Snakes All Over the Place

In 2006, I logged onto RPG.net and tossed off a shitpost capsule RPG based on a viral meme. It is probably the most-played game I've ever designed.

Snakes on a Plane captivated the Internet in the last days before social media, when word of mouth spread from one forum or blogpost at a time. It seemed to be proof that irony could change an absurd world if only people leaned into it. My game latched onto that brief moment of virality as hard as it could. People shared it via SomethingAwful and Reddit. People played it with friends and strangers. Livestreamers played it on Twitch.

It's a fun game while intoxicated or high. It's a "game" in the most literal sense of the word. If you can craft a narrative out of it, more power to you.

For Bannerless Games' Disc 2 game jam, I've repackaged the rules in a decently formatted PDF, cleaned up a few imprecise passages, and expanded on the Snakemaster's Advice section. You can still find the original on RPG.net or in a few samizdat PDFs. I've retitled the game to separate myself as far as possible from any claims of copyright or trademark and I've given it a cool cover.

This is the "director's cut" or maybe the auteur-cred "black-and-white" cut. This is as good as a goofy idea I had 18 years ago is going to get. Please enjoy and share.