A downloadable game

Buy Now$7.00 USD or more

Are you a hairless ape that knows 2-4 other hairless apes? 

Do you know at least 30-ish words in your primary language? 

Do you like throwing shiny, polyhedral stones around and grunting in approval at the symbols that end up on top? 

Then congratulations, you’re ready to be a cave dweller!

Before Fire is a comedy RPG designed for "pick up and play" one-shots. During a session, you and your friends take on the roles of Stone Age hunter-gatherers, sent on a great quest to save your tribe. Using your limited vocabulary and teamwork, you must triumph over such terrifying challenges as sabretooth tigers, stampeding herds of megafauna, and the 100% historically-accurate dinosaur riders.

Most of the comedy and the challenge of the game comes from roleplaying like a cave dweller. In Before Fire, the number of words in your cave dweller's vocabulary is super limited. In most RPGs, that would be only a minor challenge, because most of your dialogue is narration (e.g. "I run up to the wolf and hit it with my axe!"), but in Before Fire, your narration is also limited to the words you know (e.g. "Me smash woof-woof!").

Not sure you get it? Maybe the humor isn't for you? You can watch a live playtest right on Twitch, and decide for yourself if all this really does look like a good time.

Just as important as the laughs is that Before Fire is quick and easy to play. A comedy, one-shot RPG should be the kind of thing a GM can pull out of their back pocket when your normal plans are shot. The giant fight versus the BBEG is imminent, but Sandy has to miss the game because their kid is sick? No problem, character creation and the rules are dead simple, and the session itself is all handled by a zero-prep, fill-in-the-blank style Adventure Generator.


One of the best parts of Before Fire is the character sheet and how it plays into every facet of the game. The basic idea is that you know every word written or printed on your character sheet, and only those words. You can say "Me smash," because "me" and "smash" are printed on the character sheet. When you get a spear in character creation and write "spear" down on your character sheet, that means you know that word. Even your character name is just a two-word combo (e.g. "Big Bear" or "Stinky Plant") that helps expand your vocabulary. Even though you'll get a few discretionary free words, you mostly have a shared vocabulary with your cave dwelling buddies.

Purchase

Buy Now$7.00 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $7 USD. You will get access to the following files:

Before Fire (Digital) 5 MB
Before Fire (Print Your Own) 4 MB
Before Fire Character Sheet 263 kB
Before Fire Dog Character Sheet 200 kB

Comments

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(1 edit)

I’ve read and really enjoyed the rulebook! You’ve created quite a nice comedy RPG. I’ve also watched the beginning of the AP video, and it looks like a lot of fun.

There’s a thing that puzzles me, though: there’s no reference to “Og” or “Land of Og” roleplaying games, which share a lot with your gaming concept: comedy, stone-age, limited vocabulary.
I’m not accusing you of plagiarism, but I was wondering if you were aware of this (old, old, old) game, and if it was a source of inspiration in any way. (Still, I’ve been delighted to see how you’ve integrated the limited vocabulary in the game, from the character creation to the adventure hooks, very well done!)

Can’t wait to find some time to play “Before Fire”

(+1)

Real glad you're enjoying it so far, Bruno. Can't wait to hear how it played for you.

As for similarity to Land of Og, this is just one of those cases of convergent evolution. I actually only heard about Land of Og for the first time when someone mentioned the similarity during the Kickstarter, and I went out and grabbed a copy on DTRPG afterwards. 

Believe it or not, Before Fire actually started off as a much more serious game based on the Savage Worlds system, with the idea being that you would slowly build a civilization from the Stone Age through the Iron Age. In working on the Stone Age portion, the game just seemed so absurd at that stage that I felt it was better to just lean into the comedy. It slowly evolved from there with the limited vocabulary mechanic actually being one of the last I tried (it originally started as a gimmick for an initiative system based on Blindman's Bluff with lots of grunting involved).

All that said, credit where it's due, Land of Og was definitely the first to land on this idea. If someone is looking for a crunchier game of Stone Age comedy than this, that'd be my first recommendation.

(+1)

thank you for the response! I guess that “great minds think alike”. Your game has a more “modern touch”, so it’s definitely worth the interest!