Standoff

You’ve got a gun and a job to do. There’s just one problem: so do the rest of us.

Standoff is a quick, 1-page tabletop game for 3+ players that starts when someone pulls the trigger and ends when there's one person left standing.

We don't know much about each character, but we do know that one of the other characters is important to them and another one is in their way. Everyone else is an acceptable casualty.

Once the shooting starts, the action unfolds in a series of chain reactions. Each bullet prompts another; you shoot me, I shoot him, he shoots her, she shoots you. But the important question is this: who do you shoot, and why?

Standoff is a PbtA game, with rules derived from Apocalypse World by Meguey and D. Vincent Baker. It strips that game's rules down to their barest bones: every action is a reaction to the one that came before; every action prompts another.

This game takes inspiration from John Wick and other movies about expert assassins, but it draws on a host of other action movies with a preference toward the farcical. Still, it can be taken in any direction you want -- Western, assassins, buddy cop, action comedy, thriller.

It's intended to be played quickly and without showing us the whole story. It's a series of snappy, violent decisions that we likely won't understand in full but that will cascade into a very bad day for everyone involved.