
In XXXXtreme Street Luge, a little indie RPG tossed off by Ben Lehman (designer of Polaris, an excellent RPG but one you have to pay for), you are not just a street luger, but an XXXXtreme street luger, performing risky and impressive cinematic stunts in this fast-growing competitive sport that some have likened to parkour in its beauty and imaginative use of the urban environment. A detailed simulation of...
Well, no, not really. Only about the first half of that paragraph is true.
In XXXXtreme Street Luge you play an ill-educated suburban geek who participates in this imaginary sport, but the actual roleplay centers around bullshitting about your accomplishments. Everyone starts with one fan (their Mom), and can rise as high as 14 fans (no equipment endorsements in the offing, I guess, nor is ESPN 2 going to pick up on the sport any time soon). Vin Diesel is everyone's idol, and your character's stats are rated on the basis of how close the character comes to Vin Diesel's, that epitome of manly perfection. (It's not clear whether there are any chick XXXXtreme street lugers, but if so, I guess they compare themselves to Vin Diesel, too.)
Unlike most RPGs, there's actually a victory condition -- each player chooses three things his character wants to accomplish (like, get into community college, find a girlfriend, and move out of Mom's house), and between bullshitting about luge events with your buddies, you can try to accomplish these things. If someone does, he wins.
Cute, short, and worth a read -- though maybe not playing. The PDF layout is a little funky, though -- it's designed for two-sided photocopying, and folding and stapling into a little booklet, so reading it on screen is a bit like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.















