Tabletop fans looking for a relatively quick game that’s light on rules but heavy on the gore have an answer with Death Sentence. Created by Guilherme Sassaki, Leo Andrade and Luana Bibiano, Death Sentence is available now via itch.io, and is described as a narrative-focused horror RPG for one-shot sessions in the vein of the best slasher movies, integrating roleplay and rollplay to realize (and/or subvert!) the genre’s main tropes.
A session of Death Sentence runs around 2-5 hours, following a 3-act structure. The game is designed for 1 Narrator and 3 to 5 players, with the Narrator in charge of the world, nonplayer characters (NPCs), and the Threat. Each player controls 2 to 3 Player Characters, whose death is almost certain. However, given that you have a surplus of them allows you to take risks for bolder, more interesting moves.
The Threat can be anything you want, as long as it’s deadly and hard to kill. Anything from owl-people, fungal zombies, crazed killers, and so on. The main focus is trying to figure out how to escape or destroy the Threat.
Death Sentence‘s action resolution system is simple: Players roll pools of d6s that are assembled based on one character’s Action Attributes, Traits, Relationships, and current
circumstances. “Circumstances” include the environment, their Injury status, and any ideas they can come up with for their character. Players can spend Drama Points to get more dice or reroll failures. PCs have a Panic score that increases in response to traumatizing events. Rolling badly on this can spell disaster, but also keeps the tension high as a result.
As mentioned, the base game is available now via a pdf (with a booklet option for print) for $7.50 USD. However, the game currently has a launch discount from now until November 1 as an added incentive for those hoping to run a Halloween one-shot session
As a further treat (and for those thinking about snagging a copy of the game) Leo Andrade will run a session of Death Sentence on Stillfleet’s Twitch channel on October 28th at 2 PM EST.
