Loaded for Bear

Welcome to the game of Loaded for Bear! This is a low fantasy game about anthropology and wilderness survival: you and your co-investigators take on the role of the only travelers in a world of separate and scrutable communities, reveling or wallowing in the power and lonesomeness of your status as exclusive and permanent exiles.

Loaded for Bear is a tabletop roleplaying game that uses the popular Powered by the Apocalypse system to facilitate anthropological thought experiments and high-stakes storytelling. Parties of well-seasoned roleplayers might find some embroiling nuance in this game, and roundtables of burgeoning or established anthropologists can turn here for a new, exciting, and engaging way to get into the weeds of your favorite longstanding ethnographic meta-quandaries.

In Loaded for Bear you  grapple with pivotal questions like ‘How does having a homeland give or take away meaning in life?’ ‘What are the defining features of a home and a private place, respectively?’ and ‘Will eating this wild plant strengthen my immune system or give me an IBS flareup?’ Some dice, paper and pencil, and a group of three to six people are all you need to play.

If you’re a fan of the actual play podcast Friends at the Table, the seminal technofeminist author Donna Haraway, or of taking long walks in the woods and pretending the stick you found is a spear, Loaded for Bear might be the game for you!

There are three core texts in Loaded for Bear; The Loaded for Bear Player's Handbook, which is a perfect starting point for new players and required reading for learning the basic rules of the game; The World of Loaded for Bear, which helps those interested in creating their own adventures for the game to organize their world building; and Lessons from Loaded for Bear, which describes some of the academic influences behind the game and may help to inform an ethical approach to the system. Thanks for playing!