Caveat Emptor - A Solo Journaling RPG

Wittenberg, 1541. The Manager is away for three days and the shop is yours. Caveat Emptor is a solo journaling game from Exeunt Press, the studio behind Exclusion Zone Botanist, in which you play an Assistant Demon selling cursed goods to people who only think they are getting a bargain.

Each customer who walks in gets offered something from your inventory that looks too good to be true. While they admire it you twist a curse into it, then close the sale without giving away what you are. There is a quota to hit before the Manager returns. Reuse the same curse too often and the odds turn against you; close the shop to reset and you may not make the numbers, which in this trade is a career-ending problem. The journal you keep becomes a ledger of items, buyers and what happened next.

The game runs on a standard deck of cards and three six-sided dice, with Vexation Points tracking how badly the day is going. A playthrough takes about an hour, and reviewers have pointed out the side effect: you leave with a dozen cursed items, their owners and their consequences, ready to drop into any fantasy campaign.

Caveat Emptor is a 36-page A5 zine, stapled, in the clean, confident layout Exeunt Press is known for. Its inspirations are Needful Things and The Screwtape Letters, and the tone sits somewhere between them. It suits solo players who like their horror with a dry smile, game masters short on cursed loot, and anyone who has ever worked retail.

Add it to cart - it ships from Leeuwarden, ready to go.