PRESSURE POINT - A Solo TTRPG
Escape the strange beings invading your underwater base - By IMPALING the Pages of the game! A #Zinequest project!
Live on Kickstarter Feb 28th-March15th 2023 for ZINEQUEST 5
Follow the project on Kickstarter.
You had been assured that it wasn't any different than working in space. After all, what's the difference between working in the tight confines of a generic Continuum Corporation orbital outpost and the Cameron F5, a research station drilled into the canyon wall of a milky, lugubrious sea on the moon? The view was worse, but the pay was slightly better. It was still months of claustrophobic drudgery and too few holotapes to watch and miles of nothing outside the pointless portholes.
Last week, the scientists found something. Something besides the usual mineral deposits they had been fishing out of the sand, anyway. It sent ripples of excitement through the eggheads, but was barely a blip amongst your maintenance crew.
Then last night, the power went out, whatever they found broke quarantine and something outside moved. Something large enough to make the entire station shake.
This is PRESSURE POINT, a solo roleplaying adventure zine inspired by Alien, Event Horizon, and the Abyss and the first game using the boring system.
the boring system
What is the boring system? Boring system games or, as we like to call them, BS Games are solo adventure games you play like the mighty adventure gamebooks of old - Fighting Fantasy, Greyhawk, and the like, which combine dice rolls and stat checking like an RPG and the path choices of a Choose Your Own Adventure game but BS games have a twist: They incorporate a legacy element of play where, at certain times in your adventure, you must make a choice and physically alter the zine - Usually by making a choice and actually boring a hole in the page to represent your decision! Sometimes, those holes will just be that - irrevocable proof of your choice, for better or worse but other times, that hole may come back around to affect your later gameplay, by marking something on the back of the page or eliminating certain pathways with an actual hole!
The boring system is no joke! A gimmick? Undoubtedly! But it is a system that actually involves quite a bit of playtesting to set up correctly and results in a game with some surprising twists. And as you punch holes in your paper, each one becomes slightly more satisfying and slightly more terrifying! Created by Craig Cannon, Laurel Bokota, and Kris McClanahan, the boring system came out of a discussion about the best ways to utilize legacy elements in the gameplay. We are all huge fans of games where you create a living, breathing document as you play and Kris and Cannon have already dabbled with a number of Gamebook-inspired games, and eventually, Pressure Point was born.
The Game:
The 'zine edition of the game is being released as a pressure test of the boring system, to see if the interest is there in developing a larger, more elaborate narrative using the system. (It may be a bit of a gimmick, but lining things up takes a fair bit of playtesting and work!) The 'Zine will be black and white and 24 ink-friendly 5.5"x8.5" pages designed to print and play as often as you'd like at home. Backers will also get an at-cost code to print a version of the book from DriveThruRPG if they prefer the joys of impaling a professionally printed page. (The cost to print it will be approximately $2.50 plus shipping) The game can be played in 1-2 hours.