Tough Choices

Tough Choices is a roleplaying game about making hard decisions in a gritty world where moral ambiguity reigns supreme. Play a character to explore competing goals and multiple avenues for growth and discovery — or take on the role of Story Guide to watch characters deliberate over the options in front of them. Everyone together cooperates to build a setting filled with layered conflicts and complex goals.

These are some key aspects of Tough Choices:

• Decisions in every roll: Players must arrange their dice results among several Outcome cards which often forces them to weigh competing values, such as justice vs. mercy, loyalty vs. betrayal, and the greater good vs. personal gain.
• Character-Driven Gameplay: Character objectives add personal stakes to every choice they make.  Episode and Arc objectives are negotiated with the Story Guide based on what the players are interested in.
• Collaborative and Competitive Elements: While teamwork is essential for survival, conflicting personal goals and hidden agendas may strain alliances and create tension. Do you help your teammates overcome the Opposition, or do you take the opportunity to finally get the revenge you've been working toward for so long? 
• Impactful Outcomes: Decisions influence not just the immediate situation, but the unfolding narrative, relationships, and the world itself.

Tough Choices is suited for games where:

• The setting is full of moral grey areas with no easy answers
• The characters are easily pulled in multiple directions
• The players are interested in building the setting together and create challenges for themselves
• The tone is somberly heroic, shadowed, and conflicted

Tough Choices is NOT well-suited for games where:

• The characters are united in a common goal
• The good guys and bad guys are easily spotted and follow common expectations

The design goal of this game is to present characters with many compelling options that pull them in different directions, and to support the joy of learning how to take control of your own destiny.  Tough Choices is inspired by Meguey & Vincent Baker’s Otherkind Dice as well as Lady Blackbird by John Harper.  Lady Blackbird is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/