Tourist Hole

A game of roadside attractions and existential spookies

You've seen signs for it, littering the desert vista for hours. "NO SCIENTIST. NO PHILOSOPHER. DARES EXPLAIN. THE MYSTERIOUS QUESTION POINT." Letters painted so boldly they seem to shout over the lull of oldies drifting through the car radio. No other explanation follows, other than a countdown of miles as you approach Exit 276. 

You've seen people lose their senses, lose their wallets, lose their ways in places like this. And you're beginning to wonder if they're all connected.

That girl in the "I Screeeaaaam for Ice Cream" t-shirt and dollar-store flip flops. That fella in a puffy jacket and rainbow Chucks. Why do you see them in every one of these spots? Maybe they're not just riding along this highway at your exact pace.

Maybe they're part of it. 

Hell, maybe you'll be part of it too, soon.

The thing beneath all of these places.

The Tourist Hole

In Tourist Hole, you imagine yourselves as tourists, lured in by brochure copy and audacious billboards to the surreal mindflays of American roadside attractions.

Describe the strange things you find as you venture off the highway ... Each discovery gives you an opportunity to grasp, to bend, to break the hold of the attraction. To buy your ticket to freedom.

But each attraction is – indeed – the tendril of an eldritch fly trap, a feeder for some big soul-consuming void under all of us. As some tourists precariously hop from stop to stop, others will become new novelties within the Tourist Hole.

The game progresses as surviving tourists build up little menageries of souvenirs and scars, while the doomed ones draft their final postcards home and invent new tourists traveling these cursed highways.

The Mechanics

Tourist Hole uses bar-dice mechanics with story telling prompts and is played in 45-minute rounds. Play one round and call it a day. Play one more round, and then another, and then another, and call it a night. Can be played with one-to-many players, in bar mode (full game), or in car mode (stripped back dice mechanics for playing on the go).

An Anytime Anywhere ttrpg from Mike Martens

Hello Traveler,

I made Tourist Hole to fill uncertain voids of playtime with incongruent groups ... the random "let's play a game" windows in road trips and happenstance gatherings. 

Tourist Hole can tell its story within 45 minutes, or it can fill an entire evening of calls for "one more round." Start when you want, stop when you want. A complete experience all the time.

Tourist Hole opens its doors to anyone. It has mechanical gaminess, it has narrative introspection. It'll engage the people who love each of those things, but it doesn't require you to be steeped in either.

I think of it as the roleplaying equivalent of a party game. I think of it as a "shape of water" game. I think you'll love having it in your atlas of weird destinations.

Wish you were here,

Mike

NOTHING IS WRONG HERE. THANK YOU, CITIZEN.