Everyone is John is a quick-setup, quick-gameplay Tabletop RPG created by Michael Sullivan that has since spread widely across the Internet.
The players are Voices, who are inside the mind of a man simply named John, played by the GM. John can be anywhere at any time, but the one thing that never changes is that he's completely under the control of the voices in his head. The Voices each have an Obsession, which they attempt to drive John into fulfilling.
At the start of the game, each non-John player picks an Obsession. The harder the Obsession, the more it's worth at the end of the game. Then the Voices fight to control John and make him carry out their Obsession (while trying to keep him alive at the same time, which is harder than it sounds). When all of the Voices run out of Willpower or John dies, the game ends, and the player with the most points (scored each time John performs a Voice's Obsession) wins.
The complete rules are available here
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This game provides examples of:
- Black Comedy: A man suffering from a severe mental illness carrying out often-horrible tasks at the bidding of his own psychosis really shouldn't be this funny, but damned if most players don't burst out laughing at least once per session.
- Competitive Balance: By default, a Voice has two Skills and a starting Willpower pool of 10. A Voice can choose to start with three Skills, but this gives them a starting Willpower pool of only 7. You can do more things well, but getting control of John will be harder.
- Funny Schizophrenia: The "hearing voices" variety. John is less a person and more a vehicle being driven by the voices in his head.
- Hearing Voices: The point of the game. Whether or not the Voices directly control John or just talk him into doing what they want is up to the GM; the rules don't really specify.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Any time John completes an Obsession, it scores points for the Voice whose Obsession is successful... even if that Voice isn't in control. An ill-planned move might benefit your opponents more than yourself.
- Loser Protagonist: John is not great at things. When John has to do something even vaguely complicated, the Voice in control rolls a six-sided die; by default, he only succeeds on a six. (If the Voice has a Skill suitable to the task, a three or better succeeds.)
- Mana: Each Voice has a Willpower supply. Willpower is spent to seize control of John and can be spent for +1 on any roll (up to an automatic success). When all of the Voices run out of Willpower, the game is over.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Obsessions are given a value from 1 to 3. 1-point Obsessions are easy to carry out (eating a lot of candy), 2-point Obsessions are harder (running a mile in stolen shoes), and 3-point Obsessions are extremely difficult (blowing up a building). A Voice's score at the end of the game is the number of times they completed their Obsession multiplied by its value, so if two players, one with a 1-point Obsession and one with a 3-point obsession, completed their Obsessions three times each, they'd have scores of 3 and 9 respectively.
- Noodle Incident: The GM is allowed to place John absolutely anywhere at the start of the game, with no explanation for how he got there needed.
- Sleepyhead: John gets bored easily. Any time there's downtime of ten minutes or more, John falls asleep on a GM roll of four or better. All of the Voices get a point of Willpower back every time John sleeps.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: If John dies, the game ends. Justified in that everyone else is a voice in John's head, so if he dies, so do they.
