THEME: Teenage Road-trip
Hello there! I've got games about teens and games about road-trips: I'm sure between all of these you'll find the right fit!
Are you ready to head on a Journey Along the Open Road?
Along the Open Road is a simple road trip storytelling TTRPG that allows a group of 3-5 players to work together to tell the Journey of a group heading down 'The Open Road', discovering new Stops along the way, learning about cool Points of Interest, and meeting Unique Characters.
And the best part of all of this? Your group creates the story you want to tell.
Along the Open Road, as a storytelling TTRPG, is a game that allows every one of the players to be in command of the story at some point. There is a great focus on Characters, of course, but there's as great of a focus on Players, too. And just in case there are Players who aren't as experienced in storytelling or running sessions as others, there's a whole host of ideas tables right at the back of the book.
Along the Open Road is a road-trip game before anything else. This means that you can decide the setting and circumstances that will affect your characters: it cares about your car, your cash, your inventory and the journey you go on. Advice in the game also seems to hint towards holding at least one session per character in order to experience the fullness of the game, which tells me that the game likely also allows you to dig into emotional depth if you so desire. Because it's kind of setting-agnostic, I do feel like you can play teens in this one, although there won't be anything that makes them distinctively teen-like compared to other possible characters.
Delinquent Goons is a system hack of the Tunnel Goons system submitted to the One Page RPG Jam 2024. Designed for playing with 1 Narrator and up to 4 players aka Delinquents.
Explore a time when everybody expected you to behave a specific way, grow up at a specific time, and only exist in specific spaces. And reject all of that. Form a ragtag group of teenage dirtbags as they reject expectations set upon them and uncover the covert conspiracies of authority figures and classmates.
Delinquent Goons is inspired by media such as Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated (among others), so I think putting a bunch of teens in a van and sending them off to deal with strange happenings is totally in its wheelhouse.
I think the piece of the game that is the most emblematic of teenage themes is the Peer Pressure gauge, which is meant to represent the stress or dread of being a teenage delinquent. Your teen doesn't just have to deal with the threats against the group, they also have to manage the pressure of having to live up to a certain social expectation in their group of friends. Despite the core game rules of Delinquent Goons being rather simple (it is, after all, using the same engine as Tunnel Goons), the Peer Pressure gauge gives your group a tool by which you can imbue your story with drama and emotion.
The van is gassed up. The tunes are playing. The road is clear.
Well … the van is running on something, the tunes keeping remarking on achingly specific details of our travels and inner thoughts, and the road is clear of other cars but nonetheless something keeps cropping up in the rear-view that looks different to every person who gazes upon it.
But, that’s, uh … normal for a roadtrip. Right?
In Interstate 10 1/2, you and your friends will hit the road in a possibly-alive van, working hard to keep everything in operating shape, keep food on your plates, and not let your fellow road-tripper's fascination with the possum who has his same eyes freak you out too much.
Interstate 10 1/2 is a short 2-page game by Luka Brave, also known as PsychHound Games online. It uses his Horseshoe System, which centres around two tracks that help keep the story moments punchy with a peak and a nosedive in the fiction attached to when your characters succeed and fail.
Character creation is simple, but it isn't limiting: the tables that help you put your little blorbo together offer short, evocative phrases that demand that you add emotional depth to your backstories. You don't have to be a teenager in this game if you don't want to be, but you can absolutely start with the premise that all of the folks on this road-trip are young, and perhaps a little bit foolish, and Danger is sure to follow you regardless.
The Book of Brushwood Lullabies is a tabletop RPG made for the time of year when seasons turn and leaves change color. Play as a group of wayward children as they attempt to navigate and their way through the strange and wonderful Brushwood. Make friends along the way, avoid enemies, stray from the path, and (with a little help from fate) find your way back home.
This game is best with 3-5 players, and requires both a set of tarot cards and polyhedral dice for full enjoyment.
Inspired by media such as Over The Garden Wall and Tales From The Loop, The Book Of Brushwood Lullabies appears to aim for somewhere between the magical and the surreal. It isn't really a road-trip per se, but it does carry the pieces of a travelogue that you might be looking for from a road-trip story. Your kids are trying tog et back home, through a woods that harbors witches, magical creatures, and a scarecrow looking for his items of power. To add to the feeling of enchantment, the game uses a deck of tarot cards to create unique abilities for each character, as well as a mechanic that involves reading a 3-card spread to interpret what happens in a scene.
If you want a highly interpretive game, I recommend The Book of Brushwood Lullabies.
ALONG THE ROAD TO EVERYWHERE is a post-apocalyptic road-trip tabletop role-playing game. It sets the aesthetics and ideals of the Beatnik and Hippie movements of the mid 20th century against the backdrop of a vast, magical wasteland. It’s relatively low-key and role-play focused, dealing with ideas of community and regrowth. Part of the idea is to tell the stories that happen between larger stories—between dots on the map.
Branding itself as a rules-lite game, Along the Road to Everywhere embraces the themes of a road-trip by classifying the GM as the Engine, and the players as the Passengers. The game claims inspiration from Art Nouveau, Medieval Revival, Beatnik & Hippie culture, and Transcendentalism. I'm not familiar with most of these sources, so I'm not sure how much of those inspirations shine through in this game, but the idea of an art & cultural movement feels like it might be in tune with teen culture, if you don't mind blending genres a little bit.
The setting for this game is both post-apocalyptic and medieval in nature, with vans that are powered by plants instead of gas, and a world that's meant to be built collaboratively with some suggestions for beautiful and vibrant locales. I think the biggest dissonance with this game and your request is the part about "ill-advised" road-trips. The trips in this game don't feel very creepy: they're dangerous, but the aesthetic of the game takes a turn more towards the hopeful than anything else.
Civilization is a strange web; places strung together with highways and telephone wires. A loosely woven net that holds together society. Sometimes things slip through the net; they are lost, or too strange to be found at all. The map is the thread that connects these places. It leads to lands of legends, where mysteries are born and prayers are answered by strange gods.
Wayward Highway is a game inspired by road trips and the places between where you are and where you want to be. It is about experiencing the journey; the joy and agony of distance. There will be many disparate stops along your trip, and they may or may not add up to a cohesive narrative. Ultimately a road trip is not about a grand plot, but those little moments and how they shape you. The trip you take together may or may not be fantastical, but it will always be strange.
This game is part of the No Dice No Masters tradition; there is no Game Master, no dice. All you need is in this one document.
Wayward Highway feels like a great source for nostalgia and melancholy. The author calls upon media such as Alice isn't Dead and American Gods, so expect Americana and the strange, tied in with the collaborative magic of No Dice, No Masters. This is a GM-less game, allowing each player to embody both characters and locations, giving personality to the setting just as much as the people within it.
This game isn't necessarily about teenagers, but I don't see anything within it that prevents you from playing teens anyway, and it certainly gives you the tools to create an unsettling or strange atmosphere.
"The smell of discount, gasoline that's still fresh from being poured into your van's engine. Tamara is nervous. The two big wings on her back always twitch when they are. Aiden's tired, eyes that normally are full of fire, falling close at the wheel."
"Keep awake, Aiden. Miles to go before we sleep."
Melancholy Trip is a game that requires 3-5 players and a deck of cards. It's about being trans, super-powered and on the run in a ramshackle car from your superheroic mentors who know damn well why you ran.
I don't know much about this game, other than what it says on the cover, but it's got teens, it's got a road-trip, and it looks like it's also about angst! Since the teens are super powered, I have a feeling that pitting them against horrors and strange happenings is to be expected, if not encouraged. I also think that this might be a great game for fans of the movie Logan, what with all of the allegories in the X-Men franchise that I think might overlap with this one.
Games I've Recommended in the Past...
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