There is a long history of writers and artists using psychic abilities and superpowers as a metaphor for otherness, using them to show how real-world groups are often forced from public life. Luciano Dalbert’s You Are Telepaths Escaping From Town wonderfully continues this tradition in TTRPG form, dropping players into a world where they are forced to make tough decisions.
The TTRPG is set in a world where the government has suddenly decided that Telepaths are now illegal, forcing the town’s telepaths to flee as quickly as possible.
A Stressful Series Of Scenes
You Are Telepaths Escaping From Town is a GM-less narrative TTRPG for groups of players. To play, the group needs a D12 and a collection of small tokens to keep track of the character’s stress levels.
Fittingly, character creation is handled narrativly. At the start of the game, each player takes time to answer some questions and give a short narration introducing their character. This narration covers what the characters were doing (and who they were with) when they heard that telepaths had been banned and the first time someone they cared about pushed them away due to this piece of government’s overreach. Finally, the players will narrate how the group came together to start their escape and what they saw while traveling to the meetup point.
Each player also picks a psychic power for their character. This power allows the player to control a specific thing, from living beings like people or elements to concepts like temperature, sound, or light.
The game is split into distinct scenes. When a new scene begins, the player with the most stress tokens becomes the narrator. The narrator starts by rolling a D12 to work out the current state of the situation. If they roll a number higher than their amount of stress tokens, then the character’s journey is going as expected. Conversely, if the narrator rolls under their number of stress tokens, things will go terribly for the characters. Finally, if the narrator’s roll and number of stress tokens match, things are going as well as they possibly can, and the narrator gets to discard one of their stress tokens.
Once this roll is done, the narrator frames the scene, explaining the situation the telepaths find themselves in, using the previously rolled expectations as a guide. As the narrator describes the scene, players are encouraged to ask them questions, but if a question’s answer can not be determined within the scope of the current framing, the narrator once again rolls a D12 to get the answer.
A Simple D12 Dice System
While the scene is ongoing, the other players act as their characters, talking among each other and trying to guide their escape forward. However, whenever a character attempts something with an unsure outcome, they must roll a D12 to discover how the action plays out. This D12 roll functions similarly to the one the narrator makes, with rolling above the current number of stress tokens leading to a decent outcome, rolling under leading to a bad result, and a roll equal to the player’s current stress token count leading to a great outcome.
On top of this, the players can also have the option to take control of an NPC in exchange for gaining one stress token. A player can also use the psychic power they chose at the start of the game to manipulate the environment or situation to help the characters make their escape. When a player does this, they gain stress tokens depending on how much effort the manipulation takes. If the player is only slightly tweaking the target, they only take a single stress token, but if the player is totally warping the target or its function, they take three stress tokens.
When the narrator thinks the scene has come to a logical end, they may declare the scene over, and the entire process starts again, with a new player assuming the narrator’s role.
Clever Mechanics Create A Natural Flow
The stress system is the highlight of You Are Telepaths Escaping From Town. Requiring players to roll over their stress to avoid bad events gives the story a natural structure. As the game goes on, players’ stress rises, and more bad things happen, motivating players to try and escape as soon as possible.
Plus, the game is dramatically helped by the designer’s decision not to have players draw stress tokens when they fail a roll. Having a player’s stress increase only when they use their power or control an NPC adds a fun element of risk and reward to each scene while playing into the central theme of trying to shield your otherness in a world that refuses to accept it.
Linking stress to power usage also avoids situations where a player’s stress skyrockets due to a few unlucky rolls during the first few scenes, meaning that all their rolls are guaranteed to fail for most of the game.
This also plays into one of the game’s other clever flourishes. Because players only gain stress tokens when they use their telepathic abilities, having the player with the most stress become the narrator means that players who used their powers frequently (and thus had more spotlight time) in the previous few scenes are made to sit out for a while, giving other players a chance to spotlight their characters.
Making Sure Everyone Gets The Spotlight
This is doubly great for groups containing shyer players. Having the game shuffle players in and out through its mechanics avoids the awkward situation where another player calls out their lack of spotlight time and pushes them to act, making shy players feel even more self-conscious.
Finally, the game’s handling of telepathic powers is fantastic. Making each level of telepathy give different amounts of stress adds a lot of strategy to the game, as players are forced to think carefully about their actions. It also makes massive reality warps rare, which helps the game keep its emotional core. If the players could change reality on a dime, they would quickly start to feel powerful, removing the impact of failed roles and (more importantly) destroying the game’s central metaphor.
You Are Telepaths Escaping From Town is a memorable narrative TTRPG that tells a moving story about the pain of otherness and the painful decisions those in othered communities often have to make. It combines all of this with an excellent and intuitive mechanical design that means that, despite lacking a GM, the game flows quickly and naturally, making it a fun introduction for groups new to narrative games.
