Thursday is a tabletop role playing game for 2-4 players of time loops, drama, and learning from your mistakes, inspired by Russian Doll
I got a Thursday review copy while getting ready for my Time Traveling Panel for Big Bad Con 2023 with Sebastian Yūe. Thursday served as a brilliant piece to explore how one can run a Time Traveling game on the TTRPG space, specifically Time Loops. In exchange for Eli Seitz’s game, I promised to make a review of it. Here you have it. Check out Eli’s other stuff by going to his Itch Page.
A bit more about Thursday
What a concept, right? Hehe. Thursday was created as part of Zinequest 2021 and had its own Kickstarter page campaign managing to get 358 backers breaking all stretch goals, and getting $6042 on its February run. The game includes a “Director’s Commentary” in which Eli explains the process behind the design of the game, and behind the scenes.
The system
Thursday is based on the No Dice No Masters system created by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum, which excels at character driven collaborative storytelling. As the name implies, No Dice No Masters does not have a single game master, instead splitting the responsibilities among all players and alleviating the need for planning. Thursday uses a modified version of this framework to tell a fulfilling story in a single play session of fewer than three hours.
While reading the rules for Thursday I noticed that the game does not rely on that many rules. In fact, after you have set up the game (that you can do in about 15 minutes, which I find great), it is mostly an improvisational game with only the character sheets, with the Strong, Regular, and Weak Moves integrated into it. Lastly, you have the Setting Elements, which are what will be carrying the game forward.
I have not played many games of this kind, so what I find it easy to compare to is Fiasco. This is because both games are used to tell a story that goes wilder as you move scene by scene (in this case, through different loops). Additionally, both games offer you the structure of how the scenes can start, but it’s upon the players to improvise and play through what actually happens, making every playthrough unique.
The Mechanics
Being a 2-4 person game with no GM, the game comes with 4 playbooks you can choose from to play:
- The creative Artiste who allows their feelings to overflow and explode.
- The pragmatic Sellout who is willing to choose society’s norms over their true feelings.
- The isolated Misanthrope who is bound to follow routine above all else.
- The confident Trendsetter who is always at risk to turn to substances for solace and attempt something foolish.
Each of them comes with set objectives you can choose from, as well as a vibe, that will place you in your character shoes’ swiftly. Additionally, they all have their own set of Strong, Regular, and Weak Moves.
The Moves
The Moves in this game point you to the stuff you should be doing as you play. They are vague enough so you can apply them to infinite circumstances. Regular Moves are the stuff you will be doing most of the time, as these have no cost whatsoever, which also forces you to act more as the playbook you chose. Weak Moves, on the other hand, take into consideration your playbook to put your character in a difficult situation, OR EVEN DIE. Yeah, dying is normal in this game (we’ll talk about that in a bit). When you do a Weak Move you get a token. You can use those tokens to be able to use Strong Moves. These moves get the character going in the right direction to fulfill their goal, and become a better person.
By using this token mechanic with the Weak, Regular and Strong Moves, the game forces the player to play the stereotype of the playbook. If they want to win the game, they need to learn their lesson, which is done through Strong Moves. In order to be able to use those, they have to get through hardships, meaning the player has to use Weak Moves. I really like the simplicity behind this system that takes your hand and guides you to creating a story that works great with the premise of the game. Really smart!
Setting Elements
But what about the rest of the world when there is no GM? That’s when the Setting Elements come into play. Each of the players (when it’s 4 of them) take the role of one of the Setting Elements. When played with 2-3 players, the game suggests alternative ways to handle the Setting Elements. These are:
- The Loop controls the time travel weirdness and informs pacing.
- The City controls locations and informs the sense of place.
- The Home Team controls friendly side characters.
- The Away Team controls antagonistic side characters.
By having control of these elements, everyone has a responsibility during the course of the game, akin to dividing the tasks of a GM among all players. They all include Moves to keep the story constantly moving when it’s starting to slow down.
The Setting Elements grant everything you need to replace a GM. Being a collaborative game, there are no secrets to hide from each other, and everyone is responsible for creating a cool story. These elements are just a way to make that as a mechanic.
The PDF
The downloadable PDF is simple, with white backgrounds and readable text, making it extremely easy to print. As for accessibility, the PDFs available are tagged, with bookmarks and alt text on them. The art is very elegant, giving that weirdness factor, and vibes that there is something wrong, very artsy. Being a Zine, it is only 36 pages long, even including examples of play to make sure you got the hang of how the game goes. As I said: simple, yet elegant.
Conclusion
Thursday is clearly not the kind of game that goes for all gamers. If you want to roll dice, and delve more into complex mechanics this might not be your jam. However, if you are very into the roleplaying aspect of TTRPGs and love Time Loops as much as I do, then you should totally give this a try. It is a brilliant game with short rules, that works excellent for those days someone misses your weekly game, or if you are looking to run a short campaign of something different to give the GM a break!
The game is also available in physical format through many retailers. Check the link below for more info!
