Genrenauts RPG - "What is this game" excerpt (Patreon)

I've been working on the "what is Genrenauts?" part of the game text in preparation for sharing the document more widely than just here with my patrons that mostly all have read or know the series. It's been fun and weird to write about one of my own settings in this way, sort of like sales text but also very much not. 

As I said on Twitter last weekend, RPG books are tools, not finished kits. They're recipes, not completed meals. They're inspiration and illumination, but not the wonders you see once you've lit your torch and ventured out. A great TTRPG book is a catalyst more than a guidebook.

What is this game?

Genrenauts is a game about stories and storytelling - not just how we tell stories but why. Play to explore dimensions where genre and narrative conventions are fundamental laws of reality. Portray a heist crew of story experts tasked with finding and fixing broken stories to protect the multiverse. Genrenauts is inspired by works like Leverage, Planetary, and The Last Action Hero.

In Genrenauts, our dimension is just one of many in a multiverse. Each other dimension is the home to a familiar narrative genre: Westerns, Fantasy, Romance, Crime, etc. Those worlds constantly play out stories from their genre – archetypes and tale types smashing up against one another to create tragedies and happily-ever-afters.

As in any system, there is entropy. Sometimes a story breaks down. When that happens, the Genrenauts step in to put the narrative back on track. Because if they don’t, the dissonance from the broken story ripples over and changes Earth on a fundamental level. When the Science Fiction world goes off-track, scientific innovation stagnates and space exploration stalls, when the Fantasy world goes off-track, xenophobia rises and cultural rifts widen, etc.

Stories are breaking harder and more often. Travel between dimensions carries greater risk than ever, and the Genrenauts are stretched to their limits. You play a new team recruited to answer the interdimensional crisis as they try to protect the multiverse and keep their home from being warped beyond recognition by the tsunami-level ripples crashing across dimensions.

On a mission…

• you might unpack the history of a couple in the world of Romance that failed to reconcile so you can engineer a series of events that will bring them back together so they can be their best selves.
• you might recruit and train an unlikely hero to face down a group of bandits in the world of Westerns after the original white hats fled when they were expected to fight.
• you might uncover a plot by a rogue dimensional traveler to break stories in very specific ways to re-write reality back on Earth prime and work to stop them before they bring catastrophe to multiple worlds.

Genrenauts combines the joy of exploring and discussing how and why we tell stories with the fun of storytelling via homage, pastiche, parody, and deconstruction. Genrenauts is a game where you can tell stories about stories and storytelling. You might shift seamlessly between discussions as co-writers of the story to debating the ways that the fiction impacts the mechanics to intense philosophical discussions between characters about the nature of fate and free will for people living within worlds bound by genre conventions. Where other games focus intensely on one specific setting and the way that their characters emerge from and are constrained by that one place, Genrenauts focuses on the characters and their relationships – to their job, to their teammates, and to the people of the story regions and their lives.

Genrenauts lends itself to episodic storytelling, in the style of a TV show like Leverage or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. A session might open with characters interacting in their ready room, establishing current character relationships. Then they’re summoned to a mission, jumping across dimensions to assess how and where a story has gone off-track. They explore and develop a plan, leaping into action to fix the breach. Finally, they wrap things up as the team returns from another successful mission to roll credits.

Each session could involve another adventure from across the team’s beat, with storylines building and characters recurring from one mission in a region to the next:

A knight’s squire in the Heroic Fantasy region might strike a lucky blow in one mission, arrive as the general’s right-hand knight as part of crucial reinforcements in the next, and then, years later, serve as the legendary hero that fulfills the prophecy that will save the kingdom.

A pair of bitter rivals in the Romantic Comedy region could appear first as the bickering friends of a romantic pair, then fall in love and go through their own Romance arc, and then re-appear months later as a steady, committed couple to help another friend in her own love story.

In the Cyberpunk region, that one security guard that got away from the team during a mission might return later as part of a PMC that guards the megacorp targets. Then, finally, they serve as the Big Bad CEO of a climactic mission as the guard-turned warlord seeks revenge on the team and their runner allies.

Who Becomes a Genrenaut?

Genrenauts are recruited from many walks of life. If there’s a single common thread, it would be that all Genrenauts are adept at reading the flow and texture of stories and interposing themselves to change the narrative. A Genrenaut might have been an aspiring novelist, a stunt choreographer, a media critic, or a lawyer with a talent for storytelling as they frame a case.

Most Genrenauts are recruited from the Earth like ours – what the Genrenauts call Earth Prime – a world not bound by specific genre conventions. But sometimes, a person from a story region catches on to what the Genrenauts were doing and convinces the team to bring them along as a new recruit. Other times, a story-born person might be desperate to escape their life and experience a wider array of experience, prompting a Genrenaut to read them in to the nature of the multiverse and give them a chance to see it all.

No matter their origin, rookie Genrenauts undergo intensive training in narrative theory, genre conventions, physical, mental, and social skills, and more, so that they can be ready to adopt a variety of roles or identities and react in the moment to push a story back towards resolution. A team of Genrenauts are stunt performers, script doctors, and a narrative heist crew all at once.

The life of a Genrenaut is dangerous, but filled with wonder. They’re well-paid and well-appointed by a mysterious High Council that operates a dozen Genrenauts bases around the world. Each base has with their own teams, ships, and beat of of dimensional genre regions. You might have a rival in the Beijing HQ after helping them out on a mission in the Xianxia genre world or an old partner that got promoted to team lead and now works the Western and Historical Action beat out of LA.