Dead Friend RPG

"Most Innovative" nominee for the 2019 IGDN Indie Groundbreaker Awards!

Dead Friend is a roleplaying game for a necromancer and a ghost. That is, it's a collaborative storytelling game for two players. You will each play the role of a friend, one living and one dead. You will ask and answer questions to develop the characters, their community, their history together, and the motivations leading up to their final conflict. The script follows the dramatic structure of a necromancy ritual, and you will use the spellbook of instructions throughout the entire game like a witch reading spells from an ancient grimoire. The mood may be spooky or intimate, heartwrenching or hilarious — it is up to you as storytellers. Dead Friend requires 1 Tarot deck or 1 deck of mundane playing cards.

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TESTIMONIALS

"Two-player RPGs intimidated me at first. I tend toward lighter games for bigger groups, and these seemed intense — too intimate, too small. Dead Friend helped me understand the appeal: It is intimate, with space to bounce ideas around without being overwhelmed, with well-balanced agency between players in asymmetrical roles. And, in a year that made it hard for me to keep games on my schedule, having Dead Friend on deck as a self-contained, two-to-three-hour experience helped resurrect my ability to play at all."