HAZARDOUS WASTES
Quickly: 2-6 players, 30 minutes to play, digital version for $10.
Beasts of Burden is a quick-playing game of treachery and debauchery that happens to center around constantly swapping items in your inventory.
In short, players carry around weapons, tools and treasures, each with separate weights, values and uses in order to defeat monsters and puzzles in a nine-card grid in the center of the play area (the “dungeon”).
Players must constantly swap items in their pack to stay below their weight limit while trying to earn as many points as possible, through solving puzzles, killing monsters,avoiding traps, collecting treasure and solving quests.
Throw in some traps (you play them in front of other players to prevent them from adventuring in the dungeon) and some curses (Tiny Legs reduces the amount of weight you can carry and TRANSMUTATION! allows you to add weight to items, among many others) and you have a fast-playing game of hoarding, mayhem and backstabbing, all illustrated by Nikki Burch!
So not only are you getting a kickass game, you’re basically getting over 100 pieces of art! You’ll practically be a Carnegie! Or perhaps a Mellon!
The game ends when someone completes a quest, or when another player punches you for repeatedly placing traps in front of them and pickpocketing all their treasure.
But enough about the rules, let’s see some examples of the cards you’ll get to moisten with your clammy hands (your hands are sweaty because you are feeling the excitement and also your stress levels are up in a good way from all the high-flying fun):
“But Stuart!” You say, rhetorically. “I’m but a lowly adventurer and can only carry ten units of weight! Surely that will limit the amount of fun I have?
Well, the constraint is part of the fun, my hypothetical friend. Plus, you might find some delightful containers that increase your carrying capacity, like the Bag of Holding:
Put Beasts of Burden into your huge sack on Kickstarter today!
You’re a damn good cop, even if the brass thinks you’re a loose cannon, and you’ve got 3 days to solve one last case before retirement.
“Loose cannon”
“Disregards the rules”
“Psychopath”
Sure you’ve heard all that before in the chief’s office, in the station’s locker room, at one of your misconduct hearings.
The brass doesn’t like you because you don’t have time for their “procedure” or the so-called “constitutional rights” of the scum you haul into the station.
But you’re still on the force. You wanna know why? Because you’re a great goddamn cop. That’s why. You’ve got good instincts, you’ve got good contacts, and even though you’ve got a beergut and an ulcer, you can still crack skulls and book perps with the best of them.
In three days you’ll retire as a sergeant. You knew early on that you’d never be an officer, and you were ok with it–sitting behind a desk is for people who don’t have policing in their blood. However, with the changes to the department’s pensions, you’re looking at a pretty lean retirement.
“What’s this?” You scroll through the dispatch that Suzie just dropped on your desk. Your eyes catch a few phrases: “urgent case” …”Mayor wants this cleaned up”…”Book the perps in 72 hours and you get a promotion.”
You straighten your uniform and head towards the Chief’s office. Three days to solve one crime? Piece of cake. And a promotion. What could possibly go wrong?
Three Days Until Retirement is a fast-paced one-session tabletop RPG about cops going rogue to solve one last crime. Inspired by classic eighties cinema about cops on the edge, this game uses a unique card-based resolution system that requires strategically balancing investigative work, action and combat.
The game supports one-session or continuous campaign play and has suggestions for making the game as gritty or as gonzo as you want. Gameplay is rich enough to entertain veteran tabletop gamers yet accessible enough for non-gamers to pick up in a few minutes of play.
Three Days contains the full rules for playing the game, character creation, variant rules and a “lazy DM” section that contains a plot generator, NPC generator, scene generator, clue generator and henchman/villain generator, all done with playing cards!
All you need to play are the rules, 2-5 people, some pen and paper, two decks of cards and some tokens!
