Reasons to Do Gamethings: a calendar of narrative game design challenges and writing prompts

A seasonal calendar of recurring game jams, blogging prompts, design competitions, and challenges to spur your work on narrative and tabletop games.

You might find it useful too.   UPDATED July 25th 2020

This is fairly extensive (but necessarily incomplete). It includes board games, RPGS, storygames, and interactive fiction. I have deliberately excluded game jams focused on graphical video games, but if that's your jam (HA) then you can check out the calendar at Indie Game Jams. I've tried only to include -active- competitions that have happened more than once. There are loads of new game jams on itch.io going on all the time as well--and Max has a collection of current physical game jams on itch.  I've guessed at the likely date of some competitions based on previous years. Some long-running competitions have ended or are no longer updated, but have extensive archives of games worth looking at--they are listed at the end.

(Also, someone should host another Threeforged because that was a great idea, and the One Room Game IF Competition was great and should come back in some form. Even more also, I'm surprised at how many individual, unrelated One-Page RPG competitions have been started and fizzled out. I want there to be a big official one. There is a One Page RPG Jam again, on itch.io! But now I'll hope for Game Chef to return.)

Do let me know if I've missed any regular things!

ONGOING / TRY ANY TIME

    The Gygax 75 Challenge    https://rayotus.itch.io/gygax75 (make an rpg campaign setting in 5 weeks, working through a booklet)

    RPG Blog Carnival    https://ofdiceanddragons.com/rpg-blog-carnival/ (monthly topics hosted by active bloggers)

    RPG Generator    https://sadpress.itch.io/rpg-generator-alpha (randomly generated game idea)

    Meta Prompt Generator    https://crateredland.blogspot.com/2020/07/meta-prompt-generator.html (write an rpg post about...)

    Boardgame Geek Monthly 24hr Challenge (anytime w/in month)    https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2307821/current-contest-info (also several other rotating contests are listed in this post, including faves like the Mint Tin Challenge and the 9-Card Challenge)

    Game Crafter Community Contests    https://www.thegamecrafter.com/contests (boardgames, roughly every 3-4 months)

    One Month Story Challenge    http://howtomakeanrpg.com/a/one-month-story-challenge.html (nobody has used the hashtag since 2015, but the challenge is self-guided for creating a bunch of narrative ideas)

WINTER

    Secret Santicore/Santicorn     http://santicore.blogspot.ca/ (OSR rpg content, now mostly run on the OSR Discord but archives up to 2017 still online. 2018/2019 collected on various blogs)

    Cardboard Edison submit (Jan 31 deadline)      http://cardboardedison.com/award/ (unpublished board games)

SPRING

    Spring Thing (Mar 1 deadline, submit by Apr 1)       http://springthing.net (interactive fiction)

    Secret Jackalope (an Easter-ish version of Secret Santicorn for OSR rpg content)

SUMMER

    NarraScope Game Jam (May-Jun)    https://narrascope.org/ (interactive fiction)

    RPG Superstar (deadline June)    https://rpgsuperstar.com/ (rpg content design competition)

    One Page Dungeon Contest (deadline Jun/Jul-ish)    https://dungeoncontest.com/

    IntroComp  (deadline Jul 31 but pre-register in Jun)    http://introcomp.org/ (first room of an interaction fiction)

    #RPGaDay (August)    https://melestrua.wordpress.com/category/rpgaday/ (daily prompts for blogging/game design)

    Saga Forge Scribe (August 24 deadline)    https://www.wearesaga.com/sagaforge (one-shot module competition, Halloween theme)

    One Page RPG Jam (deadline Aug 31)    https://itch.io/jam/one-page-rpg-jam-2020

    200 Word RPG (did not run 2020 but claims it'll be back)    https://200wordrpg.github.io/

(and ongoing submissions at reddit.com/r/200wordrpg)

AUTUMN

    The Mega RPG Jam (ran in Sept 2019)     https://itch.io/jam/mega-rpg-jam/community (creator says will be another one in 2020)

    IFComp (deadline Oct 1 but pre-register in summer)    https://ifcomp.org/ (interactive fiction)

    ECTOCOMP (deadline Oct 31)    https://itch.io/jam/ectocomp-2019-english (Halloween/horror interactive fiction)

   NaGaDeMon (November)    http://nathanrussell.net/naga-demon/# (national game design month)

***

DEFUNCT (but archives available)

    BGDF Game Design Showdown    http://www.bgdf.com/forums/game-design/design-contests (last thread was posted august 2018)

    One Game A Month    http://onegameamonth.com/ (officially ended in 2018)

    24 Hour RPG    http://www.1km1kt.net/cat/24-hour-rpg (last entry was august 2016)

    XYZZY Awards     http://xyzzyawards.org/ (last awarded for 2018)

    New Year's Minicomp     https://intfiction.org/t/eleventh-hour-new-years-minicomp/12848 (last ran in 2017)

    Game Chef      (no archive or website anywhere! I just thought I should mention this great little competition that appears to have completely vanished)