A downloadable We Used To Be Friends

Buy Now$25.00 USD or more

We Used to Be Friends is a collaborative teenage detective drama game. As a group, you’ll create your teenagers, the city they live in, and a season-long mystery that ties them all together. 

Choose one of the nine yearbook profiles to make your character:

  • The Hardboiled who can find clues and make the hard decisions
  • The Sidekick who helps friends and manipulates relationships
  • The Delinquent whose self-destructive tendencies can get clues at great personal cost
  • The Socialite who has the connections to make things happens and plays on emotion
  • The Tech Geek who uses their knowledge of technology to get favours and information
  • The Libertine who is here to make sure that a good time is had by ... them
  • The Plotter who wants to find out secrets and profit from them
  • The Ingenue who puts themselves in dangerous situations but can rely on their friends to get them out.

We Used to Be Friends involves a series of interwoven mysteries. The top level is the season mystery which impacts every player at the table and when you solve it you know that your campaign is done. Then mostly every player has their own personal mystery that they can choose to investigate to find out more things about them and their family. Finally, there is the episode mystery which is the mystery "du jour" which you will solve to end your current session of play.

We Used to Be Friends doesn't need anyone to plan. Every player can investigate and gather clues. Every player can take those clues and make them part of a mystery. Eventually you "solve" the mystery when there are enough clues placed on a suspect. But nothing is ever easy and there are always questions at the end of every mystery. There's even a fantastic Clue Chart designed by Tim Paul Groth to help you generate ideas for clues without telling you exactly what the clue is.

We Used to Be Friends is a teenage drama game. Fall in and out of love. Get in fights with your parents. Throw parties! Worry about exams! Tell each other deep dark secrets, and fight over feelings. This is a huge part of the conflict, and fun, of the game.

Listen to Some Place to Be, which is a current ongoing AP using We Used To Be Friends!

Some Place to Be RSS Feed

Some Place to Be Website

You can listen to some Actual Plays by checking out the links below:

Party of One Podcast

Openly Gamer Theatre - Fire at Twin Falls

Game Play Radio - Stand Alone Episode

Game Play Radio - One Peak Mystery - Part 1

Game Play Radio - One Peak Mystery - Part 2

Game Play Radio - One Peak Mystery - Part 3

Game Play Radio - One Peak Mystery - Finale

Add-ons

Here's the Google Sheets Character Keeper originally designed by Clint Smith.

Google Sheets Character Keeper - V5

Current Writing Credits

Written by Jonathan Lavallee

Clue Chart Designed and Written by Tim Paul Groth 

Layout by Jonathan Lavallee

StatusReleased
CategoryPhysical game
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
AuthorFirestorm Ink
GenreRole Playing
Tagscollaborative, Detective, drama, Mystery, PbtA, Tabletop role-playing game

Purchase

Buy Now$25.00 USD or more

In order to download this We Used To Be Friends you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $25 USD. You will get access to the following files:

WUTBF-Screen-1up.pdf 66 MB
WeUsedToBeFriends01-print.pdf 49 MB
WeUsedToBeFriends01-screen.pdf 2.5 MB
WeUsedToBeFriends01-print-1up.pdf 13 MB
Character Sheets.pdf 2.7 MB

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

This game is great. Well written, evocative, and capable of generating really interesting character dynamics and interactions. The layout is great, fun, and adds to the atmosphere of the game as a whole. Love it!

I downloaded the Ashcan version years ago and nearly forgot about it as it didn't feel complete to me.  Would you mind providing a high level summary of the improvements since the 2019 draft?

(+1)

Sure! I got that covered in the first Devlog.

https://firestormink.itch.io/we-used-to-be-friends-full/devlog/389592/full-game-is-mostly-available

Let me know if you have other questions about it.

I was thinking there would be more detail considering the years between the releases.  I felt like the ashcan version didn't really fit my needs but I'm still not sure what changed since then.  For example, is there any change to how a mystery is built?

If the ashcan didn't fit your needs then the full version probably won't either.

How you build the mystery is something that hasn't changed between versions. The biggest addition to that was the TPG Clue Chart where it can help you create clues that don't necessarily make sense out the gate but can be interesting as you play.

There's an essay on ACAB. There's suggestions on how to play collaboratively better with some tools and conversations... it's got a better section on RPG safety and we added another layer of mystery but if how the mysteries were created weren't your jam then this probably won't be either. 

Maybe it was connecting the clues with the mystery that I wasn't clear on.  I'll have to take another look at the ashcan version.  Thanks for the quick feedback!

No worries. Also direct questions are easier to answer. ^_^ 

This is something we did clean up from the Ashcan but it wasn't a wholesale change so that's why I didn't think to include it.

When you place clues to the mystery there is a move for that and it's a basic move called Putting It All Together.

What I did was clean up the language on what happens when you get a 7-9 or a 6-. Before the language only made sense if you had a GM where now we talk about how the other people put it on a suspect that will impact the character the most. 

I'm excited to read this!

Let me know what you think!