Good question! Teens with Attitude is a tabletop roleplaying game that lets you create collaborative stories about a team of superpowered 90s teens. Think Animorphs, Power Rangers, or Captain Planet.

If you're looking for a deeper dive into what the game is all about, then look no further. Here's everything you need to know:

It’s a Tabletop Roleplaying Game

That means it’s a set of rules you can use to tell original, collaborative stories. You might be familiar with the classic tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons. You get together with some friends – usually around a table – and everyone plays a character in an imagined world. In Teens with Attitude, you take on the role of a superpowered teen. You say what your Teen says & does in the game world. Sometimes the rules kick in to tell you what happens next – often by rolling dice.

Think of it like watching your favorite TV show – only instead of just watching, you also get to write & star in it. In Teens with Attitude, the show is a rad 90s action series that never was. 

It’s About 90s Teens Balancing Heroism & Drama

In Teens with Attitude, you & your friends play a group of teenagers, circa 1993. You live in a small city somewhere in North America, and you deal with the normal drama that teens do on shows like Saved by the Bell or Beverly Hills 90210 – school, relationships, parents, etc. BUT you also have a huge secret – you're the only ones on earth with the superhuman powers needed to protect the world from evil.

The game is all about action-packed fights against outrageous enemies, doing cool & impossible things to defend the earth, dealing with high school life, and exploring friendships & relationships.

It’s Powered by the Apocalypse

That means it’s heavily influenced by a 2010 tabletop RPG called Apocalypse World, and by a whole slew of RPGs based on it. So far, the biggest influences on Teens with Attitude are the PbtA games Masks, Monsterhearts, Monster of the Week, and World Wide Wrestling. My previous game, Hogwarts: An RPG, was Powered by the Apocalypse.

Games using the Apocalypse Engine are about storytelling, character interaction, and improvisation. They’re about playing to find out what happens rather than going through a preplanned story.

It Gives You Everything You Need to Create Your Own Rad 90s Action Show

The game’s rules are simple. All the basics can be explained in under 15 minutes, and everything you need to play is written on a handful of sheets that you always have in front of you. Most of the rules are formatted as moves – little bits of text that tell you what happens when someone says or does something that changes the story in an important way.

The game features 6 Teen playbooks that let you create & play a classic 90s teen archetype: The Brainiac, The Jock, The Outcast, The Popular Kid, The Rebel, and The Slacker. Each playbook has its own options for characteristics, abilities, & problems – so you can do awesome stuff and create a cool narrative for your Teen.

There are also 3 Team playbooks that cover your group’s backstory & themed powers: The Biomorphers, The Elementeers, and The Mecha Rangers. Each Team playbook gives your group’s story its own flavor & cool ways of doing stuff.

Finally, there’s a playbook with all the rules & tools you need to be the Producer, this game’s version of a gamemaster. The Producer describes the game world and plays everyone who’s not a Teen. The Producer playbook includes resources to help you structure episodes of the game, make the game’s villains, and come up with interesting people & places.

It’s All About Attitude

One of the game’s most important rules is the Attitude system. It’s Teens with Attitude, after all! Attitude is a resource that Teens build up as they experience complications in their lives. They can then spend it to do awesome stuff.

It’ll Be Released in Stages

Right now, Teens with Attitude is in beta. It’s playable and includes all the game sheets you need to play. However, you might need some prior experience with RPGs or Powered by the Apocalypse games to run it. The rules & design are subject to change as the game undergoes playtesting.

The next release will be the ashcan. This will be a full digital game book. It’ll go over how to play the game in depth and provide lots of resources for running a great game. You should be able to read the ashcan book and play the game regardless of your experience level. This still counts as a development stage – playtesting & design changes will continue.

Finally, we’ll get to a finished game book. This will be the full release version of Teens with Attitude, with all the final rules, book text, game sheets, and art. It’ll also include some special new stuff that I’ll be developing during the ashcan phase, like additional playbooks. This will be released both digitally and as a physical print book!

Note that from the beta onward, the game will be available as a free, continuously updated quickstart edition.

If All That Sounds Cool to You...

Then give the game a download, and, if you like what you see, a review! It's completely free, but tips to support ongoing development are always greatly appreciated. If you want even more – like early access to future versions of the game, behind-the-scenes updates on its development, and access to exclusive playtests – consider joining my Patreon!