Earlier this year, a video of Deborah Ann Woll teaching Jon Bernthal how to play Dungeons & Dragons went ultra-viral, causing millions of people to go “Maybe I’d like this D&D thing after all.” It also caused hordes of tabletop gamers to wish that they could find a way to convince their friends and family to get RPGs without bouncing off hours-long character creations and arcane rules. Even if they do agree to play, scheduling — that great beast — gets in the way when all you want to do is play right now. Fortunately, independent game designer Clément Domergue has the answer.
Wanna play right now? is a free to download game that takes the basic ethos of tabletop role-playing and distills them into an approachable 22-page book. Taking the lead from Deborah Ann Woll’s immediate immersive prompt, the game has 10 one-page adventures with a structure that puts players into the action immediately. Set in different traditional fantasy scenarios like Woll’s original monologue about a Moonless Wood (which itself is included in the adventures), the book gives DMs a short paragraph that sets the scene, introduces a conflict, and asks the all-important question: What do you do?
Each adventure focuses on a different style of play, such as a central monster to be fought, the social dynamics of a wizard party, a heist, or a dungeon crawl complete with a thirteen-room exploration. Conflict resolution is streamlined from a set of dice to a game of rock paper scissors, with each player having three skills that give them “advantage,” or a rematch. There are 10 Hit Points to be distributed among the players, with every successful attack landing 1 damage. The game’s monsters use a system called Nested Monster Hit Dice by Mindstorm, which offers a simple yet evocative distillation of various D&D monsters’ stat blocks and abilities.
At the end of the book, there are NPC descriptions and story seeds to keep the play going with your newly converted friends. While it’s a very small and straightforward text, the amount of information packed into its covers is an incredible feat of game design. Download a free copy of this game before the holidays this year and see if you can be the Deborah Ann Woll to your family’s Jon Bernthal.
