Michael Penny
I design tabletop role-playing games; usually games that don't require much preparation or a dedicated game master. Currently this page features my game jam entries: experiments, prototypes and art pieces of the kind that inspired me to get into game design.
Coming in 2026: a reworked, playtested First Edition of Somewhere in the Dreams, my game/ritual for telling stories that transform and recontextualise themselves partway through, inspired by the films of David Lynch and the music of Soundgarden.
Also in the works, in no particular order:
- a Push-Powered heist game
- a simple, lightly comedic Arthurian fantasy quest RPG
- a Muppets-inspired game of Belonging Outside Belonging
- a system for playing sorcerers casting wildly unpredictable spells
- some hacks and supplements building on Austin Walker's Realis, including a solo RPG
- and of course GANG FREAKS, the game about making a gang of freaks
A framework. A ritual. A surreal tabletop storytelling game.
A 12-word micro-version of the Belonging Outside Belonging system
the miss of sisyphus
An ongoing (some might say unending) attempt to create the perfect Sisyphus TTRPG
Two 12-word solo LARPs / lyric games for those doomed to be cleverer than the gods they serve
Two 48-word solo LARPs / lyric games for those doomed to be especially cleverer than the gods they serve