(Header image is a pond on the smallest inhabited island in the Netherlands, taken by Zee, one of my players)

Big Dog, Big Volcano is capital “R” Rest. I played six different rpgs in seven days, which I think is maybe too many. By Saturday morning I was burnt out and looking down the barrel of my last session with no energy and 15 minutes to prep. It was in that moment that I became immensely grateful for Kurt Refling and A Smouldering Lighthouse for writing this beautiful game.

Mechanics

This game is easy, maybe the easiest game I have ever played. In a nutshell, you roll a d6, add it to cumulative total, then answer a prompt based on your character: the dog,¹ the hiker or the volcano. Once the total is high enough, the game ends.

That’s it. It’s just answering questions about a hiker, their dog, and a volcano about to erupt. This is the rpg equivalent of stopping to smell the roses. It’s a chance to still spend time with your favorite rpg friends, doing the hobby all of you love, but there is no undue load or stress placed on any one person.

The game is also short. We spent maybe 2.5 hours in the session, but likely an hour of that was just chatting about things going on in our lives and our favorite tupperware. We also pushed the game a bit and included little roleplaying scenes based on several of the prompts, deepening the immersion in the game. Played at face value, this could easily be played in an hour.

GMless and Solo Potential

I am still not convinced that GMless games are necessarily easier than GM’ed games, or that they always result in equally shared loads. I am sure given enough time and experience, all GMless games can reach this point, but for anything with even semi-complicated rules, the owner of the game is likely to take on more responsibilities than the rest. With Big Dog, Big Volcano, the game is so focused and the mechanics are so simple, that it really is pick up and play, no prep, no gming, extremely equitable in the shared experience.

The prompt based gameplay allows for what I imagine would be a quite meditative solo gaming experience, transporting yourself to a sunny Hawaiian island on an otherwise gloomy day in your real life.

Recommendation

I think, given everything stated above, this may be one of the best games to introduce new, hesitant players to roleplaying. It joins my other first-time MVPs: The Quiet Year and For The Queen. These games are all prompt-based which gives new players something very tangible to hang their hat on, and the brevity of Big Dog, Big Volcano makes it extra accessible.

The game is $2 USD on itch, it takes an hour to play, and no one needs to have played an rpg before to enjoy it to the fullest. It is a no brainer. Buy Big Dog, Big Volcano right now, and bring it to your next social event.

Soap Box

For me, this game embodies the most beautiful part of the roleplaying community: effort in service to the things we love. This game is worth more than its price tag. The art is charming, the layout is nice, and the game is fun. That said, even if Kurt makes an accounting profit, it’s unlikely he will make an economic profit on it.²

An accounting profit would mean Kurt’s total revenue would be greater than total costs. I suspect plenty of rpgs do not make an accounting profit. Economic profit calculations factor in the opportunity cost, essentially the cost of Kurt spending his time doing this that he could be doing something else, effectively the cost of his time. Almost certainly he could have made more money by just picking up more hours at his day job or doing some contracting on the side. The share of total RPGs that make economic profit must be extremely low.

Grant Howitt is on record saying, “There are much easier ways to make money than publishing RPG’s.” ³ I don’t think anyone designing games and adventures is doing it to get rich, and yet they continue, for the love of the game, for the love of the hobby. And we are all blessed by the fruits of their labors. A Smouldering Lighthouse is one of hundreds of tiny RPG publishing operations making games that you likely will never see.

So when you come across these gems, thank the creators in any way you can. Monetary support is certainly is obviously valuable, but I know that for many creators, they just want to see that their game is out in the world, being played by real people. So leave reviews, send them your stories, thank them for their work, and tell all your friends. Create a new golden thread across this niche community’s tapestry.

Acknowledgements

Big Dog, Big Volcano can be found here.

Thanks again to Kurt for making the exact game I needed. Thanks to Zee and Chun for sharing such an enjoyable morning with me. I hope that we all can find some rest this week.

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1. It is codified in the rules that no harm will come to the dog. Yay. ↩︎
2. I don’t know the numbers for this game, but Kurt did a very insightful writeup of his revenue and costs this year including a successful crowdfunder for another very cool game: Sock Puppets ↩︎
3. From an episode of one of my favorite podcasts: Talk of the Table ↩︎