Despair Dilemma
A downloadable game
Despair Dilemma is a GMless Tabletop Roleplaying Game designed to replicate the stories of Death Game narratives like Danganronpa, Zero Escape, Squid Game, and more. In these games, people are trapped in a life-or-death scenario and must fight, scavenge, or argue for the sake of their victory and survival. Players take on the role of the masterminds and narrative forces pushing the characters to the brink.
Taking control of narrative forces like “The Massacre's Edge” and “The Traitor's Sabotage”, players will vie for control of the story and work to achieve the goals laid out on before them. Depending on the hand of cards you draw, you'll have access to different ways to manipulate the game and story as a whole.
If you'd like to give Despair Dilemma a try, you can download our Free Locke Mansion Death Game Demo Kit, with a scenario pitting the victims of a strange puzzle master against each other in a decadent mansion of clockwork. It's up to you and your friends to decide whether these unfortunate few will survive or meet an untimely death at the hands of someone they thought was their ally.
Inside this PDF you'll find 120+ pages covering everything you need to start masterminding your very own Death Games with your friends. Including:
- An Innovative Narrative Control System designed to put you and your friends in the seats of the Masterminds and Directors of a Death Game.
- Eight Plot Books for you to play with, covering story concepts like The Mastermind’s Mask and The Detective’s Trial.
- Twelve Death Game Sheets with unique rules and settings for everything from schools for the talented to cursed villages.
- A complete set of Optional Modules allowing you to play with Time Loops, Character Arcs, and More.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Bleeding Heart Community Drive
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copy
We understand that not everyone is in a good enough financial position to pay for a new TTRPG. Despite that, we want to make sure that Despair Dilemma gets into the hands of the people that want to play with it the most.
Luckily, thanks to the stretch goals and backers from our crowdfunding campaign, we were able to fund a significant number of community copies! If you're from a disadvantaged position, money is tight, or you otherwise couldn't justify using limited funds on a silly TTRPG - please feel free to take a community copy!
Please don't take a community copy if you could pay. The number of community copies is limited, and we want to make sure they get put in the hands of people in need. This shouldn't be treated as simply a chance to nab the game for free if you could otherwise pay.
Comments
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Hi, I'm a backer for this game! When I pressed on the link to get my copy, it went to a 404 error and it says that it couldn't find my page, which is weird. In case you're wondering, my primary email address on Itch is the same as the one I used for Backerkit.
Hey Gangu! If you message me at continuityOfficer@gmail.com I can sort you out a custom link.
I wanted to clarify the Perspective Marker real quick. While I have control of the narrative, which characters can I make perform standard actions, like Achieve or Murder? Is it:
A) only the character with the Perspective Marker,
B) anyone in the same location as the Perspective Marker, or
C) anyone in any location?
My first guess would be anyone in the same location, but the only rules that explicitly mention the Perspective Marker are Relocate, and a few specific Plot Book actions like Intent to Kill. There doesn't appear to be any mention of which characters can perform Actions while narrating, and "primary point of focus" doesn't necessarily mean things cannot happen elsewhere. It's not unfeasible for a murder to happen off screen, for example.
On the other hand, a Plot Book like The Detective's Trial seems to imply that only the character with the Perspective Marker can perform actions. It only says that other players cannot place the Perspective Marker on the Detective, but the implication is that other players cannot control the Detective at all. Others not being able to Achieve with the Detective makes some amount of sense, but not being able to even Influence the Detective seems surprising.
From what I've read, the game seems very fun, but I think it would benefit from being more clear about which Actions can be performed by/on who, and what exactly the Perspective Marker means mechanically.
Thats fair! We'll keep it in mind and see what we can do.
Its b for clarity!
Finally! Have looked forward to this game for quite a long time!
Just tried this one with friends. Incredibly fun game with inventive, well-thought out mechanics that pretty much guarantee you'll have a good time even if you are not a big mystery VN fan. And if you are, you'll totally fall in love with this like we did. The graphic layout and artwork is stylish and quite cute, but some of the textboxes (chiefly the "tips") might be a bit harder to read for people with disabilities because of the small character size and tight leading. On the other hand, the book generally does a good job at clearly explaining how to play it (and even how to make up your own scenarios!) The cherry on top is a healthy amount of random tools and cool optional rules.
All in all this is a seriously awesome game and in my humble opinion one of the best RPGs released this year.
congratz on release, all my attempts of playing every version has fallen off, but hey i will see if i can put all files that are printable on the workshop instead oh well.
Big congrats for the release, Double Summon Games team!
This sounds so cool. Sort of SAW too i presume?
Haha we've absolutely had people do a SAW in it!