The Tower is a tabletop RPG from Todd Crapper, but you won’t get to play it for years. You’ll have to wait until he dies, and that’s not expected to happen any time soon.
That’s not all; he promises the contents of the game itself will be controversial.
Curious? You can follow the game’s progress on Kickstarter via its campaign page.
It only took CA$100 to bring this death related RPG to life. Todd, known as The Warden online, is approaching nearly 10 times that amount. People are willing to wait for the 20, 30 or more years required to find out what’s in The Tower RPG. Perhaps they think the game designer will want his game played, will change his mind, and email around passwords.
The Tower will be an RPG about a terrifying moment that changes everyone’s lives. The PDF will be password-protected, and you won’t get the password until Todd is dead.
Crapper concedes this is a marketing stunt, but it’s not a joke. It’s part of the break Kickstarter project and is making use of that license to be different.
The pitch video doesn’t tell you anything about the game but is used to persuade you that the project is legit. In fact, we’re bluntly told that you will not enjoy the game.
It costs only CA$1 to get a copy of The Tower. CA$5 gets you the same with art.
Should you decide to play The Tower (if Crapper dies before you), then you need only one GM and it can entertain 2 to 5 more layers.
Unlike all other RPGs, this one ends after 96 minutes of play. We’re not told why.
Once the project is over, there will be no other way to officially buy The Tower. That’s to say Crapper doesn’t intend on selling it. However, I can imagine it appear on ebay. I think Todd can see that happening too. He’s releasing the whole game under Creative Commons but has also written “don’t you dare try to make money off my work”).
We don’t have any clues as to what will happen in the 96 minutes of gameplay except that you may not like it. The game will come with “safety tools” which I can only speculate will be things like X-Cards or fast forward cards of the type described by the Fate Accessibility Toolkit.
Are you tempted by the morbid premise of The Tower or is this nothing more than a marketing stunt to be avoided?
