Everyone Is John: RPG Spotlight
Can you be the ultimate John? How about the ultimate voice in John’s head? This week on RPG spotlight we’re exploring exactly that with Everyone Is John.
Everyone Is John is a strange, weird, often silly game with a sort of difficult premise. John is a nondescript, average, boring individual with few defining features of his own, and in Everyone is John, the players all act as aspects of John’s personality – or the voice in his head – as they try to take over and attempt to have him complete a series of tasks.
Before we get too far into this one, yes, this game has an overall premise that on its face reads as somewhat as ableist and can easily be played as a not-maliciously insensitive game. For some groups this will be completely fine with players where nobody involved will notice or be hurt and I hope those groups will enjoy the game as it is written. For others, I’ll point out how I’ve played this game in a way that changed nothing about the game itself and yet made it an infinitely more inclusive experience.
The game is simple enough. The GM acts as “John” while the players each create a voice in John’s head. They’ll pick out skills from an open-ended list of just about anything you can think of and “Obsessions” or goals that they can earn points by having John do throughout the game. The tasks appear on a scale of easy, medium, and hard with different point values for each, and these tasks are meant to be kept secret from your fellow players. You see, you’re all in competition to complete your tasks first and you get to keep any points for a task that John completed by chance when another voice was in charge. If other players figure out what your voice’s goals are they will (and can) sabotage your attempts, often with hilarious consequences.
Players bet with their “willpower” which is represented in tokens or chits of some kind and the highest bid gets control first. They keep control of John until they earn points or fail a skill roll and then the next voice has an opportunity. The game ends when John dies or every player runs out of willpower and then goals are revealed, points are counted, and the winner is announced.
In writing Everyone Is John may sound like a hard to fully comprehend mess, but in practice, it plays like a game of tug-of-war. People get competitive, the upper hand and control can change lighting fast, and there is a ton of laugh-fighting. For all of the criticisms I could lay at the game’s feet, it is truly a ridiculous amount of fun.
For my own experience, I have played this game for a holiday-themed one shot as “Everyone is Santa,” where the DM was a Mall Santa Clause cursed by other aspects of Christmas Lore; for example there was a Jack Frost and a Krampus in the mix. There were no jabs at the nature of real world mental health issues when we could instead use the power of holiday magic to explain a fantastical situation. Other games could use the spin of a ghostly possession or a bunch of little aliens piloting a human suit and arguing over how to best seem normal. There are nearly endless possibilities.
I don’t remember if Jack was there, but he would have fit in so well.
This is a simple game that’s easy to pick up, easy to play, and a little too easy to get into. It’s perfect for one-shots or hyper-themed game nights (There’s an episode of One Shot where they play Everyone Is Joker that was off the walls), and despite everything it remains a game that’s just fun.
If you’d like to check out Everyone Is John for yourself, you can find it on Drivethru RPG.
Have you played Everyone Is John? What were your voices and goals? Did you go with a classic John or something else? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
