New Ulm, MN

THE GAME

In New Ulm, players take on the role of small town dissidents in the Bavarian-themed city of New Ulm, MN, in the year 2081. Why New Ulm, MN? Partially, I’ve just grown tired of the urban sprawl cyberpunk story, and while I get the existential crisis that is meant to evoke, I didn’t have any interesting ideas to add to that conversation. Instead, I wanted to continue exploring some of the ideas I put forward in my first jam game, Walpurgisnacht, which takes a band of outcasts out to stop the end of the world in three days. New Ulm translates that problem into the near future, pitting the dissidents against small town culture dead-set on returning to an imagined former glory.

The game is built to refine the contours of low level D&D and build up from that experience – players will spend more time bemoaning their mundane equipment than their cybernetic warblade, and never having quite enough time or money to do everything they want to do. You can have cybernetic warblades, but expect them to be more expensive and fragile than you might be used to in an RPG. In New Ulm, even in the future, don’t be surprised to find yourself fighting off your enemies with a pitchfork.