Table of Contents
Or, Cnidaria and Punishment
A game for three to five players,
by David J Prokopetz
Playtest Version 0.3
Jellyfish Felonies is written and edited by David J Prokopetz. Illustrations by Camille “Karma” O'Leary. Special thanks to copperbadge for suggesting the subtitle “Cnidaria and Punishment”.
This document uses the fonts “Nunito” by Vernon Adams and “Poppins” by Indian Type Foundry, both under license through the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
Jellyfish Felonies © 2021 Penguin King Games. The text of this document is licensed under CC BY 4.0 
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This game is a work of fiction; any resemblance to real people living or dead is frankly inexplicable. These are jellyfish. What sort of people do you know?
Note: This document may not represent the most up-to-date version of Jellyfish Felonies. You can always find the latest revision at the following address:
https://penguinking.com/jellyfish-felonies/
Jellyfish Felonies is a game about jellyfish crime, which is crime, for jellyfish.
This is a game for three to five players, plus optional GM. You'll need ten six-died dice (10d6), and a supply of at least ten coins (or other tokens) per player.
Like all jellyfish, your Player Character has three key Attributes: Drift Aimlessly, Philosophise, and Commit Fraud. Distribute five (5) dice among your key Attributes, or roll on the table below. You must assign at least one die to each Attribute.
| d6 | Drift Aimlessly | Philosophise | Commit Fraud |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 dice | 1 die | 1 die |
| 2 | 2 dice | 1 die | 2 dice |
| 3 | 2 dice | 2 dice | 1 die |
| 4 | 1 die | 1 die | 3 dice |
| 5 | 1 die | 2 dice | 2 dice |
| 6 | 1 die | 3 dice | 1 die |
Each Player Character also begins with three points of Ill-Gotten Gains, representing the remaining proceeds of past perfidies. Take a number of coins equal to your Ill-Gotten Gains.
Think about what makes your jellyfish's appearance unique. Do they have striking colouration? An unusual number of tentacles? A particularly stylish hat? Make a note of two or three key features that make them stand out from the crowd.
Finally, give your jellyfish a suitably felonious name. If nothing springs to mind, you can roll or choose on the following table for inspiration.
| d66 | Prefix | Name | Suffix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11–12 | Aqueous | Annie | Bell |
| 13–14 | Bobbing | Betty | Bloom |
| 15–16 | Deep | Charlie | Cellophane |
| 21–22 | Diaphanous | Dory | Cnidaria |
| 23–24 | Fluid | Eddie | Four-Arms |
| 25–26 | Fluttering | Frankie | Littoral |
| 31–32 | Membranous | Gracie | Medusa |
| 33–34 | Moist | Jacky | Nematocyte |
| 35–36 | Pulsating | Jimmy | No-Brain |
| 41–42 | Slick | Joey | Ocean |
| 43–44 | Slow | Johnny | Pelagic |
| 45–46 | Smooth | Lizzie | Plankton |
| 51–52 | Spineless | Margie | Polyp |
| 53–54 | Stinging | Patty | Reef |
| 55–56 | Transparent | Rosie | Saline |
| 61–62 | Venomous | Suzie | Tentacles |
| 63–64 | Viscid | Tommy | Tropic |
| 65–66 | Wiggling | Willy | Umbrella |
Play proceeds in scenes. In each scene, the Player Characters are presented with an opportunity to secure Ill-Gotten Gains. This opportunity is described by the GM; if you're playing without a GM, the group can brainstorm an opportunity by consensus, or roll on the tables provided in Appendix A: Random Felonies.
As you attempt to seize the opportunity before you, you'll be presented with various challenges. In order to overcome a challenge, roll a number of dice equal to the relevant Attribute, as follows.
Your jellyfish may Drift Aimlessly to evade danger, blame, notice or responsibility. Roll a number of dice equal to your Attribute, and select the highest single die. If the highest result is a 6, pick two from the following list; if the highest result is a 4 or 5, pick one.
If your highest result is a 3 or less, gain one point of Entanglement. The GM (or the player to your left if you're playing without a GM) describes the resulting mess.
The deep wisdom of jellyfish can be turned to serve your perfidious ends. Roll a number of dice equal to your Attribute, and select the highest single die. If your highest result is a 4 or better, choose one from the following list.
If your highest result is a 3 or less, gain one point of Contemplation. Also, you confuse yourself into believing something that isn't true, chosen by the GM (or by the player to your left if you're playing without a GM).
Though tax evasion is a jellyfish's true passion, they're flexible creatures; their talents may thus be turned to fraud and larceny of all sorts. Roll a number of dice equal to your Attribute, and select the highest single die. If the highest result is a 6, pick two from the following list; if the highest result is a 4 or 5, pick one.
If your highest result is a 3 or less, gain one point of Liability. In addition, you lose something you already had, chosen by the GM (or by the player to your left if you're playing without a GM).
Unlike other Attributes, Ill-Gotten Gains aren't rolled as a dice pool. Rather, you can spend points of Ill-Gotten Gains after any roll in order to purchase additional options from the relevant Attribute's list, on a one-for-one basis. You can do this even if your highest result is a 3 or less, but doing so doesn't negate any Entanglement, Contemplation or Liability gained. Describe how the proceeds of your various crimes – stolen goods, influence, favours owed, etc. – aid you.
At the end of each scene, the GM awards a number of points of Ill-Gotten Gains equal to the number of Player Characters, divided up as they see fit. If you're playing without a GM (or if the GM decides to defer to the group's judgement), each player votes for the jellyfish they believe made the best showing for themselves, with each jellyfish receiving a number of points of Ill-Gotten Gains equal to the number of votes they receive. You may not vote for your own jellyfish.
Jellyfish have a fraught relationship with violence. On the one hand, you've got all those lovely venomous stingers. On the other hand, you're not particularly fast or strong, so if you want to put them to good use, you'll have to be sneaky.
Sneaking up on a target to sting them is a Drift Aimlessly roll. If you make the roll and choose to avoid notice, you can sting them. What happens next is up to the GM (or group consensus, if there's no GM); if it's plausible that the target could be affected by your venom, they're knocked unconscious for a few minutes. Otherwise, they're probably pretty annoyed! If you target another Player Character, they get their own Drift Aimlessly roll to avoid you as well.
A failed roll means you get caught in the act.
In games without a GM, players take turns leading the scene. Whoever most recently filed their taxes starts out as the spotlight player. When you have the spotlight, you drive the action, and the other players react and fill in any needed details.
You keep the spotlight for just long enough to make one Attribute roll. After that roll's outcome has been described, your jellyfish fades into the background for a bit, and the player to your right takes the spotlight. You still play as your jellyfish when you're not in the spotlight, but you're a supporting character.
Only the spotlight player can initiate rolls, though you can still make rolls outside the spotlight if you're forced to do so by the spotlight player's actions – for example, rolling Drift Aimlessly to avoid the fallout of something they did! In return, non-spotlight players can step into the roles of any non-player characters the spotlight player's jellyfish interacts with; you are both allowed and encouraged to abuse the privilege.
After a number of scenes equal to twice the number of Player Characters, the game is concluded. Each player makes four rolls, with a number of dice equal to their Entanglement, Contemplation, Liability and Ill-Gotten Gains, respectively, noting the sum of the dice for each roll. The outcome is decided as follows:
In the event of a tie, you can choose how you wind up.
This chapter presents a pair of optional rules for emphasising the player-versus-player competition element of Jellyfish Felonies, and for providing more options during character creation. They're intended to be used together, but each can be introduced by itself, with a few caveats.
If you find that Ill-Gotten Gains are piling up until there's no chance of anyone getting eaten at all, and you'd prefer a game with a little more tension than that, you can impose a cost of living: at the start of each scene after the first, reduce each jellyfish's Ill-Gotten Gains by one point.
Doing so will tend to make player-versus-player competition considerably more cutthroat, and will also make players even less willing to spend Ill-Gotten Gains. The next optional rule in this section can help to offset the latter effect by providing an alternative means of boosting the results of your dice rolls. Using the Cost of Living rules alone will result in the jellyfish being somewhat less competent than they are in the basic game, since they can't afford to spend very much Ill-Gotten Gains and won't have anything to make up the difference.
A Quirk is a special trait that helps to flesh out what your jellyfish can do. In addition to its descriptive benefits, a Quirk can be exhausted to choose one extra option after making an Attribute roll. This works exactly like spending Ill-Gotten Gains. Exhausted Quirks recover at the start of each scene.
During character creation, each player should roll or choose twice from the following table, or invent their own Quirks with the group or GM's approval.
| d66 | Quirk |
|---|---|
| 11–13 | Bioluminescent |
| 14–16 | Confusing Colouration |
| 21–23 | Exceptionally Transparent |
| 24–26 | Fast (For a Jellyfish) |
| 31–33 | Fearsome Reputation |
| 34–36 | Long Reach |
| 41–43 | Numerous Eyes |
| 44–46 | Photogenic |
| 51–53 | Sticky Arms |
| 54–56 | Symbiotic Fish Colony |
| 61–63 | Tiny |
| 64–66 | Trustworthy Aura |
| d66 | Crime | Victim |
|---|---|---|
| 11–12 | Arsondon't think about it too hard | Clam |
| 13–14 | Art forgery | Crab |
| 15–16 | Burglary | Eel |
| 21–22 | Blackmail/extortion | Giant isopod |
| 23–24 | Bootlegging | Jellyfish |
| 25–26 | Cheating at gambling | Lobster |
| 31–32 | Counterfeiting | Manatee |
| 33–34 | Election/voting fraud | Manta ray |
| 35–36 | Embezzlement | Narwhal |
| 41–42 | False advertising | Nautilus |
| 43–44 | Impersonation/identity theft | Nudibranch |
| 45–46 | Insurance fraud | Octopus |
| 51–52 | Jury/witness tampering | Seahorse |
| 53–54 | Multi-level marketing | Sponge |
| 55–56 | Selling fake/stolen goods | Squid |
| 61–62 | Smuggling/customs fraud | Starfish |
| 63–64 | Tax evasion | Turtle |
| 65–66 | — Roll twice and combine results — | |
| d66 | Complication |
|---|---|
| 11–13 | The victim has been tricked before |
| 14–16 | A rival is aiming for the same goal |
| 21–23 | The victim is being pursued by a predator |
| 24–26 | You've been given bad information |
| 31–33 | The crime must be carried out in public |
| 34–36 | There's a strangely alert Whale Cop nearby |
| 41–43 | An unrelated crime is already in progress |
| 44–46 | You're interrupted by a curious bystander |
| 51–53 | You look conspicuously out of place |
| 54–56 | The victim is smarter than they look |
| 61–63 | You're mistaken for someone else |
| 64–66 | — Roll twice and combine results — |