For just three days in February 2024 we presented the all-new 2024 Birthday Bundle, a charity offer featuring .PDFs of the well-known One-Page RPGs by designer Grant Howitt (Spire, Heart, Goblin Quest, Eat the Reich) at Rowan, Rook, & Decard. This charity offer of 16 mini-RPGs, including the famous Honey Heist and Crash Pandas, marked the 11th anniversary of the Bundle of Holding, which launched 20 February 2013.
“Wait, Bundle of Holding,” you’re saying, “one can get all these weird, punchy, minimalist One-Page RPGs, on a spectacular array of bizarre, whimsical, and/or fascinating topics, typeset (or hand-scrawled) in rough-hewn fashion by Grant Howitt himself, and ornamented with Grant’s own vigorous scribbles, on a pay-what-you-want basis on DriveThruRPG or itch.io or (should one wish to support Grant directly) through his Patreon campaign. Why, then, would anyone have paid you actual money for eight or sixteen of these oddball documents?”
An insightful question! It’s because all revenue (after gateway fees) from this Birthday 2024 charity offer went to the Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program. Each year, the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, amplifies the voices of up-and-coming game designers by featuring them during an expenses-paid visit to Gen Con. The global Emerging Designer Program focuses on creators from marginalized communities.
“When I began writing one-page games back in the mists of 2015, I figured it would be easy,” says Grant Howitt. “I was wrong! It’s actually surprisingly difficult to fit a whole game on one page, even if that game is about something daft and the mechanics only have to hold together for one session of play. But it looks easy, and that’s what matters – because loads of people saw these scrappy, self-illustrated, barely-legible games and figured they could have a go themselves.
“And they did! The one-page genre of games – that I co-opted from John Harper, let’s be honest here, but I’ve sure as hell written more of them by now – has worked as a springboard for hundreds of GMs, players, and designers who were put off by weighty tomes of rules and wanted something a little more approachable.
“I’m really happy to be contributing my work to this bundle, and I’d like to thank you for your donation, because the more new voices and perspectives we get in the industry, the better our work becomes.”
There were eight One-Page RPGs in this charity offer’s Starter Collection as DRM-free .PDFs:
- Adventure Skeletons: You’re a skeleton, bored of guarding the dungeon for some wizard, and you decide to go on an adventure instead. You’re having a great time in the human dungeon (or village, as they insist on calling it) but people keep hitting you and your bits keep falling off.
- The Beast: You are a low-rent vagabond monster hunter in Eastern Europe, ordered by the Baron (whom you hate) to hunt the Beast that’s been taking people from their homes and tearing them to shreds. Learn what you can about it and its minions, and stick together, because if you go in alone and unprepared, you’ll go mad and die.
- Bird Crimes: You’re a hapless poacher roped into illegally importing seven rare parrots (who are also criminals) aboard a redeye passenger jet from JFK to Heathrow. The birds keep escaping. At one point they get hold of a gun, and it’s really downhill from there.
- Crash Pandas: You’re a bunch of raccoons, all trying to drive the same souped-up sports car, desperate to make a name for yourselves on the cutthroat LA street-racing circuit. Contains full rules for all driving the same car at once, getting it wrong, and smashing into a wall.
- Everyone Is Seagulls: A bold and exciting one-page RPG where everyone plays a flock of 30 seagulls. The core mechanic is yelling.
- Himbo Treasure Hunt: A bunch of muscular people, who are good-natured and not academically inclined, want to save the local gym from being demolished. Lucky for you, you’ve heard tell of an ancient treasure buried under your street way back in 1973! You’ve got until 5 PM to find the hidden treasure and buy back the lease.
- Jason Statham’s Big Vacation: Can YOU make sure international superstar Jason Statham has a nice holiday, despite the efforts of the WESLEY SNIPER? Will he end up bored, arrested, sad or dead?
- Kobold Endeavour: You are a kobold, a scrawny dragonling whelp. The capricious and cruel MIGHTY DRAGON KING has tasked you to sneak into a rival dragon’s hoard and steal as much loot as you can. Problem is, you’re terrible at everything – except creating distractions. Can you stack up enough distractions to get in, get the treasure, and get out alive?
This Birthday Bundle’s Bonus Collection added eight more of Grant’s One-Page RPGs:
- Big Gay Orcs: The Warlord is dead by an assassin’s hand. You have received orders from the Great Khan: Your fortress is the last defense against the enemy armies, and you must sell your lives dearly. This may be your last night alive. As the sun sets, you think of the life you’ve spent alongside the other orcs here. Can you tell them how you really feel, here at the end of everything?
- Genius Loci: You are a small god, a genius loci, in a quiet country town in 1960s south England.
- Honey Heist: (1) You have a complex plan that requires precise timing. (2) You are a GODDAMN BEAR. That’s largely it.
- Nice Marines: YOU ARE A SPACE MARINE, an immortal giant genetically engineered to be the perfect instrument of war. You and your squadmates are oathsworn protectors of the Astral Commonwealth – and one another. The iconoclasts of the galaxy shiver in terror at the very mention of your name. However, support forces have not arrived following the recent liberation of Vannis, leaving you in charge of a diplomatic envoy dedicated to rebuilding after the conflict. You have no idea how to do this.
- Sepulchre: This One-Page RPG presents a sawed-off version of the Resistance System that powers Spire. Take on the role of desperate relic hunters and seize power from wealthy occultists in a city sunken beneath the frozen wasteland of the North.
- Sexy Battle Wizards: You are a member of the College Errant – an organization based in a magical flying castle that roves the land looking to avert arcane disasters and fight injustice. You have precisely zero authority to do this, the cops hate you, and you are wanted in several countries for collateral damage caused while saving the world.
- Stag Party: YOU are a HALF-HUMAN, HALF-BEAST creature from the DEEP DARK of the WOODS. You are a MIGHTY CHAMPION. As is TRADITION, you and all your peers are to be wed to THE ARBOREAL SOW, a sacred pig the size of a transit van. You emerge, STEAMING and GLORIOUS, into the forecourt of a GAS STATION. It is the night before the ceremony and, as is TRADITION, you must secure tribute for your queen from the LANDS OF MAN. You have until dawn to claim something worthy. MAKE HASTE!
- The Witch Is Dead: You are a magical woodland creature. Your beautiful witch mistress has been killed, and you are about to set out on a murder-revenge adventure in the human lands. The Witch Is Dead contains very strong language, but also murder and some eye-ripping, so maybe think before showing it to your kids.
