Bone Bout: A Game of Boxing Skeletons
A downloadable ttrpg
The first boxing TTRPG about fighting in the grand Bone Bout, a tournament full of strange and interesting boxers in a world of skeletons!
But that's not all, there's always a mystery afoot in the tournament to solve. People to investigate, the Black Bone Market to buy from, even learn amazing new Haymakers!
Bone Bout is a self-contained tool for any Referee to create a tournament to last the ages brimming with unique art!
Fight as a team, tagging in and out to destroy a variety of unique and interesting boneheads as you duck, dodge, dive and dodge to quick jabs in, storing Marrow as you save up for that final extravagant Haymaker!
Pick new Haymakers and sneak illegal items into the ring if you can, but try not to lose your head. Though no matter if you do, you can just put it back on again.
Outside the ring there's always a mystery afoot. Someone may have just been murdered in the locker room. Perhaps the prize money has been stolen. Maybe there's been a dreaded bonenapping.
Between bouts, you and your team of boxers must work together to solve mysteries in and around the ring, interrogating potential suspects, sneaking around the seedy underbelly of the bout, perhaps even climbing through the vents into the sealed of 'old changing rooms.'
Available physically here! https://ko-fi.com/s/d5cc4c877a
Purchase
In order to download this ttrpg you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- Update 1.5Mar 26, 2024
- Bone Bout 1.3May 21, 2023
Comments
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Yo! Me and my friends really enjoy runnning this game and play it regularly. I've reccomended it on Reddit a few times too.
Just saw you've updated it. Downloading the update now. I'll leave a review once we've given it a spin.
Enjoy your day
Woah thank you so much for recommending it! I feel the update made skill checks more fair (stops people from auto succeeding) and additionally makes skills easier to obtain.
By the way, if you wanna join my discord where we discuss my games/have any questions, the link is here https://discord.com/invite/bJ8HRbYR
Hi hi, my friend, is there any initiative to add community copy?
The Haymaker "Enrapturing Glance" says that this can also be used outside of the ring with a successful Moxie check. However, the Requirement to acquire the Haymaker is having at least 17 Moxie and considering how rolls are resolved, it's been long impossible to fail Moxie rolls at that point. In fact, every Moxie roll is a Perfect Success by the point you can acquire it.
I feel like stat requirements for Haymakers are not well-thought out in general. "Brittler" and "Best in the West" are mathematically-impossible to be acquired before Level 10 and those are Level 5 Haymakers. "You're Already Dead" is impossible to get before Level 15 and it's a Level 7 Haymaker. All but one Level 20 Haymaker cannot be acquired before Level 35 assuming maximized stats and level-up rolls.
Tempted to houserule that stat requirements for Haymakers are halved (rounded down) so they're realistic to reach at their levels if one has some luck with their levels and focus their build towards it.
Hey thanks for the comment. This is entirely fair and I'll look into rebalancing this, in the mean time feel free to house rule away! I like to think of zines as more guidelines than hard rules anyway.
I am not totally sure if I understand the bout system fully. There are actions that appear to indicate only player boxers can take which ends up meaning for NPCs they get marrow very very slowly. It also seems very odd that getting a humerus hit can result in negative results on a jab. I figure it is not supposed to go under 1, unless I am totally wrong there.
I would appreciate a breakdown of how the bout system should work.
You are right, it cannot go under 1. Also NPCs can use all the actions pcs can.
I'll get a few examples of bouts to post here.
Thank you! That would be much appreciated!
Bone Bout is a tabletop roleplaying game about boxing skeletons.
The PDF is 68 pages, with a faded showbill vibe to the layout and some absolutely incredible illustrations. Seriously, just purely on visuals, don't sleep on this game. Every picture is expressive and funny and cartoony and dynamic.
Story-wise, Bone Bout is troupe-based, and it isn't just focused on the action in the ring, so it's not as narrow a concept as it might appear. Any story you can tell that's adjacent to a boxing ring can also be told here, although the ring is still the center of the action.
Dice-wise, Bone Bout uses a pool of d6s that represent your stamina. You choose how many to spend, but you only recover one after each roll. To fully refill the pool, you need to rest. This encourages players to husband their resources most of the time, and to go very loud occasionally, in a way that nicely mirrors RL boxing.
Levelling up happens fast, and players should expect to see progression within each game session, but Bone Bout can still run for a while, possibly stretching into a mid-length campaign. Most progression goes towards improving a character's Haymakers (special moves), but every five levels characters gain some points for their skills, which are added to regular dice rolls.
It's probably impossible to overstate how hard this game leans into its skeleton theme. During matches in the ring, you can knock bones off of your opponent. Outside of the ring, your rib cage determines your item capacity. Marrow is your super meter. Calcium is a performance enhancing stimulant. And so on.
For GM tools, there are sample NPCs, sample mysteries, and sample locations, but the GM is expected to think on their feet and flesh out parts of the setting that the players engage more with. For GMs who can voice an old-timey boxing announcer and can lay down NPCs and hooks on the fly, this should be an easy run.
Overall, Bone Bout is a gem. Its mechanics are solid and favor bursts of high player agency, and it's not locked into being pvp. The setting is fun, the art is charming, and both the game's character progression and adversity feel meaningful. If you like indie titles, absolutely check this one out.
Minor Issues:
-Page 50, "to convince a referee. they aren't cheating" This ends with a period but the sentence keeps going.
I’ve been trying to run a campaign about punch out for a while now and this might just be what I’m looking for. I did want to ask if this game would be able to replicate cartoony humans fighting or is it strictly skeletons?
You could replace it with cartoony humans if you like, but losing bones is an integral mechanic within the ring, so things could get very gruesome if replaced with fleshy bits.