A Monty Python TTRPG is coming, will provide much more than a flesh wound

As tabletop role-playing games explode in popularity, indie publishers are pushing industry boundaries both behind the scenes and in game design, including the kind of material that gets adapted — like Monty Python’s corpus of popular Ren Faire pregame material.

Publisher Exalted Funeral and developer Crowbar Creative have announced a new tabletop RPG called Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme, a tome that cheekily calls itself “not a role-playing game but rather a very rigorous course of study intended only for serious students of English History. It is by no means a complete and comprehensive manual for running imaginative, highly unpredictable, Mediaeval-themed role-playing games based upon the complete comedic output of Monty Python with one’s friends.”

Which, of course, it actually is. That dry British wit will get ya every time!

Per Exalted funeral, the Reenactment Programme will include:

A core book featuring an original rules-lite gaming system; guidance on designing adventures; character creation, bestiary, retinue, and NPC sections; tables for generating all sorts of things; and ready-to-run adventures. There is also a madcap, backgammon-based minigame that involves dice catapults and farm animals, called Fetchez la Vache.

The publisher also notes that while the game is set in Medieval England, it draws from the entire Monty Python catalog, from Flying Circus to stage shows. And for those concerned that this will turn their Monty Python loving friends into even more unstoppable quote-fiends, designers Brian Saliba and Craig Schaffer told the folks at Dicebreaker that they were interested in making the game much more than that.

“What we were adamant [about] is it can’t just be replication of scenes from the movies and TV shows,” said Saliba in the Dicebreaker interview. “It’s more a matter of providing a toolbox of stuff that people can create stories that feel very Monty Python without recreating scenes.”

So hopefully, the final product will be more of a role-playing adventure that happens to be funny, as opposed to one set in a world that Monty Python fans think is funny. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, after all.

Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme will be available on Kickstarter on Oct. 22.