# Notorious Style *Created:* 2025-01-16, *Modified:* 2026-11-10 ![[Notorious Style (cover).png]] **Notorious Style** is a solo journaling and sketching game about getting up in the graffiti scene: hunting spots, racking paint, painting pieces, running with a crew, and trying to be known for it. There is no fantasy layer and no referee — the city is the one outside the window, the culture is one that already exists, and the only character you have to keep track of is the one in your journal. A 21-page zine by **Fraud**, art and layout by Clément Filleul, published by **Colourful.name** under **CC BY-SA 4.0**, and honest about its parents: *Ironsworn - Starforged* for the engine, *Apocalypse World* and the PbtA family for the move-shaped play. ## Setting The setting is the scene itself. You are a writer — the game's word for a graffiti artist — and the book opens with the ethos rather than a map: *You've been given nothing. You take everything. Graffiti is anti-authoritarian. They cannot ignore you. Regret nothing. Don't get caught. Don't snitch.* Notoriety is the thing you're accumulating, and it comes from the work, the places you put it, and the people who see it. Three things carry the world. **Spots** are where you paint, and the best ones are stolen space: an abandoned train carriage, a rooftop, a legal wall, a mate's garage — each rated for how **chill** or **hot** the crowd is and how **easy**, **limited** or **hard** it is to reach. **Crews and NPCs** are the scene's other people, each with a name, a crew, a notoriety of their own and a relationship to you that can drift into beef. And the **journal** is the game's actual medium: you record the character's progress in your own words, at whatever intensity you like — **Arcade Mode** for the pivotal moments, **Story Mode** for an archive of the whole story — and keep a **blackbook** for sketching and writing graffiti, which the book very much hopes you'll try even if you've never done it. The tone stays street-level and unsentimental. Nothing supernatural is happening; the pressure is money, supplies, police attention, reputation, and the ordinary wear of a scene that punishes getting caught and punishes snitching harder. ## Mechanics The engine is Starforged filed down to a zine. Roll **2d10**, add a stat or a progress bar (rounded down) plus any modifiers, and read the ladder: **Miss** at 7 or less, **Weak Hit** at 8–14, **Strong Hit** at 15 or more. A 0 on a d10 counts as 10. A miss doesn't stall the game — it triggers **Shit Happens**, which is where the trouble comes from. - **Five stats** — Style, Craftiness, Physique, Creativity, Stealth — take 9 points at creation (0–5 each), and each Move names the one it wants. - **Six tracks** hold the character's material and mental state. **Supplies, Health, Money and Time** fall, and dropping below 1 marks **Lacking, Injured, Broke or Busy**; **Stress and Heat** rise, and passing 5 marks **Freaked or Profiled**. Either way the track resets and the journal gets an entry — and crossing the same condition a second time triggers **Retirement**. - **Four progress bars** — Belonging (to the culture), Rep (among your peers), Nicked (run-ins with the justice system) and Fulfilment (your own potential) — tick in quarters and halves, and a full bar turns into Fulfilment or Retirement. - **Spots modify the roll.** Chill/Easy is +2 and Hot/Hard is −2, with Alright and Limited shading between; Paint and Playbook Moves use that number, and you start with three spots on the sheet. - **Moves** cover the working life: Paint Moves (Piece, Tag, Black Book, Commission), Playbook Moves, Crew Moves, Sticky Situation Moves (Bluff, Flee, Fight), (Anti) Social Moves, Supplies (rack, buy, make your own ink), Observation (look for new spots, check on your work) and Shop Moves. **Shit Happens** rolls a d10 for who you meet and a d10 for what's happening, then hands it to Bluff, Flee or Fight; an **Oracle** answers a question with *yes and*, *yes but*, *no and*. - **The journal pays.** Doing the sketch or the piece in your own book adds +1 to the roll, so the game rewards the practice it's about even when the dice are mean. ### Character Creation Pick a **playbook** — Art Student, Vandal, Veteran, Kid, Punk or Nerd — and take its backstory, stats and track values, or build from scratch: a motivation from the 20-entry table, a name, 9 points across the five stats, and the tracks (2 split between Stress and Heat, 11 across the rest). ## Editions - **v1** — May 2024, in singles, text and ePub layouts, plus a sheet pack. *Superseded.* - **v2** — 7 November 2024, the current build, held as PDF and ePub. The two builds are a version pair, not formats of one another: v2 corrects a typo (`accessiblity`), changes a couple of spot-table entries, and moves the colophon to 7 November. The printable spot, NPC and character sheets are the same release's play aids. ## References - [Notorious Style - itch.io](https://colourfulname.itch.io/notorious-style) - [Notorious Style - Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mxfraud/notorious-style-a-solo-ttrpg-about-graffiti-zinequest)