Sarcodes Sanguinea
A downloadable Tabletop RPG
Sanguinea is a 3-player RPG about some kind of relationship, be it platonic, romantic, or symbiotic. One player will be steadfast and caring, one transactional and impactful, and one beautiful and doomed.
Content Warning: Sanguinea is written and named after snowplant, a parasitic plant that can only survive with certain mycorrhizal fungi. As such, the game is centered around themes of codependence, and unstable relationships. Stories told using this game are also predisposed to involve character loss, grief, and death. Be aware of your own sensitivity to these issues, as well as those of your fellow players, and use appropriate safety tools. If you are unaware of common safety tools in TTRPGs, feel free to consult Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk's compilation of safety tools here: bit.ly/ttrpgsafetytoolkit.
Somewhere, somehow, the three of you became interlinked. Something is true about each of you:
The Rhizome is steadfast, constant, and unmoved.
The Mycor is driving, changing, and transactional.
The Sanguine is fleeting, beautiful, and doomed.
The three of you are deeply intertwined, locked together in this dance. You might or might not know it yet, but something else is true: The Sanguine will not survive the Spring.
You, the players, will embody these roles, determine how you all came to be so closely connected, why each of you cannot live without the other, and how the Sanguine is doomed. Throughout play, you all will explore how your relationship changes and grows, even as the Sanguine withers.
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be wholesome, fall in love, be very sad with your friends.
I play a lot of bastards who cause problems for themselves on purpose. With Sarcodes Sanguinea, the tension writes itself. Both times i have played this game, i found myself playing incredibly devoted wholesome characters that everyone at the table became very invested in and therefore, sad about. That made it even more fun for us to cause problems for everyone together.
You can absolutely play bastards who cause problems for themselves on purpose with this system. In fact, i’m hoping to be a devoted little bastard, next time. But whoever you are, you will all be sad about it.
do you want to be GAY? do you want to be SAD? do you want to be REALLY CLOSE and not necessarily romantically involved? do you want to play an ELEGANT and BEAUTIFUL GAME about loss, complicated bonds, and breaking hearts? play this game!!! it works so well for so many different settings, relationships, vibes, etc, and the way it incorporates the game of Hearts into its narrative is so powerful and effective. cannot recommend this game enough.