A few years back (more like half a decade, but time is meaningless in this sort of Cat & Squid game), my friend Joe got challenged by Ryan Macklin to write a functional RPG in less than 500 words. That challenge turned into Dime Stories, an RPG about cowboy gunfights and cartoon villains in Spaaaaaaace. It got me my second RPG writing credit (after the... underutilized Red Dragon Inn Appetizer) and I've had the chance to run it at GenCon for the last 4 years. Dime Stories has been good to me.
I went through a pretty severe depressive episode over the past week. An utter loss of motivation, a huge upswing in disassociation, and a tsunami of existential dread. I'm sure part of this was triggered by editing some very personal blog entries for a friend, but I knew that going in to the project. Usually, when I'm going in to these sorts of episodes, I focus on the things that make me happy. I talk to my wife, I play with my cats, I read upbeat books, I listen to fast music. None of that really worked well this time around. Eventually, my mind wandered back to my last year of high school and my first year of college. The age when I started going to punk shows.
Punk shows, in that era and in that part of Ohio, were a really weird thing. They usually took place in VFW halls or in someone's barn, because that's where the available space was. There were a lot of skinheads, because it was Ohio and Ohio has a higher than acceptable percentage of racist assholes. There were a lot of shitty bands, because it was Ohio and Ohio's music education programs are about as robust as our Ski Rescue programs. There were a lot of great memories, because it was my first real experience getting out into (what I though, at the time, was) the wider world.
Half-remembered concerts, fistfights, and nights at Tom's Donuts (ordering only a drink and eating Day Old Donuts that were 50c a piece, for five hours, while my friends chain-smoked a pack and a half each) flooded back to mind. Inspired by Quinn Murphy's excellent game Five Fires, I felt the need to put my experience into a cohesive form. I jammed out a bunch of words and something resembling Punk's Been Dead Since '79 happened. It was only afterwards that I decided to try to fit it into the 500 Words framework. (Note: I am aware of the newer 200 Word challenge, but I can't be arsed to edit this down to that level.)
In PBDS79, you're a member of the punk community in the space between cities in the (Late 90s / Early 00s). Your goals? Go to shows, find a place to belong, seek an outlet for your feelings, look for companionship, or just break everything. It's based loosely on the (Apocalypse World / Dungeon World / Monsterhearts) games, because they're fast and easy and full of raw emotion.
Check it out.
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Follow this link to Punk's Been Dead Since '79 for complete rules.
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