UNCANNY RALLY

HELLO AND WELCOME to my first of twelve collaborations - a game I made with Chris McDowall about trying to talk normally whilst being unable to talk normally and, if you do something weird, your arm turns into a big cannon which causes problems at your new job. Something which we all have experience of, I'm sure.

(If you want to learn more about Chris McDowall, and why wouldn't you, you can go to Bastionland.com and check out his stuff. Electric Bastionland itself is tremendous and you should buy it immediately.)

First up: it has two pages. Deal with it. NEW YEAR NEW ME. Well - NEW MAY NEW ME.

Second up: it was fun to collaborate! I think that by working together we made something that neither of us would have done on our own. Chris' ideas for playing a weird conversational gotcha game was interesting, and my insistence on wild chaos whenever possible led to this strange Frankenstein's Monster of a thing which is half party activity, half slapstick manslaughter adventure, and half desperate bid for freedom in a world that hates you. Three halves! That's what you get with Howitt and McDowall.

Here's what Chris has to say about Uncanny Rally:

When Grant invited me to collaborate on a one-page-RPG, I saw it as an opportunity to experiment. The initial spark came from the social deduction game "Inhuman Resources". In that game, one of you might be a secret robot trying to hide their identity while restricted by a rule that makes everyday conversation difficult. Could we explode that ultra-tense interview game into an RPG with multiple androids working together to conceal their identity? Could they be on a road trip? Once the name "Uncanny Rally" hit the page I was sold.

The Androids are each restricted by a Glitch, anything from "you cannot refer to emotions" to "you cannot ask for help with anything". Worst of all, you can't see your own Glitch, but everybody else can, so the androids need to protect each other if they're is going to make it through a day's work without drawing attention to themselves. 

Making the characters escaped military androids working through various temp jobs let us inject a bit of dark humour. Violating your Glitch might just cause a static shock to your human supervisor, but might see your arm transforming into an auto-firing minigun while you're trying to prepare a wedding buffet. 

Your Glitch creates problems, but each Android has a Drive that pushes them outward to engage with the world in a spirit of curiosity. Maybe you want to "make a human laugh" or just "have a picnic". You'll never achieve these digital dreams if you let your Glitch hold you back. 

I'm really happy with how this game turned out, and can't wait to try it out at my own table.

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My thanks (and half of my takings) to Chris for working on this, and coming up with all the funniest bits of the game. I especially like "Learn an animal fact" as a motivation; that's classic.

Next month's collaborator is the fabulous and ingenious NATHAN BLADES, and we're going to come up with something absolutely glorious, I'm sure. 

- Grant