Tragedy Looper

Tragedy Looper is a game about a group of Protagonists traveling back in time to prevent a Mastermind from instigating various tragedies. Or it’s a game about a Mastermind plotting various tragedies while meddling time-travelers keep getting in the way.

The components for Tragedy Looper are a little atypical, and I don’t know if it’s because it’s imported from Japan or what. The box is a non-standard size, and the game board comes in four separate sections rather than a quad-fold board. The counters are all circular cardboard punch-out tokens. The Goodwill, Paranoia, and Intrigue counters all come in 1 and 3 value tokens with slightly different sizes.

There are two manuals: the Player’s Handbook is the game manual and explains how the game works. The Mastermind’s Handbook is specifically for the person who will be the Mastermind, and should not be read by all the players, because it contains details about the plots that the Protagonists need to figure out. The first half of the Mastermind’s Handbook is also an outline for teaching the game to new players, because only the Mastermind player really needs to learn all of the rules and can explain it to the Protagonists.

The game comes with 10 pre-made “scripts,” but you can also create your own scripts once you’ve gotten some more experience playing it. Each script, pre-made or otherwise, has various parts: a main plot, 1 or 2 subplots, some characters, a schedule of incidents, number of loops, and number of days per loop. The Mastermind will know all of the details, but the Protagonists will not know the plot and subplots, nor the specific roles that the characters play. Everyone will know what incidents will occur and on which days they will occur, but only the Mastermind knows the culprit for each incident.