Tabletop Light Roleplaying Game: Prohibit This!

For our Game Design III course, one of the class's final assignments was to create a light tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) complete with various classes, character creation, and a number of other RPG facets.  The group I ended up working with; Lauryn Gordon, Ben Parise, and Cesar Rocha, was an aggressive team that took the base premise of the assignment and ran for it.  In the course of just three weeks, the four of us built, tested, and iterated a Dungeons and Dragons inspired, team-based RPG we finally titled Prohibit This.

The world of Prohibit This focuses on America's roaring 20's.  A time of flappers, big parties, mobsters, immigration, and prohibition, it was an era of chaos and bloodshed, a time when someone could be a self-made-man if he did not mind getting their hands dirty.  The interesting twist that comes with Prohibit This is the existing of magic, both simple and complex.  In this world, mobsters are not just smuggling moonshine and prohibited spirits, they smuggle special elixirs that can augment a person's nature abilities or give them brand new ones.  The selling of such elixirs is highly illegal and open use of them is frowned upon by society.  However, there is not a flapper out there that does not take a sip or two of charmer's potion before heading out, or a bouncer that does not chug down a brawler's brew before going on shift, or a wealthy business man who tries to keep death a distant thought with other powerful potions.  

The world of Prohibit This is a corrupt and dangerous world, and the players are some of the few people some that can see where the opportunity in it all.  Players can then choose one of four classes.  The brawler class is the tank, focusing on getting into melee and keeping the enemy occupied either through potential damage or through stuns and knockdowns.  The Bootlegger is mix of offensive capabilities and support, either throwing molotov cocktails or sending enemies and allies into frothing rages.  The Backup is the sharpshooter of the group, able to deal out considerable damage from afar with a number of different armaments.  Lastly, the Fence is the voice of the group, able to sweet talk employers into better pay, having the contacts necessary to sell stolen goods, and at the very least being a distraction in the midst of combat.  All of these classes can be further augmented based on equipment the player chooses and one of the two possible feats augment a class's role in some way.

In the end, the project was a success and one that I am very proud.  Given time, I feel like the team could have easily figured out some of the concerns with the lengthy character creations process and handled some of the balance concerns.  Personally, I look forward to potentially coming back to it someday and polishing it up, make it a complete experience with more classes and augmentations for those classes, equipment, enemies to fight, and really explore some of the potential of a 1920's magic RPG.