[Note: We presented the original version of Misspent Youth in the February 2015 IGDN Bundle. This is the current version 1.2. The changes are small editing tweaks, and five new worlds are added to the core text. The rules are unchanged.]
Misspent Youth is about friendship, standing up to bullies, and changing the world. One player plays The Authority, the force making the world a shitty place to live. The others all play Youthful Offenders (YOs), the only ones who can redeem the future from this pack of assholes. You create the evil Authority as a group, then you create your characters together.
Each episode has a seven-scene structure which, in every complete session, gives you a story with a beginning, middle, and end. At the start of each episode, you ask questions about the friendship between the characters, then you make up villains for The Authority to employ. In each scene there is a Struggle, where you attempt to achieve your group's hope without letting The Authority get its objective. As you throw dice in a craps-like system, you can win it all or lose everything. But not to worry – if you roll a loss, you can sell out one of your convictions! You describe doing something so vile, heinous, and Authority-like that your friends are horrified. You win it for your side, but now you're permanently more like The Authority. Once the first YO has sold out every conviction, that's the last episode of the series.
In each episode, you have the chance to change the world to make it a better place to live. If the last episode of the series ends and you haven't changed the world enough, a catastrophe comes to pass, and it's your clique's fault for failing to stop it. But if you beat The Authority, you can fix the world.
Spread the word!
RESIST