Killing Time - Ashcan Edition
A downloadable Existential Duet TTRPG
Killing Time is an existential duet TTRPG, designed as an experience for exactly two players. One will facilitate the game as Father Time, the literal personified incarnation of time's passage. The other plays as the foolish hero destined to kill him.
The game is played across four in-game seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, each with their own themes, rules, and live 40-minute timer. Gameplay can run through each season in one session, or split them into multiple sessions. Playing the entire game in a single session is about 3 to 3 1/2 hours of play, including character creation and safety tool debrief.
In Spring, the foolish hero is establishing their motivations and conversing with Time as they search the realms for a weapon powerful enough to slay the god of time. To represent this task, the foolish hero's player physically searches through a deck of tarot cards, addressing prompts along the way.
Summer brings maximalist, tactical combat, as the foolish hero faces down with Time. This is a multi-stage boss battle on a grid with simple, but tactically interesting rules. Expect to defend against Time's iconic scythe, as well as a handful of other tricks.
In Autumn, Time has been injured, and scatters the foolish hero's mind between the past and an impossible future. Mechanics here are reminiscent of a childhood game and a memory test. The foolish hero must return to the present and deal the final blow.
In Winter, Father Time has been mortally wounded, and all that remains is to wait out the end. Rules fall into abstraction and the game mostly becomes a conversation. With dozens of ending conversation keys, largely written by the incredible Kyle Tam. The foolish hero must reckon with what they've done, and Time must grapple with the end of their immortal reign.
This is the Ashcan Edition, a sort of extended beta of the game. Contains 34 pages of text. All the game is functional and playtested, but the layout, art, and possibly some mechanics, are not finalized. Purchasing this version will give you future access to the complete release.
Two Players
3 to 3.5 hours
Recommended Age 16+
Required Materials:
- A 78-card tarot deck
- A way to keep time
- A coin
- A 12x12 square grid (or larger)
- 9 miniatures or representative tokens scaled to your grid
- 7 six-sided dice
- A twelve-sided die
- 6-10 tokens, like casino chips or small stones
- Paper
- Pencils
Purchase
In order to download this Existential Duet TTRPG you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $8 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copy
Support this Existential Duet TTRPG at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copy
If you can't or don't want to purchase Killing Time - Ashcan Edition at full price, for any reason, feel free to grab a free, no-questions-asked community copy of the digital version here! These will drop in limited quantities periodically.
Development log
- Killing Time's Ashcan Edition is here!Jul 12, 2024
Comments
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Killing Time is an existential duet rpg about a hero attempting to kill the embodiment of the concept of time. This sounds like it should be pretty lightweight but I've got good news for TTRPG sickos. This game is *wildly* maximalist with its design.
The PDF is innocent enough. 35 pages, with clean but bare text throughout and a solid, evocative cover. As of this review, the game is out in an ashcan format, so text and visuals are not finalized.
Now, content-wise, for a duet game Killing Time is relatively resource intensive. You need a tarot deck, a coin, a grid map, miniatures, timer, d6s, d12s, and tokens. It's also kinda thematically heavy. Safety tools are included.
The heaviness is because Killing Time talks about mortality and doomed causes and changes in the universe. It is also, interestingly, a duet game that the players can lose. The hero can take damage and die. Time dies if the hero makes it to the end.
Mechanically, the first part of Killing Time plays a little bit like a Wretched & Alone. The hero pulls cards, Time reads prompts, the goal is to progress through the deck---although there's a risk of taking too much random damage before then and dying. While this is happening, a timer is also running. Various cards interact with this timer, and include delays. Furthermore, the more the players are drawn into the roleplay, the more the timer runs down naturally. Time can kill the hero just by being interactive.
The second part uses the battle map, and the cards from the previous phase as a resource, to conduct a 4e style grid combat. Both sides have moves. Time has bodyparts that can be broken that change its attack options. There are multiple phases to the fight.
The third part of Killing Time, when it arrives, is difficult to explain. It's a choose your own adventure, and the goal is to guess the pre-set right answers, but the two players are also roleplaying the entire time and the story is moving back and forth between a frame story and a story-within-a-story and there's an owl and it's kind of a lot.
The fourth and final part of Killing Time is a long guided conversation between Time and the hero. And I mean long, long. The game's sections are forty minutes each, but there's enough material to cover that it feels plausible to run out. It's also considered and philosophical, and I think even if you don't play the game you could get something out of reading the fourth part.
Overall, I think for people that Killing Time clicks with it will REALLY click. If you like kinda sensitive existentialism and absurdity and having fight chemistry between you and the universe, I'd strongly recommend giving this a go. If you just like duet games, I'd still recommend taking a look at Killing Time, because I haven't seen many rpgs that are quite like it. It takes an extremely audacious swing and makes solid contact with the ball, and I think it ought to be talked about more.