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Classic anime tournament story-arcs inspired this new tabletop RPG

Built on the Wanderhome engine.

An upcoming roleplaying game inspired by tournament story-arcs in anime is now available.

Called Tournament Arc, the tabletop RPG takes inspiration from a popular storyline seen in many anime series – and some western cartoons as well, such as The Legend Korra – in which a group of heroes enter into a competition that sees that competing against other teams. Tournament arcs are usually found in anime series centered around sport or competitions, such as Haiykuu!! or Yuri on Ice, but can also be unique storylines that appear in various other shows.

In Tournament Arc, players become members of a team that find themselves embarking on a journey together, whether in a sport or some form of professional competition. The players can create their team and experience stories within any number of anime-inspired worlds, from a high school setting to a cyberpunk dystopia. Players will have six playbooks – or character archetypes – to choose from, each with their own unique set of moves and motivations.

Tournament Arc TRPG artwork 2

As a rules-light roleplaying game, Tournament Arc is more focused on enabling players to engage in collaborative storytelling than providing a robust gameplay system. The tabletop RPG uses the Belonging Outside Belonging gameplay engine, which is also the basis for other roleplaying games like Dream Askew and Wanderhome. The Belonging Outside Belonging system does not feature a game master role, instead, players work together to tell the story – taking control of different non-player characters and helping to collectively drive the plot.

A campaign of Tournament Arc can take place over a series of seasons, made up of a total of 26 ‘episodes’ that are split between ones focused on the tournament itself, and others concerned with the characters’ lives outside of the competition.

Watch on YouTube

Tournament Arc is a tabletop roleplaying game that was created and is set to be published by Biscuit Fund Games – which was co-founded by Chloe Montgomery and Alyssa Ridley – a studio that has previously released TRPGs such as Goblin Country and a skirmish wargame called Skirmish: Wallet Friendly Wargaming. The artwork for Tournament Arc was created by Kaylee Rowena, Pseudonym Jones and Valentine de la Rosa.

A free-to-download digital PDF quick-start version of Tournament Arc is available from Itch.io, with a full PDF and physical hardback version of the TRPG set to be released sometime soon.

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Alex Meehan avatar
Alex Meehan: After writing for Kotaku UK, Waypoint and Official Xbox Magazine, Alex became a member of the Dicebreaker editorial family. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS. Besides writing, Alex appears in Dicebreaker’s D&D actual play series Storybreakers and haunts the occasional stream on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel.
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Tournament Arc

Tabletop Game

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