Birthday Fishes

17 Mar, 2026

You find yourself in front of a door. It is old, and brass, and round, with a dark window in the center. There's movement behind it, but as you lean in to look you realize there's water seeping into the toes of your shoes, leaking out from the bottom of the door — and carrying a note with it. It begins:

It's my birthday today!

pauses for raucous applause

Thank you, thank you, yes it's very impressive I know.

To mark this momentous occasion I've decided to release a game I made in a post-convention haze and will never finish. It's not a very good game, but it's a very funny game, and more importantly it allows me to ask for some jolly cooperation (I've been working my way through Dark Souls, by the way).

I'm going to post the game text first and then I'll get into how I'd like your help adding to it. Here goes!

System Agnostic Fishing Minigame™

System Agnostic Fishing Minigame™ is a quick and easy way to insert fishing into any tabletop roleplaying game! Lasers and Feelings? More like Lures and Fishing! Blades in the Dark? More like Fish in the Dark! Wanderhome? More like! Fishplace-you-can-never-go-back-to!

It’s so easy.*

*If you are having trouble integrating System Agnostic Fishing Minigame into your game, consider that you’re doing it wrong. Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

HOW TO PLAY SYSTEM AGNOSTIC FISHING MINIGAME

STEP ONE

Get your character to some water. In case you didn’t know, that’s where fish live. In the water.*

*”Oh but my game doesn’t have water in i-” Explosion.

STEP TWO

Get a bag. The bag should be big enough to stick your fist into and should be made out of an opaque material.

STEP TWO PART TWO

I have provided you with some fish. You can either cut the fish out, crumple them up, and put them in the bag OR you can cut the fish out, glue them onto some tokens, and stick those in the bag. You’ll notice all the fish are sized to fit on

1 Inch Wood Coins 200-Count Round Wooden Slice for Crafts, Unfinished Natural Wood Discs Thickness 4MM

. You’re welcome.

If you feel the need to make the fish smaller for whatever reason, don’t. That’s going directly against my artistic vision and I will be forced to take legal action.*

*I don’t know what laws are.

STEP TWO PART THREE

PUT THE FISH IN THE BAG 🔫

STEP THREE 🙂

Put ur hand in the bag and pull out a fish. Congrats!!!!!!!! You have successfully gone fishing!!!!!!!!!!!!!

STEP FOUR (OPTIONAL)

Consult the SYSTEM AGNOSTIC FISHING MINIGAME FISH ENCYCLOPEDIA™ to see what kind of fish you have caught.

WARNING

Once you know what kind of fish you have you cannot go back. This may have consequences such as: giving your character a problem they have to deal with in game and therefore forcing you to “role-play”.

Be so fucking careful out there ok.

SYSTEM AGNOSTIC FISHING MINIGAME FISH ENCYCLOPEDIA™

1. A small fish. It has pretty green scales.
2. Another small fish. This one is kinda blue-ish
3. This ones big actually. Nice.
4. Ok now this one? This one is completely average sized. Like actually it is the most average sized fish I’ve ever seen. That’s actually kinda fucked up. Is it… is it growing and shrinking a bit? Like as other people fish and the known record of fish sizes changes I think it’s changing its size in order to stay perfectly average sized. What the fuck.
5. Pink fish :3
6. A bass. Like from earth. An Earth Bass.
7. U fucked up this one is just trash actually.

• C’mon every fishing minigame has to have a chance for u to pull up trash and that's this one. It’s either an old boot or an empty broken bottle of some kind. If you have actual tokens (good job) you can flip the token to decide which it is.

8. An eel! Nice!
9. A really cool fish. It’s got sunglasses and everything.
10. A dead fish

• Aw man 🙁

11. An undead fish

• Hey what the fuck

12. A fish made out of printer ink

• This for sure shouldnt be in the water

13. A fish with a sponsorship

• No im not going to tell you what the sponsorship is i sure as fuck didnt get paid for that

14. Fish that is going to be sooooo tasty and good to eat

• Sometimes u can tell just by lookin at em

15. Cat-fish :3
16. Bomb Fish

• 10
• 9
• 8
• 7
• 6
• 5
• 4
• 3
• 2
• 1
• Explosion.

17. Fish that needs a ride to the airport

• It does not have gas money but will owe u one

18. Fish that wants to send you to hell

• Aw no :( aw man it really wants to send you to hell, idk what to do abt this one it’s really determined. Look it’s got angry eyebrows and everything you’re kinda fucked here. Idk what you did but this fish fucking hates you and wants you to go to hell so bad.*
• *”but my setting doesn’t have hell in it!”
• It does now.

19. Me :)

• and before you go off saying im not a fish im literally a pisces sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

20. A Fishblade

• seems controversial but alright

And that's all I got! Now, I ask that you, dear reader, create a fish for the SYSTEM AGNOSTIC FISHING MINIGAME FISH ENCYCLOPEDIA™.

It is quite easy to do so: simply pick a number and create a fish to go with it. The fish should be able to fit on a one-inch token but the description can be as long as you like. Here's an example from my friend Mel:

21. A fish with full bush

• ;3

Now best case scenario I would like to see these lovely fish, and to assist with this I have enabled comments on this post. However, that doesn't matter for the game and thus you can put your fish wherever you like! Stick them in a notebook, on a wall, on a business card, on someone else's business card, in a different game, or in a body of water (you know, where fish go).

Maybe one day I'll create a template to put these fish into and print them out, but that will not be today. In the meantime, happy fishing!

• N.A.