Win the Day with the World's First Model-UN-Like TTRPG

“Model Our Nations” is the newest game by Eric Silver, game designer and longtime GM of award-winning actual play podcast Join the Party. In the game, players inhabit the roles of representatives of powerful countries or entities. They race to fill out a docket with projected ideas and motions, and they play out the meeting as dictated by the motions of the docket. 

“The best thing a TTRPG can do is facilitate the roleplaying of a specific situation in as fun of a way as possible,” Silver says. “And that’s what I’m trying to do: run a secret world government meeting and enjoy yourself along the way.

“Model Our Nations” is a GM-less TTRPG with worldbuilding and character-creation stages. It involves two hours of active playtime, ideally with four players, but it can work with 3-6. No dice are needed, and every copy comes with a one-page character sheet in PDF and printable versions that can be folded into a placard. Best of all, there's a winner at the end!

This versatile game can be used as a standalone one-shot or as a part of a larger campaign setting. It was inspired by an episode of Join the Party where he looked for a way to play out government power and overreach in a way that felt cinematic and fun. Silver wrote the game for that episode, then built it out into a fully-fledged TTRPG for everyone to enjoy. Influenced by GM-less games like the Fall of Magic and Dream Askew/Dream Apart, Silver focused on pushing "moves" into weird places that change how the players play the game in real life, like in Triangle Agency and Heart. He also draws inspiration from board games with faction power a la ROOT or Sentinels of the Multiverse. Significantly, as a longtime TTRPG player, Silver made sure that his game names a winner at the end (as opposed to the "winner" of an actual play being the Most Chaotic player).

You’ll love “Model Our Nations” if you: did Model UN in high school (but we have space for debate and Model Congress homies too); want a worldbuilding game with exciting mechanics; really like the space senate parts of the Star Wars prequels; or just want a chance to play the worst person possible in your TTRPG.