Spiral Star
Nutshell
The world is going to hell and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Desperate survivors cling to whatever hope and humanity they can find as reality itself crumbles around them. Spiral Star follows the last days of ordinary people thrust into a cosmic horror story inspired by the works of Junji Ito. Over the course of the game, players will be faced with an uncaring catastrophe that turns everything they know on its head. But most importantly, they will come face-to-face with the very personal terror of other humans doing anything at all to live for just one more minute.
	Conceptually, this is the roleplaying equivalent of a disaster film. There is a catastrophe going on that cannot be interacted with in a meaningful way by the player characters. At best, the characters will begin to piece together the barely-visible logic that their apocalypse abides by. The bulk of play should be in dealing with the fear of death, unfulfilled desires, and maybe, just maybe, finding somebody to hold hands with as the black sun swallows the Earth.
Core Themes
	Love Your Characters to Death: Players and the GM (if this winds up as a GMed system) should be fans of the characters. The characters should be motivated by their own survival and desires, but all players at the table should be prepared to put the characters through hell, and potentially kill them off in a gruesome fashion.
	Annihilate Responsibly: This is a game about terrible things happening to people, many of whom really don’t deserve it. It is assumed that cruel and disgusting things are going to happen, but what exactly that entails falls into the hands of the group. Before playing, take time to list anything that is right out (“I really hate torture. None of that, please.”) and anything that can be hinted at or happen only off-screen (“It’s okay if sex happens, but only consensually and off-screen.”).
	Human Wants and Needs: At the start of the game, each player should establish their relationship with two other characters. Then, decide what it is that you need from each of those characters. Examples include love; forgiveness; release from a debt. Then, that player’s character will tell you why your need has been denied until this point. For example: You have never declared your love; the emotional wounds may be too fresh; you may be too useful to let go. These conflicts should be the driving force of the drama between characters.
An Uncaring Apocalypse: This is not a superhero game. While some or all characters may manage to survive, something horrible is happening and it cannot be stopped. This might be a localized curse sucking a town down into the bowels of the Earth, or it might be a global extinction event caused by a world-eating planet. In any case, the scope of conflict is limited to other characters and the immediate surroundings.
	You Reap What You Sow: The end times have one thing in common, and that is a twisted sense of karmic retribution:
-	A lazy character slowly turns into a human snail
-	A vain character’s hair tries to strangle her
-	An abhorrent fan’s tongue grows long and forked
As time passes and things grow weirder and weirder, actions come back to bite characters, and hard.
	Behaving selfishly, or even giving in to the mad logic that is starting to take hold, should be a tempting option that comes with a terrible price. Use NPCs to show the full extent of what can happen. Emphasize body horror and depravity. Make forking paths that allow players to choose their own demise. Perhaps moving too quickly while outside causes whirlwinds, but moving too slowly causes people to slowly turn into snails.
Thoughts on where to take this game
	This was originally going to be written as a Series Pitch for the Drama System. I was considering hacking together a mechanic for tracking spite that either the players or GM could tap into to curse characters. It could potentially have mirrored the Drama Tokens collected during gameplay, but I wasn’t sure exactly what the spending would look like, or how exactly the points would be collected.
	Putting together an Apocalypse World hack could also definitely work. Moves that are cruel or weird could be powerful but grant Hold to the victim, allowing them to retaliate through the uncaring workings of the curse.
Inspiration
	For a quick look at Junji Ito’s works, I would recommend The Enigma of Amigara Fault, which you can find here: http://imgur.com/gallery/ZNSaq.
	Another source of inspiration was These Final Hours (available on Netflix Streaming right now), a disaster film that focuses very closely on the emotional reactions of people faced with certain knowledge of their death. Ideally, I’d really love to see this game capture that sort of story, but with weird horror instead of an asteroid impact.