Future Thieves

Plato and Aristotle discuss if our purpose is revealed in the heavens or on earth, from The School of Athens by Raphael (1511)

Future Thieves

Steve Dee


You can download Future Thieves HERE

My advice to all people trying to get started in RPG design is to start small. And keep coming back to small. RPGs can be giant hardcover books but you can also do a huge amount with a few tiny touches. All the games in this series were produced in one hour flat, using the GAMES system. You can find them all and that system on the Tin Star Games page and watch us making one on youtube. If you use our method and/or make a game in an hour, please link to the site and let us host a link to your game!


Future Thieves isn’t the sexiest title, but I really like how evocative this setting is in just a few words. We got a bit more longwinded in some of the other games, and you don’t need to. The downside is it leaves a lot unexplained like what the future looks like but that’s part of the fun of these one pagers: taking off the restrictions lets players as well as GMs write the setting more. The system is one of the best I’ve ever been part of designing. It has a really interesting rise and fall of successes and failures - the more you succeed, the less you succeed, and the more you fail the more likely you will succeed in the future. Slowly, you change over a session, then reset back to your core nature. I also love that the harder the test, the more likely it is to kill you. The more injured you are, the fewer risks you take, which is really interesting for emerging play. I would love to flesh out this setting a bit more (and have done, in my head) and use the bag system for a larger game!