Pilot Episode

YOU are a cast member of a tv show about to film the PILOT EPISODE of a new sitcom. You and the rest of the cast believe, should this pilot do well, a stable life of working in television awaits. The show may not be Emmy-worthy, but it pays the bills and reliably gets renewed. The work is steady and even as the lights hanging over your set, and the only monster you’ll have to deal with is the three-headed monster of the cameras.

You and the rest of your cast are wrong.

You will find yourself trapped in a loop. Recording the episode over and over and over. Trapped playing these characters, trapped in the world of the sitcom until you can amuse the entity (or entities) that have trapped you. The three-headed-monster will vanish, replaced by something much more dangerous. You will hear their laughter, their shouts and cries, howling in the back of your mind. 

You will stay here until they are suitably entertained.  

Pilot Episode is a horror hack of Time To Drop inspired by 1950s sitcoms such as I Love Lucy and Leave It To Beaver. The game follows the cast shooting the pilot episode of a brand new sitcom, only for something to go horribly wrong.you use a custom-written soundtrack to determine where you are in the loop; when the music ends, the loop resets, giving you a chance to fix your mistakes. When something is in doubt, you roll a six-sided die to see if the joke lands, or falls flat. 

Pilot Episode is perfect for horror fans, particularly those who enjoy Lovecraftian horror mixed with the bland, idealized conformity of American suburbia as depicted in the sitcom. It plays with the inherent horror of being trapped in a world that constantly resets to its bland, normal state, no matter what happened the previous episode. Significant research into sitcom history and aesthetics went into Pilot Episode, giving it an in-depth understanding of the themes and aesthetics being explored.

3-6 Players, No Gm: Pilot Episode is a GMless system for three-to-six players; instead of one person taking on the mantle of a Game Master or facilitator, the role is divided evenly amongst the players. When your Cast Member is not in the current scene, you will instead take on the role of a non-player character or narrator, giving everyone an opportunity to describe and introduce the conflicts the Cast will face.

Original Soundtrack: Pilot Episode is a hack of Time To Drop by Marn S., in which a time loop is mapped to the duration of an album—when the album restarts, so does the loop. This innovative concept creates a unique and fascinating experience for the play group. Rather than using a pre-existing album, the soundtrack was a part of the Kickstarter campaign.

Low/No Preparation: Pilot Episode requires little-to-no prep to play! Setting up the characters and the world is part of the session, making it great for a last-minute change of plans at game night.

To play a successful game of Pilot Episode, all you need is a six-sided die, a deck of tarot cards, a way to track your game that everyone can see (e.g. pen and paper, whiteboard), and a way to play the game's soundtrack (or a twenty-minute timer).

Gameplay in Pilot Episode begins with character creation—or, characters creation. You will create both a sitcom Cast Member and the Role they inhabit in the show; you are invited to consider all the ways your Cast Member does not fit into the world of the sitcom they work in, and how they might mirror the Role they play.

Once you have your cast(s), you and your fellow players work together to develop the style of sitcom and the rough plot of its pilot episode. This will serve as a basic timeline of events that consistently occur during the time loop. At this point, you'll also create the initial technical difficulties that the Cast Members will face and overcome in their efforts to entertain the Live Studio Audience.

Once the cast and setting are locked, it's time for filming to begin. This is the longest section of the game, as you'll go through the time loop several times in order to escape.  When you run into technical difficulties, you'll roll a six-sided die to see if you overcome them—or create more in the process!