How I Design Micro-RPGs

I’ve been designing a lot of small RPGs.

Some of them start as palate cleansers between bigger projects. Some of them come out of a single idea I can’t shake. Most of them exist because I wanted to make something that would actually get finished and actually get played. Over time, a pattern emerged: eight “pages” kept showing up, whether I planned for it or not. I put “pages” in quotes, because when designing, I always plan for eight major beats that are concieved of as a page, that usually turn into two, but from here on out, we’ll refer to it as eight pages.

Eight pages doesn’t give you room to hide. You can’t lean on extensive setting lore, sprawling subsystems, or pages of optional rules to prop up a weak idea. Every word has to earn its place. Every mechanic has to point toward play. If the game works, it works because the core is solid, not because it’s buried under explanation.

This post isn’t a manifesto, and it’s not a claim that eight pages is the “right” way to design games. It’s a look at how that constraint shapes my design process, what it forces me to prioritize, and why it keeps me excited about making RPGs at a time when it would be very easy to stop finishing things altogether.

If you’ve ever had a game idea stall out somewhere between inspiration and completion, this limit might be worth your attention.

Why Micro-RPGs, Specifically

Eight pages is not a magic number, but it is a useful one.

It’s short enough that I can finish a game without losing momentum, and long enough that the game can stand on its own without feeling like a sketch. I can print it, staple it, hand it to someone at a table, and trust that it contains everything they need to play. That physical reality matters more than it sounds.

The page limit forces hard decisions. There is no room to explain myself twice. There is no space to hedge. If a rule does not actively support play, it does not survive the draft. Lore has to earn its keep. Mechanics have to justify their existence.

Eight pages also keeps the entire game in my head while I’m working on it. I can see the beginning, the middle, and the end at once. That makes it much easier to spot contradictions, dead weight, and ideas that don’t actually connect to the experience I’m aiming for.

Most importantly, eight pages makes finishing the goal. I’ve designed larger games. I’ll design larger games again. But small games are how I keep designing at all.

Start With A Feeling, Not a System

I don’t begin with mechanics.

Every 8-page RPG I design starts with a feeling I want the table to sit in for a few hours. Dread. Longing. Rivalry. Weariness. Wonder. Sometimes something stranger, like obligation or quiet defiance. The feeling comes first, and everything else exists to serve it.

If I start with a system, I end up designing around the system’s assumptions. If I start with a feeling, the mechanics have to bend to it. That usually means fewer rules, but sharper ones: A single die roll that always hurts, a resource that only ever goes down, a choice that looks harmless until it isn’t.

I’m not trying to model reality. I’m trying to apply pressure. Good small-game mechanics don’t explain the world; they push players toward specific decisions and then let them live with the consequences.

When I’m cutting rules, and I’m always cutting rules, the question is simple: does this make the table feel more like the game I’m trying to create? If the answer is no, it goes, no matter how clever it is.

Page One Has One Job

The first page of a micro-RPG has exactly one responsibility: it must make the reader want to play.

That page needs to answer a few questions quickly and clearly. Who are the players in this game? What do they do at the table? Why is this situation interesting right now? How long is this game meant to last? If any of those are unclear, the reader hesitates, and hesitation is deadly in a small game.

I don’t worry about being exhaustive on page one. I worry about being honest. This is not where I sell the game as something it isn’t. This is where I tell the reader what kind of experience they’re agreeing to sit down with.

If someone reads the first page and decides the game isn’t for them, that’s a success. It means the game did its job. The worst outcome is a player sitting down expecting one kind of experience and discovering too late that the game was never interested in that.

In a longer book, you can warm the reader up. Here, you don’t have that luxury. Page one either opens the door or it doesn’t.

It’s Not Eight Pages. It’s Eight Ideas.

When I say I’m designing  8-page RPGs, I’m not actually thinking in pages while I’m working. I’m thinking in ideas.

Eight pages works because it naturally limits how many distinct things the game can care about. In practice, that usually shakes out to around eight core ideas: what the game is about, how players act, how uncertainty is resolved, what characters risk, how the situation escalates, how sessions begin, how they end, and what changes along the way.

Each of those ideas often wants more than a single page. A core mechanic might need examples. Character creation might sprawl once you account for playbooks, prompts, or shared setup. A session structure might take a full spread to explain cleanly. When that happens, the game grows, but it grows in service of the same limited set of concerns.

These eight ideas don’t always appear in the same order, but they’re always there.

1. The Premise
Who the players are, where they are, and why this moment matters. This isn’t lore; it’s orientation. In The Gospel of Salt and Smoke (coming soon), it’s the isolation and religious dread of a drifting monastery. In Pythian Whispers (coming soon), it’s the weight of prophecy and public expectation. The premise tells players what kind of story they’re stepping into and what emotional register to play in.

2. What Players Do at the Table
This is the game loop. Are players investigating, confessing, competing, enduring, interpreting signs? This section defines the verbs of play. If the verbs aren’t clear, the game stalls. Small games live or die on whether players know what they’re supposed to be doing minute to minute.

3. The Core Resolution Mechanic
One way to answer uncertainty. One roll, one draw, one comparison, or one choice. In your designs, this is often tied directly to cost rather than success. The mechanic exists to apply pressure, not to simulate reality. Everything else leans on this.

4. Characters and Roles
Who you are in relation to the premise. This might be playbooks, roles aboard a ship, positions within an institution, or shared identity with meaningful distinctions. Character creation is quick, but loaded. Each choice tells the player how they’re allowed to matter.

5. Resources, Risk, and Pressure
What can be lost, spent, or exhausted. This is where tension lives. Faith, reputation, health, safety, trust, time, whatever the game is about, something must erode. In your games, resources rarely refresh cleanly. Loss is usually permanent or at least meaningful.

6. Session Structure and Escalation
How the game moves forward. What changes from scene to scene. How pressure increases, options narrow, or consequences compound. This is often where your games expand past eight pages, because escalation benefits from examples and pacing guidance.

7. How the Game Starts
The opening situation, first question, or first shared decision. This section prevents the table from stalling. Players should be able to begin play immediately, without prep or hesitation.

8. How the Game Ends (or Doesn’t)
Endings matter, especially in small games. Whether the game concludes with doom, revelation, survival, or quiet continuation, this section tells the table when to stop and what stopping means. Even games designed for ongoing play need a sense of resolution.

When I say I design 8-page RPGs, this is what I mean. Eight ideas. Eight pressures. Eight answers to the questions a table will ask once the dice hit the table.

The page count is flexible. The structure is not.

One Core Resolution Mechanic Is Enough

A micro-RPG can only support one real way of resolving uncertainty. Everything else is decoration.

That doesn’t mean the mechanic has to be boring. It means it has to be honest. One roll. One comparison. One clear understanding of what success and failure mean in this game. Once players grasp that, the rest of the rules should feel like natural extensions of the same idea, not exceptions.

If I find myself adding a second resolution system, it’s usually a sign that I haven’t committed hard enough to the first one. Instead of clarifying the experience, I’m trying to patch it. Small games don’t survive patchwork design.

Variants are fine if they twist the same core rule. Changing what’s at stake, changing when you roll, or changing what failure costs can all deepen play without adding complexity. What doesn’t work is asking the table to learn a new mental model halfway through the book.

If a rule needs a table to explain it, I stop and ask why. Tables take up space, but more importantly, they slow understanding. In a short game, speed of comprehension is part of the design.

Characters Must Fit the Game and the Page

Character creation in an micro-RPG should be fast enough that it doesn’t feel like a separate activity. Ten minutes is the upper limit. Less is better.

This is where the page constraint does some of its best work. When you don’t have room for long lists or detailed builds, every choice becomes more meaningful. A short list of traits tells the player what kinds of people matter in this game. A single starting resource tells them what the game expects them to risk.

If advancement exists at all, it has to change how the game feels, not just adjust numbers. Gaining a new permission, losing a safety net, or being forced into harder choices is far more interesting than a modest numerical improvement. In a small game, progression is about transformation, not optimization.

Character sheets are teaching tools. If a player can understand the game just by looking at their sheet, the design is doing its job. If they need to keep flipping back through the book, something has gone wrong.

Design for the Physical Object, Not Just the PDF

Even when a game isn’t eight pages, it’s always a multiple of four.

That’s not an aesthetic choice. It’s a practical one. Four pages is the smallest unit that can be folded and stapled into a booklet. Eight pages, twelve pages, sixteen pages—those numbers mean the game can be printed at a place like Staples, folded by hand, and put on a table without special equipment or planning.

Designing with booklet printing in mind changes how I think about layout and flow. Page turns matter. Where the staples land matters. The center spread matters. The game becomes an object someone can hold, mark up, and share, not just a file sitting in a downloads folder.

This also keeps my ambitions honest. If an idea can’t justify the space it takes up, it doesn’t get the space. If a game grows beyond eight pages, it grows in clean increments, with each added spread earning its place.

I like games that want to be played where people already are: kitchen tables, work lunchrooms, convention halls, library rooms. Designing for easy printing is part of designing for actual play.

Why This Limit Keeps Me Designing

Micro-RPGs keep me honest.

It lowers the cost of starting. It lowers the fear of failure. If a game doesn’t work, I learn something and move on without months of sunk effort weighing on me. That freedom makes experimentation possible.

It also keeps my focus on play rather than perfection. Small games want to be tested, not endlessly polished. They improve through contact with the table, not through another week of rewriting a paragraph no one will notice during play.

Most importantly, this limit keeps me finishing things. In a hobby full of half-written rulebooks and abandoned drafts, finishing is a skill. This lets me practice that skill over and over again.

I don’t design this way because it’s minimal. I design this way because it’s sustainable. It lets me keep making games, keep learning, and keep putting things into the world that someone might actually sit down and play.

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Sometimes a game stays small. Sometimes it grows into twelve or sixteen pages because an idea needs room. But even then, I’m still designing within the same boundaries, still asking the same questions, still trying to make something that can be printed, shared, and played without ceremony.

If you’re stuck on a game that won’t quite come together, try shrinking the problem. Decide what the game actually cares about. Decide how many ideas it can afford. Let the rest go.

You don’t need a hundred pages to make something worth playing. You need enough clarity that a group can sit down, understand what’s being asked of them, and begin.

Everything else is optional.