SURREALPUNK! TTPRG

SURREALPUNK! is an original TTRPG and setting built around player agency and intuitive roleplaying. It delivers on the classic RPG promise: you can play whoever you want, attempt anything you can imagine, and succeed—if you’re willing to pay the price.  

The setting of Kilter showcases the system’s flexibility through a surreal twist on classic fantasy. You might negotiate rent and ancient mummy, travel to the aether and come back with puppet friends, brawl through a city council meeting, or defend a "dungeon" from plundering adventurers. Beneath the absurd premises are deeply human stories about greed, idealism, folly, and making ends meet. 

Help us fund the Players's Handbook & Bootstrapper Vol I, our first adventure zine.

(SURREALPUNK! is 100% human made)

• An original 60 page RPG rule system
• 3 Detailed Folk Groups
• 4 Playable Archetypes 
• 12 + Backgrounds
• Rules for Conflicts
• Rules for Death & Retirement
• Rules for Recovery and Downtime
• Rules for inventing Gear with 30 + examples
• Rules for Crafting gear.
• Rules for character Advancement.
• MORE!

Try the Preview Edition free

Welcome to Kilter!

Somewhere, sometime, someplace, something happened. In an event known simply as the convergence, time, space, and psyche merged. A powerful civilization just inches from utopia collapsed like a dying star and went supernova. And then, out of the husk that remained, an odd little world formed. Way out, past time, at the end of history.

KILTER is a land of contradictions where farmers plow their fields around dazzling ruins, shopkeepers stock ancient wonders alongside bubblegum, and ox drawn wagons share traffic with aether-powered cadillacs. The Kiltish frontier is an infinite wilderness stippled with the ruins of the last civilization. Everywhere they litter the landscape like a junkyard of madcap dreams. 

Bootstrappers

You’ve made a few mistakes to get here. Opportunities squandered, bridges burned, and a series of bad relationships have left you on the lowest economic rung of civilization. You have little to no prospects and are forced to take the jobs reserved for the daring and desperate; navigating dungeons replete with snares, grappling with monstrous absurdities, and working retail. You face impossible odds on a daily basis, but you know what to do. When you’re sinking to the bottom, the only thing left is to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and hope that you don’t drown.

The Folk

Sapiens Mutated heirs of a shattered surface driven by ambition and a vision of progress toward an idyllic future. They fight an ideological cold war over the future of Kilter.

Myr Eight-foot-tall amphibians who live "in the moment" for up to 1,000 years. Since their last emperor abdicated out of boredom, they have traded conquest for grand enterprises and total mastery of their hobbies.

Hani Subterranean keepers of memory grown from the Matriarch, a living mycelial archive. They record everything from sacred texts to junk mail to prevent another collapse of civilization.

Our First Full Length Adventure Zine

What do a lich king, a mutant vermin problem, and a frightened village have in common? They’ll all pay a Bootstrapper like you and your rent is way overdue.

You’ll crisscross Kilter in a sputtering aether Cadillac, selling your labor to whoever can scrape together the Slugs. Sometimes that means contracting for a corporate necromancer. Sometimes it means skimming too close to the Aether and losing pieces of yourself along the way. Will you free the mutant meat-monster that makes everyone’s burgers so delicious, or keep it chained forever to protect quarterly profits?

The end of the world didn’t end capitalism, dear Bootstrapper. It just made work stranger. It’s funny. It’s sad. It’s SURREALPUNK!

• A 60-page Adventure Zine for several sessions of play
• New content based on several play tested and well-loved adventures
• A full region of Kilter for exploration and GM world-building
• Dazzling art! (depending on our budget)
• Dozens of NPCs 
• Adventure Hooks  
• Tons of unique Gear
• MORE!

[UNLOCKED] $2,000 – Additional Art We will commission and license more original HUMAN art for the adventure zine. This includes full-page spreads and character art to further define the setting.

[UNLOCKED] $4,000 – The Kitbasher Archetype A new archetype for the adventure zine.  Kitbashers scavenge parts from their surroundings to build temporary gear during a session.

$6,000 – The Zealot Archetype A new archetype for the adventure zine. The Zealot serves a high-level Patron and weaves their devotion into reality. 

$8,000 – Three Regional Adventures We will include three additional adventures free to all backers. These scenarios are designed to explore three distinct regions of Kilter.

$20,000 – Game Masters Guide A comprehensive expansion of how to run SURREALPUNK!  We will explore the world of Kilter in depth, including numerous new Folk, backgrounds, conflicts, gear, adventure hooks, and brand new mechanics for endless play.

The Game System 

SURREALPUNK! runs on our own Hyphenpunk! engine, a flexible system built around player agency and intuitive roleplay. Instead of funneling play into rigid tropes or predefined actions, the mechanics rise to meet your intentions—letting you play whoever you want and attempt anything that makes sense. 

The system rises to meet your intention instead of forcing you into predefined actions. Together, the system emphasizes elegance: simple rules that layer together to handle complex situations. Easy to learn. Hard to exhaust.

All Style - All Substance

Nothing on your character sheet is incidental flavor. Every narrative detail has mechanical weight, and every mechanic feeds back into the story. This isn’t freeform make-believe, though; every decision carries consequences, costs resources, and requires thoughtful management.

A Polyhedral System 

Let's face it - those d2s and d12s are getting pretty lonely. The system uses the full range of polyhedral dice, with die size reflecting advantage, risk, and impact. 

Character Matters

The words that define your character (your Folk, background, and custom Traits) raise or lower the dice you roll, directly affect your chances of success or failure. You gain new Traits through adventuring and by surviving wounds that leave a mark.

Skill Rolls Provide Agency

Your Skills and Ability dice shape both what you do and how you do it. Together, they allow you to attempt anything. The same task can unfold in radically different ways depending on approach.

To slip past a guard, you might use:

• Guile + Move to sneak through the shadows
• Gumption + Move to pretend to be a statue
• Head + Move to memorize patrol routes
• Heart + Move to blend in and mimic their march

Failure Is a Choice

A failed roll isn’t the end of the action—it’s a decision point. You can accept the failure and deal with the consequences, or you can choose to succeed by paying a cost. 

That cost might be Stamina, representing the effort and strain you spend to push past your limits or gear durability, wearing down or breaking the tools you rely on to get the job done. It could also mean accepting a new complication or a wound like "peg leg".

Play your Style, not your Trope

Your Archetype feels like a classic class without boxing you in. It gives you familiar tools—casting spells, taking aggressive actions, boosting skills—while leaving it to you to decide what those look like in play.

• As the Quixotic, you take extra actions and build unstoppable momentum. A Ranger Quixotic keeps pressing a hunt without losing ground. A Thief Quixotic chains actions to lift keys, wallets, and weapons from a gang before the fight even breaks out. 
• As the Mystic, you apply Traits to people, objects, or environments. A Wizard Mystic may weave floating onto a heavy gate or enflamed onto an enemy vehicle. A Detective Mystic applies footsteps to the snow to reveal where a suspect fled or honest onto a suspect. 
• As the Mnemonist, you reveal stats, hidden lore, and generate a bonus pool. A Fighter Mnemonist recalls enemy weaknesses mid-Conflict revealing their defenses. A Clown Mnemonist reveals a king’s hidden insecurities and turning them into leverage for the party.
• As the Harken, you restore, stabilize, and suppress collapse while the action is still unfolding. A medic Harken clears Bleeding and restores Vitality before it turns lethal. A mechanic Harken repairs shattered armor or weapons on the fly.

One Conflict System

Combat, dialogue, and exploration all use the same Conflict mechanic. Fights, negotiations, chases, debates, and puzzles are handled the same way, letting you bring any skill to bear.

You can talk or fight your way out of a street brawl, solve a puzzle with wit or brute force, or settle a debate with magic, intuition, or endurance. What changes is your approach—not the rules.

Gear is Gameplay

Gear isn’t just descriptive—it enables action your endless skills and lets you push past failure. When you fail a roll, you can burn some of your gear’s Durability to force progress or turn failure into success. 

You might crack the lens to spot a hidden detail, tear your cloak to vanish into a crowd, or dent your tool beyond repair to finish the job. 

One Holistic System

The Hyphenpunk! system is built on simple mechanics that apply across every context, ensuring clarity and adaptability without unnecessary complexity. Once you know how to roll the dice, you can handle any situation—keeping gameplay fluid, intuitive, and open to creative role-playing in any setting.