You wake up dead. It’s a lot to take in, but there’s no time for philosophising- you’ll need to travel between Earth, Heaven and Hell to figure out whodunnit, howdunnit, and whydunnit. A game about death, levity and finding out hard truths.
Waking up dead sucks, but at least you're in your own bed. This is your bed, right?
DedBoi is a solo role-playing game where you investigate not only your own untimely demise, but also try to figure out who the hell you are. Traverse hell, heaven and earth in search of answers to your questions. Sometimes, answers you don't want to hear.
From the award-winning creator of Be Like a Crow, Punk is Dead, and All Night Breakfast at The Midnight Owl comes an introspective game about death, life and self-discovery.
Before you get too excited, it’s worth saying this up front: you start the game on the back foot. Actually, worse than that. You start it dead.
Unlike many role-playing games, you start the game with no knowledge of who you are, meaning character creation is an ongoing process. As you investigate your own death, you also learn things about your life and your abilities.
Your story unfolds as you visit a dozen locations, look for clues, and piece together what you learn to build a theory of who you are and why you died. Dice and playing cards drive the events and encounters you have, but all other choices are yours. You might be dead, but you still have agency! Things you will need to play DeadBoi:
The investigation phase is based on one of my other games, All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl (but with very different prompts), which itself leans on a heavily hacked version of Hints & Hijinx by Pandion Games. The main skill mechanic is Breathless, which allows you to assign one from an array of dice to each of your skills. Oh, and there's another twist: you will create your character as you play.
Ability Recall is a mechanic that enables you to set your skill scores. The first time you test any of your six skills, it will define your score for that skill going forward. But beware, you can't be good at everything.
Genre Bending. The prompts in DeadBoi are designed to spark your creativity and guide you in your investigations. However, they have also been designed to be setting-agnostic, meaning you can play DedBoi in any world you wish. Fancy figuring out how you ended up in an ancient Mesopotamian ziggurat? You do you! Or how about New York City in the 1970s? Or even a generation ship heading for Alpha Centauri! You get it.
The rules take about 15 to 20 mins to learn and, even better, you can understand them as you play. Jump right in as you read the zine!
We are collaborating with Cezar Capacle on his project, Triple-O.Why? Well, because we think he is one of the greatest living designers of TTRPGs, and we are also his publisher, which means we can save you some money on shipping if you back our project and his.
Triple-O is a tool for solo RPG players who want to invert roles and play as the GM instead of a character. This resource allows you to dynamically and naturally emulate character behaviour and actions, making it ideal for running published adventure modules or exploring your own creations.
We're not big on stretch goals as a concept, but we also want to reward our backers as they help fund our projects, so we will release these as and when we are close to hitting them.
As always, during the pledge and survey process, you will be able to add any games from our back catalogue without paying extra shipping! That's right, our capped shipping means you can load up and get more bang for your buck.
There will be a quick turnaround on this one, just like we did last year with Unleashed.
We expect to fulfil this in May because it will go straight into production after the campaign, and we don't have any fancy add-ons other than what we already publish. No FOMO, no waiting, this is how we will do crowdfunding from now on!
So, here are the shipping rates, all capped, EU VAT paid and tariff-free to the states! If you fancy some add-ons, load up, kids. Also, don't forget, with our cross-collab, you can get another set of rewards at no extra shipping cost. Woop!
UK = £5 / EUROPE: £10 / USA & CANADA: £13 / ROW: £18
Tim Roberts is an ENNIE Award–winning tabletop RPG designer who has been playing role-playing games since the mid-1980s, cutting his teeth on Fighting Fantasy books. In 2019, he founded the indie publisher Critical Kit Ltd. Since then, he has written the acclaimed solo RPG Be Like a Crow and Punk is Dead. He is also the winner of the Faber Academy Prize for short fiction.
💥 Zinetopia 2026
This project is participating in Zinetopia! A Small-format TTRPG event celebrating Zine Month running February 2–27, 2026.
📖 What is Zine Month? Zine Month is a month-long online celebration observed every February by the tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) community where creators share and launch new DIY zines.
🔥 Unlock the Limited Zinetopia Freebie! Receive the limited edition Zinetopia 2026 Group Zine when you back 5+ projects featuring 60+ pages from participating creators full of mini-games, sketches, activity pages, and more!
