scare off interlopers, develop your main scheme, reflect on your career that keeps getting labeled as "villainous" for some reason and stop Those Wretched Kids! from interfering!
Those Wretched Kids! was inspired by the classic "Kid Sleuth" books and shows I loved as a kid - Scooby Doo, (and the dozen other Hanna-Barbera cartoons that used the same format) Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, Lewis Barnavelt and the Three Investigators as well as more modern twists on the genre like Stranger Things.
And of course, what better place to set this adventure than a creepy abandoned amusement park?
Preview Art from the game
Want to know more about the game and Kickstarter? Read on….
Chris Bissette's streamlined and beautifully designed Wretched & Alone RPG system is the perfect partner to this world. Originally designed for The Wretched, a solo game about attempting to survive on a derelict ship filled with ghosts, corpses and threatened by a deadly alien, the game draws out adventures and backstory as you play in a really evocative fashion.
With The Wretched, you use a Tumbling Tension Tower (Jenga) to represent your rising stress and potential collapse of the ship, a deck of cards to prompt events and story, with each suit representing a different aspect of your experience, from the alien itself to thoughts about your crew and ship systems. At the end of each day, you record your doomed adventures for anyone that finds the drifting wreckage. You are very unlikely to survive, but that doesn't stop you from trying. You can read more about The Wretched and the system HERE.
In Those Wretched Kids! I took a more tongue in cheek approach to the system, encouraging you to dream big with your plans and even bigger with the distractions you've conceived to scare off visitors. You will play with the same system, with the tower representing the assorted hodgepodge pieces of your plan as well as the rickety condition of the abandoned theme park itself.
The card suits represent the following aspects of the game:
THE PLAN: These cards revolve around your ultimate goal - what you are looking for and what you hope to achieve when successful. SUCCESS!
THE LEGEND: These focus on the elaborate, possibly silly, maybe supernatural tale you've concocted to scare away anyone dumb enough to want to snoop around the amusement park while you are working. G-G-G-GHOSTS?
THE KIDS: This suit represents those very same snoops - a group of meddling kids that have taken it upon themselves to uncover the secrets of the legend and in the process throw a monkey wrench in your plans! CURSES!
THE ORIGIN: These cards allow your character to reflect on his past. Henchmen that didn't work out, why this plan is so important and missed opportunities and explosions. PATHOS?!
As you play, you'll attempt to thwart their investigations, perpetuate the legend, progress the plans and examine who you really are. Are you actually the villain after all?
And can you ever defeat Those Wretched Kids?
A game of Those Wretched Kids! can be played in a single sitting or as a creativity and journaling exercise over the course of days.