Hellball

From AdamWiki

Hellball is a tabletop role-playing game for 4-7 players. One plays The Devil (GM). One plays the Coach, a sort of mentor character and helper GM. The rest play athletes who are pro football players who must beat The Devil at his own game to save the world from the Apocalypse. The Devil's game, in this case, is "hellball," a game like football but with very few rules, played against actual demons in Hell. Between games, The Devil tries to ruin your life as you struggle to keep things together with your family and friends. Can you be a monster on the field without becoming a monster back home?

Playing Hellball combines opportunities for Narrativist-style role-playing with a little tactical miniatures game for playing "hellball" against demons.

• Download Hellball (PDF)
• Read my blog entries about the design process for the game
• Read what I liked best about the rules and discuss the game with me and others

I wrote Hellball as an entry in the Iron MACE Game Chef competition in November 2006. I had two weeks to write a game based on some pre-selected criteria and following some really funky rules. More details are in the PDF itself.

Hellball won the contest, though I had no real competition. Six or so people registered for the event and most of them did not submit a game. Of the two others who did submit games, one did not have time to finish due to RL constraints and the other was disqualified for submitting work product done years ago. Nonetheless, I won some gaming loot and I am pretty happy with the way the game turned out.