Cafe90 (EN)

Welcome to the Café

Café 90 is a light roleplaying game inspired by sitcoms from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.

Create ordinary people, give them ordinary lives, and watch relatively manageable problems spiral wildly out of proportion.

Life unfolds before the internet becomes part of everything. Missing a phone call can matter; finding someone might mean crossing the city. Errands, dates and awkward conversations happen in person.

The characters are not heroes. They are ordinary people, though that might include vampires, witches, androids or ghosts if they fit your sitcom's tone.

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What do you do in Café 90?

Create your sitcom, its cast and the place where everyone somehow keeps meeting.

Draw cards to introduce obstacles and determine how difficult things become. When an action could go wrong, choose how your character approaches the problem, roll the dice for their style, and see what happens.

Success moves the story forward. Failure makes things more complicated and gives you Ketchup, which can help you later when you really need a break.

A simple problem might begin with a missed phone call, an important meeting or a forgotten birthday and end with a ruined jacket, a terrible lie or everyone trying to avoid the same neighbor.

Narration is shared by the group. Take turns presenting scenes, interpret the cards together and let consequences become tomorrow's problems.

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Episodes and Seasons

One session is one episode.

Each episode begins with a problem that needs to be solved. Cards introduce complications and help determine when the story is approaching its finale.

Six episodes make a season. Characters can pursue personal season goals, develop new abilities and carry consequences, relationships, lost objects and recurring characters from one episode to the next.

Play one episode, play a season, or keep going until your sitcom has told all the stories you want from it.

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What kind of stories can you play?

Café 90 can support many different sitcom settings and tones.

Your characters might be roommates in New York, coworkers in a terrible office, regulars at a café in Istanbul, students sharing an apartment, or supernatural creatures trying very hard to live normal lives.

The setting can change. The important part does not:

Ordinary people. Huge problems.

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What do you need to play?

You need a standard 52-card deck with no jokers; two of each die used by your chosen styles (d4, d10 and d20); a d6 for the generators; pencils, paper and tokens to track Ketchup.

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Inside the Game

• Three different character styles with their own dice mechanics
• Simple tests built around a standard deck of playing cards
• Character abilities and season goals
• Ketchup, because failure should eventually be useful
• Object sacrifices that can create future episodes
• Generators for episodes and season objectives
• Oracles for people, places and objects
• Character and series sheets
• A one-page quick reference for the table

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A missed call. A lie that went too far. A jacket still sitting in the store.
There is always a reason to come back to the café.

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AI Disclosure:
Visuals and layout were created with the assistance of AI.
The game system was designed, developed and playtested by humans.

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Looking for a different kind of adventure?

Try Midgard Offline, a rules-light solo and GM-less co-op RPG about running an adventurer guild, building parties, exploring dangerous places, and bringing your heroes home alive.

Visit Midgard Offline on itch.io