BELONG
A downloadable game
BELONG is a simple, setting-agnostic tabletop RPG made by condensing the basic token exchange mechanic from the Belonging Outside Belonging system into just 12 words*. It was made in one afternoon for the 12-word RPG Jam organised by W. H. Arthur & Rook and Role.
BELONG is a game for 1 or more players, with no Game Master. It requires a handful of tokens (coins, counters, poker chips, etc.) per player. I also recommend using the TTRPG Safety Toolkit created by Kienna Shaw.
As this was a design challenge/experiment with very strict constraints, the game text only outlines the core mechanic with no additional "How to Play" guide. While it's not too difficult to each make up a character, collectively narrate a story and have each player gain/spend tokens when the rules indicate, it would probably help if one or more players have a pre-existing knowledge of Belonging Outside Belonging or similar story game systems.
*Technically 11 words. The "Belong" in the game text is as much an instruction as it is a title, so it felt more fair to let it count towards the 12-word limit.
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BELONG is a very neat hack of Belonging Outside Belonging, one of my favourite RPG systems!
Hello, I'm thinking about using this for a downtime session (with just me and another dude) this Saturday, what do you think about our two characters sharing the same token pool vs having separate ones? Could this promote the characters sticking together because of shared problems?
Thank you.
Good question! My general answer is always: try it out, house rules are great and the designer can't stop you! ;)
However, I do love overthinking things, so let's dig into it a bit more. The tokens encourage players to plan out their story beats: you have to let your character suffer setbacks and get into scrapes, in order to gain tokens you can spend to succeed later on.
So a shared token pool might not work if you wanted conflict between player characters, or to have one character resolve all their personal drama while another was still struggling, but it should be fine for what you've described, with just two players. Your idea makes total sense for telling stories where the characters are under pressure to keep together, and have to take risks to help each other succeed.
If both characters take a joint action, I'm inclined to say you should still only gain/spend one token in total, because it's only one story beat. I'd describe it as one character leading the action and the other assisting them.
(Although I'd probably choose to spend two tokens for the characters to coordinate on a badass final move to end the session if I was playing! I don't know if your downtime is going to be that dramatic.)
I think it should work well, as long as your fellow player is cool with it. Don't be afraid to make adjustments midway through if you find running the game this way limits your options.
Let me know how it goes!
Went pretty well. We roleplayed freeform for some 20 minutes then introduced the first token-exchanging part (as a separate "ritual" separate from the rest of play, like a traditional test) and it quickly accelerated events to being questioned about the guards about a shady individual we were travelling with, lying our asses off that we didn't, being caught leaving together with him the next morning, then going into a chase, our vehicle failing midway, we being ambushed by locals, creating a ramp to move forward with magic, then finally reaching the woods and getting to safety... ! This was with the shared pool of tokens, and I think it worked neatly as pressure to keep the party together.
Later on I tried the separate, individual pools and it led to a more heroistic fantasy, maybe? Like, the individual characters did awesome actions, as opposed to the group, which creates a certain kind of mental image often associated with that kind of thing, I suppose.
Overall I'm glad I tried and I'm going to bundle it with some other rules in "Elderion Quest", whenever that comes out!
Thanks for sharing.
That's so cool! I'm glad the shared pool worked out nicely, it sounds like it had the desired effect. :)