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You Should Play Zoo Mafia RPG

Here at Nerdarchy we are known for playing fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons not creating new roleplaying games like Zoo Mafia RPG. I suspect people think we don’t even play other RPGs but we do. There’s actually a bunch of game play videos at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel if you sift through 3,500+ videos. Nerdarchist Ted and I love D&D and probably always will. Sometimes you get an itch that can only be scratched by playing something other than D&D. In the case of Zoo Mafia RPG the itch was not just to play but create our own RPG.

Zoo Mafia RPG is meant to be a little gonzo and silly

The Zoo Mafia RPG was birthed in a Zoom call after a game. Nerdarchist Ted made a statement and awesome author Robin R. Miller misheard him. They knew they did right away but shared with us what they heard — Zoo Mafia. Hearing this got into my brain like a worm and wouldn’t stop wiggling its way deeper until it burst forth as what was to become a new RPG. The concept is very simple — Go Wild, Do Crime (and don’t let the humans catch you). You are a zoo animal trying to get into one of the mafias within the zoo. There is one extra caveat insofar as the humans must never see you doing human stuff.

We are currently live playtesting the game over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel. Here is a design diary playlist and the live play playlist. When designing our RPG we knew we didn’t want it to be super crunchy. The idea is for someone to begin playing and by the end of their first session they know how to play the game even if they are new to RPGs. We have chosen to ignore minutiae and instead focus on the big picture and feel we want the game to elicit.

Zoo Mafia RPG is supposed to feel like the 1920s and 1930s but isn’t meant to be an exact replica of the time period. Our zoo animals do human stuff like wielding weapons, using phones and operating vehicles. In other words things for which one would need hands with opposable thumbs. To be clear our zoo animals aren’t anthropomorphic. They don’t technically have hands. Our approach is to not worry about it and to just have fun going wild and doing crime.

The zoo animals will use currency as an abstract. In our current game we are using peanuts and we aren’t being super precise with those numbers either. Your game might use clams, bananas or something else. One of the fun things about playing Zoo Mafia RPG is you can just grab a map from a real world zoo of your choice and play there as your setting. Of course we’ll commission a map for the final product. For now we are using a cool zoo map I found online that incorporates a lot of what I wanted in our zoo setting. Shout out to the Miami Zoo. You can expand the map below and take a peek.

If you’ve played Powered by the Apocalypse games you are 90% of the way towards understanding how to play our Zoo Mafia RPG. We are currently hacking the PbtA system by taking heavy inspiration from Evil Hat Games’ Monster of the Week RPG. There is also influence from Green Ronin’s AGE system and Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars Roleplaying game. We’ve taken PbtA’s story driven rules and the narrative dice aspects of the other two RPGs to create a unique take on a system.

At the end of the day play Zoo Mafia RPG if you want to play cute animals who commit crimes and fool the humans all while trying to get made into a notorious mafia family. Sign up for the Zoo Mafia RPG newsletter here and be the first to receive our FREE Quick Start Rules along with other news, sneak peeks and specials related to our very first RPG design project.

New videos all the time at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel