what if everyone in the wild west met at high noon and every revolver spat fire and every bullet hit every other bullet and the weathercocks spin, the rain barrels leak, the horses rear up, hats hit the dust, spurs jingle-jangle and then that’s it, the wild west is over and there’s still plenty of afternoon left

Most of the class is at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, having fun. You and your fellow players never got your permissions slips signed, so you’re in a classroom, bored.

Find a way to bring the aquarium experience to yourselves. Flood the room. Paint scales on a school bus. Perform damp rites and transform into fish people.

Game ends when the school day ends or when the ocean reclaims you forever.

I DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE TO SHOOT: the game of clones, a gun, and asking questions only you would know the answer to

One player holds “the gun.” Everyone else plays identical people. The player with the gun asks every other player questions “only the original would know the answer to.”

Gameplay continues until the questioner decides they know who the original is. Game is lost if they actually shoot anyone, ’cause what the hell, that’s not a way to solve problems.

CLOSED FOREVER is a mini-RPG in about roadside attractions and failure in convenient brochure form.

You are: the owner of a roadside attraction in late-20th century USA. (You know… like a fiberglass dinosaur or something.)

You are: in over your head. But you have a plan.

Pay-what-you-want here:
https://signalstation.itch.io/closed-forever

1) What vowels, primarily, does the dark shape in the corner whisper to you at 2:32 a.m. every day?

2) What city were you in the first time you fell into the Inverse and had to free yourself from the Despair Trees?

3) What’s your password? Just kidding, don’t type that in here, that was a test. What’s your favorite 401K service provider (whether you work with them or not) and how often do the ashes on your tongue make you think you never left the Inverse?

Try our new social network, it’s called COVERING YOURSELF IN MOSS AND LIVING IN THE DRIPPING WOODS.

There’s no cost to sign up, because we sell aggregate user data to advertisers you actually want to hear from, such as THE WHISPERING TREES and THE SOFT INTAKE OF BREATH WHEN A DEER SPOTS YOU and if you want the deluxe package you can arrange a personal sponsorship from THE LORD OF SLOW GROWTH (which allows custom emojis!)

ROFL: Real Oxygen Failure Loop
STFU: Systemic Total Failure Underway
ILY: Irreparable Leak Yonder
YOLO: Your Oxygen Lost (Oops)
SMH: Something Mauled Hull
WYD?: Why’d You Die?
DGAF: Decompression: Gas/Atmosphere Failure
LMFAO: Let’s Maybe Forget Astronaut’s Odds

You run a roadside attraction in 1960s America featuring (1d6):

1. A giant fiberglass fruit
2. Giant fiberglass dinosaurs
3. The World’s Biggest Collection of [something useless]
4. Biggest Ball of Twine
5. Minigolf
6. A Haunted Corn Maze

The place is going to shut down but you’ve got a plan (1d6):

1. Lure in cocaine-rich investors from Miami
2. Scare elderly Uncle Morris to death and inherit his fortune
3. Get featured as the setting for a Hollywood movie
4. A celebrity endorsement!
5. Rally the community and host a fair
6. Be the first roadside attraction to launch into space

Unfortunately (1d6):

1. The Mob has plans for your space
2. A crew of thieves plans to steal the attraction
3. Your attraction is re-zoned for toxic waste storage
4. Dinosaur bones have been found on site and archaeologists are everywhere
5. All the kids are into disco
6. The tax code is changing unless you help elect a dog mayor

You have two statistics which both start at 3 (on a 6 point scale). They are ROADSIDE and ATTRACTION. Use ROADSIDE when you want to get your hands dirty, engage in business, fleece someone, use street smarts, or scrap. Use ATTRACTION when you want to charm someone, get glamorous, harness the power of dreams, or create something.

When taking an action where the outcome is possible, but in doubt, roll a d6. Rolling under your relevant stat is a success. If you fail and your failure can serve as an indictment of The American Dream, increase your ROADSIDE stat by one. If your failure was because, by Gosh, you just didn’t work hard enough, increase your ATTRACTION stat by one.

If you ever reach 6 in ROADSIDE, you abandon your dream and go get a day job somewhere in a call center selling diet pills or penny stocks. It doesn’t matter. If you ever reach 6 in ATTRACTION, you abandon your dream and go to L.A. or New York to earn money dressing in a costume for tourists. It doesn’t matter which one.

You can move a point from ROADSIDE to ATTRACTION (or vice versa) if you introduce a flashback scene to a time where the establishment of your attraction has an important corollary to the current obstacle you’re trying to overcome. Perhaps it’s a lesson you learned, a skill you acquired, or an asset still available to you from those days.

Catch me during the skeleton war working logistics. While bony soldiers are being shattered or crushed underfoot on the field of war, I’ll be lining my pockets. Catch me, post-war, the Calcium Supplement King, rockin’ a bone monocle.

See if I don’t.