Indie Spotlight: Spine + Human No More

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Today is our Indie Spotlight, where we’re featuring smaller projects that we think are neat. Today, we are looking at SPINE, a solo RPG that hopes to ‘suck you in’ to the text. There’s also Human No More, a sci-fi TTRPG that makes humanity the villains while you play the aliens.

What is it like to get sucked into a book? Some of us have felt the intoxication of a novel, spending hours reading it without noticing the time. But what if that could actually happen to you?

That’s the concept behind SPINE, a solo TTRPG that is now available in physical print. The story of this adventure centers on a researcher who inherits a strange book from a relative. As players read the book, they risk losing parts of themselves within it. The only way to get out is to deface the text and explore it through the endnotes.

“I’ve always been curious about transportation, which is the fancy term for ‘losing yourself in a book,’ SPINE author and Backwards Tabletop owner Asa Donald told TTRPG Insider. “It’s that experience when all of the stimuli fade around you and you are so into the story that it is almost real to you. To me, that’s the power of the human mind – to manifest a fictional reality in such a way that it is essentially real to us, a waking dream. In SPINE, ‘losing yourself in a book’ has a double meaning. It’s not only about getting sucked into the mystery behind the book and peculiar connections between each of its authors. It’s also about literally getting sucked into the book.”

How that occurs from a narrative aspect is through the endnotes, those bits of text written in smaller text at the end of the book. Those bits are written with prompts in mind, which are intended to spark memory of compulsion in your character after reading the text. The endnotes are mandatory, Donald notes, and you have to follow them if you want to keep working through the text as intended.

Your decisions and responses to those prompts will determine whether or not your character makes it out as themselves or if something else replaces them. Those prompts could include taking notes, drawing, ripping, burning or other acts involving the text. It’s very intense.

The book draws on Donald’s history in the university. “I’m a former academic, now in administration, one who is both enamored with what I used to study and disillusioned with my discipline,” Donald noted. “But I love reading; I adore books; and I am fascinated by print culture. I’ve always wanted to make a game about reading and a game that plays with its book. And SPINE, which is a game about reading and which is played through its endnotes, was born from those interests.”

The book is written in a way that allows you to play through it multiple times, Donald emphasized. That includes trying out different prompts, crossing out the ones you've already done, and seeking the secrets contained within the text. Donald also insisted that readers leave it in places for other people to experience, whether through a trade with a friend or at your local Little Free Library. He hopes that people will be intrigued by this odd little book containing all the scribblings.

SPINE is available for free as a download on Itch.io. It is also available in print-on-demand format on Mixam.com.

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Human No More: Are We the Baddies?

Science fiction stories often portray aliens as humanity's oppressors. But what if this were turned on its head, and humanity were the bad guy?

That’s the basic premise of Human No More, a “non-human" RPG from the Turkey-based Cultic Games. The “game design collective,” is best known for Stygian, a Cthulhu-inspired computer game. The company decided to pivot over to creating a TTRPG. The property came into existence out of Cultic's desire to make something that was their own. “I wanted to make the alter ego journey of the players as unique and original as possible, possibly making them view the characters they portray from a different, perhaps stranger angle,” creative director Can Oral told TTRPG Insider. There was also a desire to create a structure that would make players “really dependent on each other” in hopes of avoiding issues where “self-driven players use personal RP goals as excuses to hijack games and undermine collective fun.”

The story of Human No More is one where the “human-supremacist” totalitarian government called the Human Apartheid has ruled for nearly a century and has forced all other species to obey it. These include bio-engineered mutants, half-alien hybrids, Neanderthals, and sentient mammals. Now, the players are rebels who must collaborate to combat the human government. It’s a very dark setting and not for the faint of heart.

The game is built around a d20 system that draws heavily from tactical strategy games like XCOM. That includes adjusting combat so that factors like elevation, terrain, and cover influence the success of an attack, alongside the various abilities the rebels will have.

Totalitarian governments are a familiar story beat in many TTRPGs, but bringing them to life at a time when tyranny feels closer to home than ever requires a unique approach to storytelling.

“I live in Istanbul. We inhale and exhale politics and, of course, draw inspiration from political history, current events, figures—you name it—but also try to focus on universal situations and archetypes that would resonate with any member of our community, regardless of country or culture,” Oral told TTRPG Insider. “A tyrant is a tyrant, wherever he is. People were abusing power thousands of years ago, and they will most likely continue to do so thousands of years from now. The important thing is, can we create fictional yet realistic representations of it within our game world and reflect ‘today’ through the lens of tomorrow?”

Oral is confident that the game presents its vision of a pro-human universe and the allegorical horrors well. “In my very first GM’ing session, we were playtesting the game's first mission, and I remember how my players suddenly got particularly tense upon encountering the apartheid forces for the first time,” Oral explained. “At that moment, I realized that the idea was working. How did we do it? Through many big and small things —from the flavor texts to environmental descriptions to ability contents to the design of the regime forces —the presence of ‘the human’ as an oppressive power is evident throughout the material. Since that presence is also an inescapable part of our players, it resonates in a fresh yet strange, almost guilt-inducing way.”

Human No More is now available on Kickstarter.

Thanks to Asa Donald and Cultic Studios’s Cam Oral for chatting with us!

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