Indie Spotlight: Absurdia + Enclave

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Today’s newsletter takes a short look at two new smaller indie TTRPGs aiming to capture very different vibes.

First is a surreal horror-oriented game that will make you wish you were visiting the dog park Night Vale-style.

The other is an attempt at a multiverse-oriented one-shot TTRPG where you never roll dice.

Welcome to Night Vale. Gravity Falls. Alice in Wonderland. All of these are influences on a new game that attempts to capture a surrealist and absurdist approach to storytelling in its new rules.

Absurdia is a TTRPG now funding on Backerkit about a suburban town where its residents are sealed within a city that’s been disconnected from our reality by forces beyond our comprehension. It’s a town that draws on the ‘weirdness’ of Welcome to Night Vale where seemingly normal phenomena (PTAs, bureaucracy, etc) take on strange elements that cause them to become more malevolent or threatening than we would think at first glance.

The game itself isn’t entirely new, as creator Quinn Majeski told TTRPG Insider. The game has existed in an earlier form since 2022 on itch.io as he and his fellow creators on the Monster Hour podcast used the Powered by the Apocalypse-oriented game Monster of the Week to tell stories in a very Night Vale-ian way. But eventually, he decided to take the PBTA system and flip it around into its own game.

PBTA, a system built on players using ‘playbooks’ to establish archetypes for play and to roll 2d6 to perform specific moves, is great for “capturing a specific sort of genre” through the unique moves available to players while capturing the distinct flavor of the setting, Majeski argued. It allows the characters to embrace archetypes of storytelling that draw on classic character tropes from the very media that inspire the game with ridiculous names like “Bureaumancer” or “Vox.”

Unlike the recently released Welcome to Night Vale TTRPG (built around Renegade Game Studios’ Essence20 system), the game doesn’t come with extensive lore or lots of history to incorporate. Instead, it provides touchstones and inspiration for a storyteller to adopt into their stories, including the artifacts and items that we’ve come to know and identify with the middle-class lifestyle. There’s a looseness to the narrative that players can adopt into their own stories as they see fit.

“I think the most important thing is this notion of turning things upside down and subverting expectations of what we expect, in our day-to-day lives, would think of as normal. It’s also about making seemingly mundane things such as the dog park, you know, going to a city council meeting, trash collection or your neighborhood HOA terrible and terrifying,” Majeski emphasized. That twisting of expectations not only allows one to play around with the expectations but also to explore the satire implied in the products themselves.

“There is something joyful and freeing in taking the conventions that we accept on a day-to-day basis and turning them on their head,” Majeski concluded.

Absurdia is available for crowdfunding on Backerkit.

Enclave Captures Diceless Play in a One-Shot Fixated Multiverse

While Absurdia aims to capture the ridiculousness of modern life through humor, a diceless game with a multiversal perspective is taking a broader perspective.

Enclave is a diceless RPG that claims to have ‘infinite depth’ in character customization. It claims to tell the story of the Enclave, a morally grey mercenary organization within the infinite realms of the Manifold. Players represent a plethora of archetypes (gunslingers, knights, etc.) being sent out on missions across this multiverse that incorporates timelines, story types and technologies across the spectrum. “Every single time you play can be in a completely different setting, and your characters can come from completely different backgrounds,” Enclave designer Robbie Howell told TTRPG Insider.

The main appeal of Enclave is that it offers a consistent system for leveling and character development, all while playing through one-shots. So if you want to tell a story in a medieval world in one game session, then move to a futuristic world with that same character, Enclave’s setting and mechanics allow that flexibility.

Dice are never rolled in the game, but players will have preset abilities and stats that may impact how skilled their character is at specific tasks. They are already specialists in certain fields because they’re in the Enclave. Instead, the players are drawing on preset ‘stats’ and abilities that reflect their character's identity and are limited by time and the resource of “essence.”

The entire game is reliant on “socially enforced rules,” Howell argues, which means that if players are joining this table, then they’re expected to buy into those rules. They can’t just pull a “I’m good at everything” card and expect to get away with the task.

“Your character is going to be special in some way. And as long as you acknowledge the limitations and embrace the downsides as they come up, you're not trying to cheat power. That is going to make all the difference,” Howell argued.

It will also be up to the storyteller to create the world and villain since stat blocks are no longer a thing. Instead, the character will have to be illustrated and explored through the world while also presenting an appropriate challenge.

Enclave is a looser, more improv-oriented form of gameplay that may feel akin to sessions of pretend with friends, albeit with set guidelines and no dice.

The original version of Enclave was funded in 2023. Howell is hoping to fund a second book (titled Aspirant) this September, which will add new classes and options for leveling a character as well as new rules and guidance for operating within the system.

Enclave launches on Kickstarter today, Sept. 23, 2025.

What are your thoughts? Send any scoops, tips or press releases to [email protected].