The Design Spine

There's motherfucking snakes on this plane. That is the whole game, and it is the only thing the whole game needs to be. Before you add anything to this project — a character, a location, a new rule, a reskin — read this chapter. It is the design spine: the shape every other decision hangs off of.

What the game is

Snakes on a Plane is a one-joke game played straight. The joke is the premise. The game is what happens when you take the premise seriously: a sealed metal tube, two hundred panicking people, an absurd number of snakes, and a clock that does not care. The rules in the Player's Handbook are the complete rules. There are no hidden mechanics, no subsystems, no leveling. There are five traits, one Story, one attack table, and a countdown.

The two hard requirements

Everything you build must respect two requirements. They come straight from the SnakeMaster's advice, and they are not negotiable:

1. The characters cannot leave until conditions are met. Those conditions must be either beyond their control (by default: the passage of time) or complicated to ensure (several steps required). On the plane, you cannot leave until the plane lands, and the plane cannot land until the clock runs out.
2. The antagonist creatures can move freely through the setting. They should emerge in unexpected ways at unpredictable times. No one should ever feel safe.

Check every design against those two lines. A location that characters can just walk out of is not a location, it's a lobby. A snake that can't reach the cockpit is a plot hole with fangs.

The three-question test

Before you create anything, run it past three questions:

• Can I explain it in one sentence? "The snakes get released at the midpoint." "The producer is under attack." If it needs a paragraph, it's too complicated for this game.
• Does it make the situation worse? The game is a pressure cooker. Good additions turn up the heat. Bad additions let off steam.
• Does it require a new rule? If yes, cut it. The five traits and the attack table can handle anything the players throw at you. If you find yourself reaching for a subsystem, you're playing a different game.

The tone is horror as comedy: take a terrifying concept — enclosure, small deadly creatures — and heighten it until it is absurd, until everyone can laugh at it. That laugh is the point. Build toward it.