Going For Broke - Starter guide
What is Going For Broke?
Going For Broke is a fast-paced sitcom roleplaying game about a collective house that is always one bill away from disaster. Rent is due, the boiler just died, somebody's cousin needs bailing out again, and the roommates have a week to find the money. Every episode opens with an argument about how to cover a huge expense, spirals into two ill-conceived plots, and ends with one scheme paying off and the other collapsing. The house scrapes by, and next week it starts all over again.
That is the whole premise, and it is a sharp one. The game runs on sitcom logic rather than campaign logic: nothing carries over, nobody levels up, and the point of an episode is not to win but to find out what your roommate does when the pressure is on. Think Community, Rent and every flat-share you have ever survived, played out in under an hour.
Going For Broke was designed by Avery Alder, the designer behind The Quiet Year, Monsterhearts and Dream Askew, and published in 2025 by her own imprint Buried Without Ceremony after a BackerKit campaign. Netherbook sells the card box edition: a small sleeve box with the full cast of roommates and the reference cards you need at the table.
How does the system work?
There is no game master and there are no dice. Each player picks one of twelve roommate cards. Every card gives you a name, a few tendencies, a secret the other players are allowed to know, and a Classic Question printed at the bottom: the two-sided tension that makes this character tick, such as whether they will finally stand up for themselves or smooth things over one more time. Finding out this episode's answer to that question is what makes your roommate worth watching.
Play is cut into quick scenes. The group picks an episode premise, argues about the money, and lets the argument split into an A plot and a B plot. Scenes jump between the two plots the way a sitcom cuts between storylines, and every time a character answers their Classic Question on screen, that player earns a coin.
The coins decide the ending. When the moment comes, you flip to find out which plot succeeds, and the other one fails on the spot. One plan pays the bill, the other blows up, the house is exactly as broke as before, and the episode ends. Episodes run 40 to 70 minutes, which is roughly a 22-minute sitcom at the speed of people talking over each other.
What do you need to start?
The card box holds 12 roommate cards and 5 reference cards. The rules are free to read online, so the box is deliberately light: everything you need to play sits in the cards, and the reference cards keep the structure of an episode in front of the table. Add a coin, four to eight players and a room where people can raise their voices, and you are ready.
The cards are in English. Because the game has no book, the text on the cards is all the reading anyone at the table has to do.
Who is this game for?
Play Going For Broke with a group that likes to argue in character. It is a superb pick for a game night with friends who have never touched a roleplaying game: no stats, no maths, no preparation, and a premise everyone understands in one sentence. It is equally good as a warm-up or a palate cleanser for an experienced table between heavier campaigns, and it suits improvisers, writers and anyone who has ever shared a fridge with strangers.
Skip it if you want a story that builds. Nothing persists between episodes, by design, so if your table lives for character arcs and long-term consequences, this is not the vehicle. It also needs a certain energy: with four quiet players it can stall, while with eight loud ones it flies.
How does it compare to other systems?
Compared to Dungeons & Dragons 5e, the difference is almost total. There is no game master, no dice, no character sheet and no campaign; where 5e asks you to grow a hero over months, Going For Broke asks you to play the same broke roommate every week and enjoy that they never learn.
Compared to The Quiet Year, Alder's other game on our shelves, it shares the collaborative, game-master-free structure but flips the tone. The Quiet Year is a quiet, melancholy map game about a community with dwindling time; Going For Broke is a loud one about a household with dwindling money. Play both and you can hear the same designer thinking about scarcity in two very different registers.
Compared to Alice is Missing and Dialect, the other card-driven, GM-less games in the shop, Going For Broke is the fast and funny one. Alice is silent and tense, Dialect is slow and elegiac; this game is thirty seconds from a shouting match at any moment, and that is the appeal.
Where do you start?
Read the rules online before you gather the table; they are short. Then let everyone pick a roommate by reading the cards aloud, because the Classic Questions are the best pitch for each character. Choose an episode premise together, keep the opening argument short, and split into the two plots as soon as two bad ideas are on the table.
One piece of advice: cut scenes early. The game is at its best when nobody gets to finish their plan uninterrupted. And do not try to be funny. Play your roommate's Classic Question with conviction and let the contrast between the eight of you do the work.
Recommended products at Netherbook
Going For Broke is the complete game in one small box, cards and all.
If the collaborative, game-master-free format is what you enjoy, The Quiet Year is the natural next step from the same designer, and Jay Dragon's Wanderhome offers a gentler, wandering kind of shared story. If it is the comedy that hooks you, our Comedy & Satire collection gathers every game in the shop that refuses to take itself seriously.