My Take On One-Page, Design By Subtraction & I’m Making A Prehistoric Old Earth Game
Sleepdrifter's Newsletter #14 📜
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Deep forests, giant mountains & weird dungeons. I speak about TTRPGs, video games, music and what I like.
Summary
🎲One-Page RPG Jam 2025: My Take On One-Page, Design By Subtraction & I’m Making A Prehistoric Old Earth Game
🧙🏼♂️What I’m Up To: Converting A Van & Stopping The Newsletter For Some Time
🎲One-Page RPG Jam 2025: My Take On One-Page, Design By Subtraction & I’m Making A Prehistoric Old Earth Game
Here we go again!
After releasing my Breathless adventure, called Breakless, for the Breathless Jam 2 two weeks ago, I’m joining yet another game Jam: the famous One-Page RPG Jam 2025.
If you are familiar with my stuff, you know I love one-page games.
I have created a one-page Dungeon Crawler called GrimRogue (okay, it’s two pocketbooks, so that’s a lil’ bit more than one page) and a one-page “game” about grief called All My Ghosts Are Here To Stay. And I have made some Business Cards like Work!, Rise and Lost In A Forest.
So, yeah, my work is almost only made of one-page games.
Why do I love that type of creation?
Well, because I think that Design By Subtraction is one of the most powerful ways to create things, not only in the TTRPG niche, but in all forms of arts.
Less is more.
When you put yourself under heavy limitations, you are avoiding the worst enemy of game designers: scope creep. Scope creep is the idea of always putting features and stuff in a game (Board games, TTRPGs, video games, …).
Imagine that you want to make a game:
“Ok, that will be an OSR game, with GM-Less features, a huge hex-map, I’ll add tons of oracles and tables, lots of POIs, …” and you’ll quickly be overwhelmed by the amount of things you have to create.
I’m not saying this isn’t possible, I’m just saying that this can be a lot to process for creators and newcomers.
That’s why, using a huge limitation like making a one-page game can be useful.
Now, I think that making one-page adventures/dungeons/settings can be a great way to create and release things that people will enjoy. And that’s something I would love to make for this jam.
But, it’s mandatory to make a fully playable game on a single page, that’s why I’m making a full game.
Some time ago, I thought about making a game or setting on the Old Earth Horror concept. That’s an aesthetic thing that blends a cosmic horror feeling with the primal unease rooted in Earth’s ancient history.
Imagine being a “newly” Homo Sapiens 200.000 years ago. You stumble upon weird and brutal animals roaming like smilodons or the cave lions while crossing the paths of other human species like Neanderthals, Erectus, or Denisovans beings you don’t understand who look a bit like you, but not quite (see The Uncanny Valley effect). Picture it, how grim and cruel the world looked back then.
That’s what I’ve tried to put in my game.
I called it: Weak, Lost & Alone.
Here is the intro text:
You were a Homo Sapiens 200.000 years ago, somewhere in cold, wild Europe.
Weird creatures roam the earth and some of them look almost like you.
You called them “The Other Ones”.You were with your tribe.
But a huge cave lion came after you.
You ran. You were torn from them.You're now
Weak, lost and alone.
This is a simple game, with a kind of board gamy vibe, hugely inspired by
Eleventh Beast.At first, I was making a kind of micro solo TTRPG with a lot of roll modifiers, but I found it bland and boring. That’s why I replace every roll modifier with a token concept. You earn tokens that you can spend to make the best roll on a specific table, to find your tribe and win the game.
The whole game revolves around this idea. That’s what we called a Push-Your-Luck design.
As I’ll be without a computer for a long time the next few weeks (see What I’m Up To below), I won’t be available to release the game on the 18th of August, so I must finish it in less than two weeks.
I almost abandoned the project as I was struggling a lot to make it better. But now I think I’ve managed to make a cool idea. I still need to playtest it and to make the game map. Then all the arts, layout etc.
Wish me luck!
🧙🏼♂️What I’m Up To: Converting A Van And Stopping The Newsletter For Some Time
As you can read above, I’m making a One-Page RPG these days.
But the thing that is taking up almost all of my free time is: converting my van to feel as much like “home” as possible before going for a 2-3 weeks road trip across various French mountain ranges.
With the help of my dad, we are crafting all the furniture and stuff we need to get a convertible bed-to-living room, a kitchen and more.
It’s hard but satisfying as hell!
That’s also the reason why I won’t be making any newsletter after this very one, as I won’t have any time or a computer to help me write these articles 😢
I hope you’ll be there when I return, and I hope I’ll manage to release my game in time 😀
Thanks for reading!
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Van conversions are so cool! Have a great trip!
Safe travels!