FAME: Ashcan Edition

If you had the chance to become a god, would you take it? 

Welcome to the playtest document for Fame, a TTRPG by Sylvan Lawrence. Spun on the Loom, Fame is a game about celebrity, but it is also a game about worship, a game about the systemic abuse of the downtrodden, and a game about how much you can change and still remain you. This document is a work-in-progress, and subject to change. All proceeds will go towards funding the final game!

Fame is a freeform, diceless, GM-less narrative game for 3-6 players in which characters slowly lose aspects of themselves to a specific Divinity in order to serve their own interests, until they are no longer people at all. In the game, playbooks guide how players develop their characters and what their characters can do in each scene. At the same time, players use other playbooks to develop and embody each other’s Divinities, representing them as environmental forces, non-player characters, magic, and the world at large, all governed by the moves in each Divinity playbook.

For the good of everyone

In Fame, each of you will create a character in late adolescence or early adulthood who is, in one way or another, desperate. This desperation leads each of these characters to make a critical choice: when approached with an offer of Divinity—at the cost of their mortal life—they will take it with eager and open hands, signing their futures away for a chance at something greater.

For the good of your followers

Each of you will also play the Divinities: the potent, inhuman forces that give your characters extraordinary power. The push and pull between the Divinities and the characters is the central conflict of Fame: what do you do when the god in your heart wants something that you do not? What do you do when you want to enact change that your Divinity rejects?

For the good of yourself

There is, of course, a catch: you do not play your own Divinity. Instead, each player will share responsibility for playing and embodying every other player’s Divinity. While it is true that Fame is technically a GM-less game, it is more accurate to call it a GM-full game: the weight of narrative should be shouldered by everyone equally, and the responsibility of the Game Master is shared by everyone at the table. Together, you will all hold the fate of the characters in your hands. Together, you will pull them apart and fill them with godhood until there is nothing human left.

For worse

This is a playtest document, but it is fully playable. Included within these pages are:

• 6 unique Character Playbooks
• 8 unique Divinity Playbooks
• Rituals and structure for in-person and online play
• A full pre-show checklist to set you up for success
• An unhealthy number of band and music references

This is a playtest document, and is thus incomplete. Here are some things that will be in the final game that are not present here:

• 8+ Character Playbooks
• 22 Divinity Playbooks
• Additional scene framing tools
• Additional setting guidance
• What this game is and what this game isn’t
• Examples of play
• Various tweaks, adjustments, and additional content