# Something Is Wrong With the Chickens tags: #game/rpg/something-is-wrong-with-the-chickens ![[Something Is Wrong With the Chickens (cover).jpg|600]] **Something Is Wrong With the Chickens** is a free one-page, rules-lite RPG by Elliot Davis, hatched for the Chicken Jam 2020 itch.io jam and wearing its debt to Grant Howitt's **Honey Heist** on its sleeve. It delivers exactly what its tagline promises: are we chickens? We are Chickens. Are we Eldritch Horrors? We are Eldritch Horrors. **Make. Bryson. Pay.** It's a comedy-horror heist one-shot about a gang of weird fowl mounting a sabotage-and-revenge campaign against the poultry industrial complex, best hauled out at Thanksgiving or any night you'd rather not think too hard about where chicken nuggets actually come from. ## Setting Bryson Foods, Inc. has taken everything from us. We are Chickens. We are Eldritch Horrors. Make. Bryson. Pay. That's the whole pitch, and the game is admirably committed to it. One day a portal opened to **The Other**, "an indescribable dimension of horror," and each chicken began manifesting the traits of distant cosmic entities. This has not, notably, distracted them from their grievances against the factory — it's simply given them better tools to press claims. As one itch.io commenter put it, the game plays like an 80s environmentally-conscious monster movie: a scrappy band of monsters turning the tables on the faceless corporation that commodified them. The Chicken Master (CM) rolls or chooses a **Scene** (a small family farm run by the Bryson family, a sprawling factory farm, a caravan of refrigerated trucks, a massive grocery store on Thanksgiving Eve, a state fair, or Bryson HQ itself), then layers in **Friends**, **Foes**, and a **Chicken-Fried Stake** to chase — perhaps Elder Chickens held hostage in a back room, the Eggs of Prophecy, the sole copy of a recipe that will make chickens more delicious than ever, a secret Bryson lab running the patent-pending Juice-ifying Tender Tech, or Mr. Bryson himself, on-premises, finally vulnerable. Foes range from Farmer Jones and armed Bryson goons to chicken-nugget-lovin' five-year-olds, a wolf in sheep's clothing, a haunted detective, and a Magic Chef. There is, crucially, a rollable table of **Puns** (one requires a Duck in the group), because no self-respecting poultry heist is complete without one. ## Mechanics Character creation is three steps: discover your **Name**, choose your **Chicken Type**, and pick your first manifested **Eldritch Trait**. **Chicken Type** (d6) gives each chicken a Special Quirk to lean on: 1. **Chicken** — Fast 2. **Chick** — Cute 3. **Rooster** — Loud 4. **Turkey** — BIG 5. **Duck** — Mean 6. **Nugget** — Crispy (the souls of many lost chickens live on in you) **Eldritch Trait** (d6) grants a power from The Other: 1. **Tentacles** — constrict, grab, destroy 2. **Scales** — harden to a diamond, sharpen to a razor 3. **The Third Eye** — see hidden truths, seek paths to victory 4. **Voice of The Other** — speak any language, in any voice 5. **Non-Euclidean Geometry** — defy space and time, take any shape 6. **Magic Eggs** — lay on command, infuse with power ### Resolution — "How We Chicken" For any action with an uncertain outcome, roll **3d6**; if you're leaning on your Chicken's Special Quirk, roll **4d6** and drop the lowest. Each die is read against your dual nature: a **3 or lower is a Chicken result**, a **4 or higher is an Eldritch result**. Success and failure hinge entirely on whether you stay mixed: - **Success** — a mix of Chicken and Eldritch results is *always* a success. You do exactly what you intended. - **Chicken Failure** — all three dice land Chicken. The action fails and the chicken **loses one Eldritch Trait**. A chicken with no traits left to lose becomes *too delicious* and is captured. - **Eldritch Failure** — all three dice land Eldritch. The action fails and the chicken **manifests a new Eldritch Trait** of choice. A chicken that has manifested all six traits *transcends this realm*, no longer concerning itself with the mortal struggle of Chicken and Man. Because your Eldritch count starts at one, an unlucky all-Chicken roll on your very first action can snuff your character out of the gate — and a fast-ramping monster can fly off into transcendence mid-scene. Both eliminations are built into the fiction as exits, so there's always room for another chicken at the coop. All chickens can talk to one another but not to humans (unless you have Voice of The Other), and the CM is explicitly told the Quirks and Traits are meant to be freely and maliciously interpreted. ## Editions The main rulesheet ships in **color** and **black-and-white** print variants — not separate editions, just the same two-page spread laid out for different printing budgets. The current release is **V2** (*SIWWTC_V2.pdf*). Alongside the rulesheet, Elliot Davis publishes a **Chicken Sheet** and a **Chicken Portrait** (a portrait-frame character sheet) to help players track their Name, Type, and the Eldritch Traits they've gained or lost. *All six (color rulesheet, bw rulesheet, sheet, sheet x3 bw, sheet x3 color, portrait) are in the library.* ## References - [Something Is Wrong With The Chickens (name-your-own-price, free) - itch.io](https://moreblueberries.itch.io/chickens) - [Something Is Wrong With The Chickens [Print+PDF bundle] - Indie Press Revolution](https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Something-Is-Wrong-With-The-Chickens-Print-PDF.html) - [Something Is Wrong With the Chickens (print) - Twenty Sided Store](https://twentysidedstore.com/products/something-is-wrong-with-the-chickens) - [Chicken Jam 2020 (the jam it was made for) - itch.io](https://itch.io/jam/chicken-jam) - [Something Is Wrong With the Chickens, Part 1 w/ Elliot Davis (My First Dungeon Podcast) - Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/something-is-wrong-with-the-chickens-part-1-w-elliot-davis/id1601290088?i=1000569002116)