Skeleton Siege - Skullitics is a collaborative storytelling TTRPG for 4 players. The only game pieces required are a standard deck of Tarot cards, some 10 sided dice, and a few handfuls of tokens or coins. Oh and maybe some paper and pencils, if you feel like it. In this game, players take the roles of the different arms of a powerful Skeleton Army as they attempt to triumph over the last vestiges of humanity at the fall of mankind's reign.

Skullitics is a "mod" for a game system I found on the internet a while back - an obvious joke, "Skeleton Siege" piqued my interest for obvious reasons. I was enamored with the looseness of the rules, and thought that the sort of zany dark comedy that "Skeletons" implies as a premise for roleplaying would be the perfect framing tool to turn this into a game with a slightly clearer outline for play. My goal was to keep alive the spirit of Skeleton Siege feeling like it doesn't really have any rules while still guiding players' experience in a way that felt like it was actually pushing a story forward.

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Skullitics was once described to me as essentially a slightly more structured game of "I Have A Bigger Sword Than You" and I agree with that assessment. The intended play experience is meant to be centered on storytelling and humor, not so much skill or chance. I designed the game with 3 main pillars in mind:

Roleplaying -

The assymetrical gameplay of Humanity Vs. King + Army + Advisor results in interesting situations that cause conflict between the intra-Skeletal politics and the Skeletons' collective goal to destroy humanity. This working relies heavily on the Skeleton players fully embracing their roles; trying to work together while ultimately being fickle, petty, and selfish.

Humor -

"Skeletons" has a surprising amount of punch as a prompt for comedy roleplaying. The macabre nature of the threat implies a sense of fear and darkness, while the zany antics of the monsters themselves provide levity. Players should lean into this juxtaposition to get the most out of Skullitics.

Collaboration -

The rules of Skullitics are left intentionally vague to leave room for players to craft their own experience. This is intended to help players' create a shared vision of the world, to try to get them to resonate on the same wavelength and group-think their way to the setting of their story. Games of Skullitics have been played in fantasy realms and capitalist dystopias alike. Players should all work together to craft this world, not just the GM. The basic gameloop of Skullitics involves the Skeleton players slowly amassing resources to build up their forces to take out Humanity. Each turn, players draw from the deck of Minor Arcana to determine what moves they can use. Skeletons can mutate, craft new weapons, cast spells, and acquire magical artifacts that they can use to destroy humankind. Humanity takes on more of a GM role. As the primary antagonist to the Skeletons, Humanity is tasked with using the Major Arcana and provided prompting to create complicated situations for the Skeletons to have to navigate.

Given the amount of time I was able to spend this semester tuning the mechanics of Skullitics, I feel relatively happy with the product I've ended up with. Earlier versions of the game had more complicated conflict resolution mechanics, as well as more narrowly defined prompting on the moves for all players. I was finding that this specificity was taking something out of the experience, and I believe I was able to pare down the system to what was most important. I think the moves for each character provide enough scaffolding for players to get into their characters as well as leaving enough room for them to be creative with the means by which the Skeletons enact their plans. The Advisor feels scheming, the King feels important, and the Army feels powerful. I think the Advisor role could do with a bit of tuning when it comes to their moves. I think the Advisor role requires a bit more from players in terms of their willingness to bend the rules and be imaginitive, which I tried to take some of the onus off the player for. You can download the rules for Skullitics here! Skullitics was designed for my Game Design Fundamentals Class, Spring of 2025