Design a role-playing game using 200 words or less.

This small tabletop game design challenge exists for two primary reasons:

1) Encourage everyone to make a complete Role-Playing Game. It’s hard to work on a game, and much harder to finish one. This is an opportunity for participants to brainstorm, write, edit, playtest, and polish a game idea from start to finish.

2) To provide a collection of ideas that the community may build upon. These entries are released under the Creative Commons license to promote collaboration and innovation. It is our hope that new designers and old pros alike will use these interesting ideas and work together to expand them into something greater.

The Challenge will not happen in 2020

Many of the organizers are taking the year off to work on other projects and remain sane during the pandemic. We hope to resume the challenge at some point in the future. Thanks for your interest! Stay safe, everyone.

Why 200 Words?

A 200 word limit encourages creativity and demands the very best of your editing and writing abilities. While making a game in 200 words can be difficult, it’s less of a daunting commitment than editing and proofing 285 pages of rules, complete with art and layout.

Conceiving, designing, and publishing a 200 word game is a great first step toward completing larger game design projects.

Got a neat idea? Use our Wordcounter to check your entry. Cutting a game down to 200 words is difficult! Good luck.

Plaintext?

Visual presentation can be a large and scary problem. Very few people are masters of writing, editing, art direction, graphic design, layout, and marketing. It usually takes a village to make a game. We want participants to focus solely on the challenge of creative writing and brutal editing.

Licensing and Ownership

All entries are publicly posted on this page. We reserve the right to reject entries that we consider to be inappropriate or offensive. All entries have been submitted under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. More info here.

Ethics & Inclusivity

The 200 Word RPG Challenge is a small contest with small stakes where you design small games to win small prizes. It’s an inclusive contest that welcomes the submissions of game designers from all walks of life and designers from marginalized communities are especially encouraged to participate! We want to make this a space that is safe for first-time designers, marginalized designers, and designers who struggle in structural and personal ways. Whoever you are, wherever you come from, we’re happy to have you.

Helping everyone to feel welcome means working together to help everyone feel safe and treating others with consideration and respect. Harassment, intimidation, and hate speech are not acceptable. We will not tolerate discrimination based on race, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual preference, mental health and ability, physical health and ability, size, ethnicity, nationality, or refugee status. The organizers reserve the right to refuse contest submissions, prize donations, and service offers based on these values.

Also for the first time this year we allow entries to include Content Warnings. We hope this will make the challenge safer for everyone to enjoy.

Connect with other Creators

Making and sharing a game is a great way to showcase your ideas and connect with new and more experienced game designers. Do you see a game that inspires you? The 200 Word RPG Challenge is a forge for new collaborations! Join the subreddit for discussion, collaboration, and feedback.