"Anna Anthropy is a prolific creator across many formats who makes big things using simple tools. I envy her knack for taking an existing system and, with a few simple twists, turning it into a balloon animal uniquely hers."

—Tim Hutchings, author of Thousand Year Old Vampire

Winner of The Awards 2024

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Forgotten Palaces is a trilogy of tabletop role-playing games about digital worlds out of time - meticulously-crafted virtual spaces almost immediately robbed of their context. These games are inspired by 1990s shareware and 2000s MMOs, Microsoft Encarta and Frutiger Aero, William Gibson and Tron.

The three games are:

When you finished Final Fantasy, you knew two things: 1, that Shadow the Ninja was the coolest character ever, and, 2, that you were going to be a Game Designer. THIS MAZE is a 3-5 player game about online teens co-designing their dream game using an archaic, text-based game editor. Draw ASCII characters on a map, sabotage your friends' ideas, and create a game that will make the forums rave.

Polygons are missing, NPCs are glitching, and the ghosts of forgotten code lurk everywhere. L0ST K1NGD0M is a game for one main character – the Streamer – and 1-30 Audience members exploring an abandoned MMO. A hack of Gregor Vuga's A Singular Quest, this game can be played with a small group or an entire classroom. Don't forget to give a shout out to your sponsor.

YOU ARE A HACKER. Ventacorp cannot be breached. Run on Ventacorp is a solo cyber run on a high-security network guarding something top secret – a program that can edit reality itself. In this DTRPG (Desktop Role-Playing Game), you'll explore real folders and edit real files to change your fate. Evade ICE, reprogram AIs, and steal SPHEROID right out from under them.

Run on Ventacorp is Free to download!

Key Features

Run on Ventacorp is compatible with Windows and iOS, and is FREE to download. Pay $6 to unlock the other two games: THIS MAZE and L0ST K1NGD0M.

THIS MAZE and L0ST K1NGD0M include full-color pdfs, printer-friendly black and white pdfs, and plaintext versions of the rules.

I'm currently fighting my landlord and could really use the money! Thanks!!

Acknowledgements

Illustrated by Jacob Potterfield.

Cover photography by Foone Turing.

Thanks to Gregor Vuga for creating A Singular Quest and allowing me to hack it, Bonnie Shaver-Troup, Thomas Jockin, Santiago Orozco, and Héctor Gómez for creating the Lexend typeface, richardhriech for creating italics for Lexend, the Ultimate Old School PC Font Pack, and Dice Dojo and Windy City Games Chicago.

Playtesting by Adal, Andi, Caleb, Zac, and my Games Literacy and History & Design of RPGs classes. Mac consulting by Nathan D. Paoletta and Kevin Sheehan.

Fuck the IDF, free Palestine.