An Ur-RPG

This is a game for two people. It's a little like a text adventure, or one of those choose-your-own-adventure books you read as a kid. It's about imagining a person in a situation, and exploring different ways that same situation could turn out depending on what the person does. It's played through conversation: face-to-face, over a phone call, through twitter/tumblr/instagram/discord messages, whatever. Here's how you do it:

1. Pick who's gonna control the Character, and who's gonna control the Situation. If you can't decide, flip a coin or something.
2. The Character player thinks a little about what kinda person they might wanna play. Then they give a brief description. Here's some examples:
   - I'm a space pirate, with an eyepatch, and a raygun!
   - I'm a teenage witch. Frizzy hair, stolen spellbook, too ambitious for her own good.
   - I'm a divorced dad in his mid - 40's who's secretly a radioactive mutant psychic.
   - Uhhh, a guy? With a sword?
3. The Situation player thinks a little about what kinda problem they'd like to see the character face. The situation should be precarious, with many possible ways of turning out badly. Here's some examples:
   - An Imperial Space Force ship looms above. It sends a message through your communication screen, threatening to open fire if you don't turn yourself over now.
   - You're missing the key ingredient to your spell. Eye of newt, or something. Yeah anyway it's in the middle of like a weird maze filled with weird little magic fuckers. Like in Labyrinth.
   - Your ex-wife, a notorious supervillain, calls you from her evil lair. "World domination isn't working out" She says, "Wanna pay me a visit - for old times sake? I've got half a bottle of wine and a DVD box set of some trashy soap opera. I just want to talk to you again - face-to-face."  
   - A big scary monster's been tearing apart the local town, and you gotta sneak into it's cave and kill it before it kills anyone else.
4. The Character players says what the first thing they do is.
5. The Situation player says what happens because of that. This will end either with "The End" (if the Character has solved the problem they started with, or if they are now unable of solving it from here, for example if they died), or more often, "what do you do next?"
   
6. Now it's the Character player's turn to speak again. If the Situation character asked what they do next, they answer that question, and describe their Character's next action, repeating step 4, from which point play keeps repeating in a loop until you come to an end. If the Situation player declared an End, they can either accept that as end to the story and the game, or try again. If they try again, they pick up the story at any established point of their choice and say "but instead of ____, I do ____". The Scenario player describes how the different action leads to a different result, again restarting the loop of play.

That's it! Hope it made sense. I feel like that last step might of been a bit wordy and messy, but I'm not gonna edit it right now, so I hope you figured it out somehow. :shrug emoticon: