The Great and Secret Game - a solo RPG
A downloadable game
You have before you a solo journaling guide that will lead your attempts to win The Great and Secret Game, an underground alternate reality contest. You will try to learn the rules of the Great game and avoid getting killed by other players or removed by the shadowy Enforcers for breaking the rules you do not know, as reality itself seems to bend around you. If you win, you will have the ability to change the world as you wish. However, it would be best if you were clear that you will most likely fail and may destroy this universe when you do.
During the game, you will roll dice, draw cards from the deck and read their associated events, pull blocks from a jenga tower, place or remove tokens from cards, and write about your experiences in character.
Death and destruction is the most likely outcome of this game. If the jenga tower falls, reality collapses around you. If you draw all four Kings, you die; the last King you draw will tell you how.
To win, you must draw the Ace of Hearts and remove tokens from it over subsequent days. For a shorter, easier game, place the Ace of Hearts on the top of the deck after you've shuffled it, so it's the first card you'll draw.
Please note that although this game may deal with conspiracies and secret organizations, do not use this to further hatred and fear towards any groups existing in the real world. There is enough hatred and distrust in the world as it is.
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The Great and Secret Game: A solo RPG was written by CadejoNegro in 2022.
This work is based on The Wretched, product of Chris Bissette and Loot The Room, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
THE WRETCHED™️ is a trademark of Chris Bissette. The Wretched and Alone logo is © Chris Bissette, and is used with permission.
The format of this game is based on the wonderful Make a Wretched Game template (https://litzabronwyn.itch.io/make-a-wretched-game) by Litza Bronwyn and used with permission.
Except for the card suits which are from the public domain, images used under license from Shutterstock.com from the following artists: ozrimoz, NadezhdaShu, New Africa, Triff, beccarra, syachin, Sergey Nivens, Gorbash Varvara
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Comments
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Thank you so much for your kindness and generosity in providing community copies of your game. I’m a disabled pension who can’t afford much so these free gifts really help me out in playing games and keeping my mind active.
I really appreciate your hard work and kindness
You are more than welcome. Enjoy!
i just got done playing this for the first time and it was a BLAST. the story quickly got more and more intense and these prompts were just so creative. i adored it all so much and had a ton of fun watching my character go down into a Jonathan Sims style rabbit hole of paranoia .
I am really glad you enjoyed the game, and happy to hear that your character had an intense (but enjoyable) paranoia-filled experience.
BIG love for including your Shutterstock artists! Also for your consideration on the photo side for other projects: Pexels.com. Royalty-free and a massive library. Enjoy!
Thank you. I am more than glad to recognize the wonderful artists whose work I used here.
It's a cool game! But I'm wondering about the number of tokens on the ace card, it feels like the game is unwinnable, even with the ace card on top.
In average, you will draw only 13 times 1-6 cards before you get all 4 kings (not even counting the jenga tower), but the probability of getting 10 "six" on the dice in this amount of time is two in a thousand games.
I'd suggest changing this number so that the chance of winning appears somewhat possible, even if unlikely. I crunched the number with a python simulation, and here is the result:
Ignoring jenga tower and with the ace card ON TOP:
3 tokens: winning 50% of the games (one in 2 games)
4 tokens: winning 30% of the games (one in 3)
5 tokens: winning 15% of the games (one in 6)
6 tokens: winning 8% of the games (one in 11 or 12)
Now, if you put the ace card at random in the deck, you will have in average about 6 or 7 rounds only to remove all the tokens. The specifics are a bit more complex as you need to take the probability distribution into account, but here are the statistics, still ignoring the jenga tower:
3 tokens: winning 22% of the games (one in 4)
4 tokens: winning 10% of the time (one in 10)
5 tokens: winning 3% of the time (one in 30)
6 tokens: winning 1% of the time (one in 100)
Based on this, I feel like 3 or 4 tokens are enough. Alternatively, you could use 6 or 8 tokens, but removing one if the dice roll a 5 or 6, it would be about the same stats.
This very long mathematical analysis of your game being finished, I love both the concept and the execution. The table are super neat, and the mecanics work well together :D
Thank you so much for your comment, and I'm glad you enjoyed the game! I knew that the Wretched & Alone system made it unlikely to win, but I hadn't crunched the numbers, and as you show, there's a big difference between 'unlikely' to win and 'almost impossible.' Thanks for the suggestion, and I will adjust the probabilities for the next version.
That's super cool !
Right now I'm playing your game, but I decided to keep the 10 tokens. By the time my first character inevitably dies, they will have hopefully removed some. I'll then switch to an other character and start again, with as much tokens as they were left. Someone is going to win at some point !