Dave Ex Machina
A downloadable game
You are Dave.
You are a somewhat average human person whose interests include eating pizza, watching TV and minding your own business. Life would be fine and dandy if it wasn’t for one small thing...
Every so often someone somewhere in an alternative dimension performs a summoning ritual but, due to some arcane typo, instead of a demon they get you, Dave.
Dave Ex Machina is a short storytelling / journalling RPG about getting out of tricky situations and, of course, being Dave*.
Requires:
- 3 x regular 6-sided dice
- pen/pencil
- piece of paper
*Dave can be anyone or anything you like really; male, female, something else...
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- V2 - tiny amendmentsAug 04, 2020
Comments
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Hey i was hoping to use this game as a basis for a fictional podcast/short stories based on my playthroughs. Are you cool with that? Me using terminology and such? I have a first episode partially written up and wanted your permission. And in the credits would put like "based on my playthroughs of dave ex machina" with a url or whatever
Yep, that sounds good. Drop a link here!
awesome! Thank you!
I had a great time playing. I really like the dice rolling system in this.
Awesome, thank you for playing!
I wrote up an actual play one shot for my blog if your interested in seeing how it plays. Fun game!
https://croakerrpgcorner.blogspot.com/2023/01/dave-ex-machina-light-ridiculous.h...
Hilarious concept! Can't wait to play!
A really cool game, with a great concept! My Dave just did strange movements and dances while waiting for the cultist-people to think the vengeful spirit was gone (he was summoned to defeat an assumed ghost, even if Dave doesn't believe in ghosts). It was pretty fast and Dave was quickly able to go home to watch his favorite TV show.
That's really interesting and ridicoulous idea :) it sounds fun. And the graphic design is excellent.
this is clever, succinct, and fun, i dig it. I love the near-instant setting generation by just saying things you enjoy. the time mechanic is neat, spend more time in the other realm and go for a big cool reward but risk getting stuck there. imho the dice could be simpler by just comparing 3d6 against a success range, but making some aspect of rolling a player choice amps up the gambling element which is fun too. Great work!
Thanks for the comment! I’m happy about the things you picked up on. Whilst sort of novel I’d probably agree that the dice rolling can be a bit clunky. I was taking inspiration from ‘push your luck’ style board games and wanted to experiment with giving a player that sense of gambling, like you say.
I neglected to mention the graphic style is very cool and what drew me in the first place! The layout is well done and clean, and the icon to bring attention to gm information is especially clever and useful on a one page game
Much 💖 for this one!
I’m glad, cheers!