Sock Puppets

Sock Puppets is an award-winning tabletop RPG about a failing children's television series. Make real, actual puppets and use them to ruin a perfectly good puppet show.

• 👤3-6 Players
• ⏲️40 - 80 Minutes
• ✂️ Crafting
• 🤝 GM-less

In Sock Puppets, you'll act as both puppets and their troubled puppeteers, each with baggage they're taking onto the show. Someone is trying to get a vape sponsorship; someone is pushing their cult; someone wants to make their cat famous.

It's a mess, basically.

The game is a 38-page zine filled with awkward relationships, messy personal agendas, goofy characters, episode ideas and a handful of rules. It's designed to be picked up and played with no work in advance – well, except for getting a bunch of puppet-making materials. But you could all just take off a sock and shove a hand in there if you're feeling lazy and gross.

Sock Puppets is lovingly designed in the style of petty squabbling games like Ghost Court or Fiasco. It's a playful, crafty, fast-paced game that will get all your friends talking in wretched little puppet voices almost immediately.

But don't take my word for it. Here's Ian Howard, designer behind 5-Star Match and One Breath Left, with an accolade so glowing that I'm almost too shy to put it here:

Kurt is one of my favorite people and designers, and Sock Puppets is the Kurtiest game imaginable. That is to say: it’s whimsical, funny, artful, elegant, insightful, and suffused with loving reverence for all the quirks and foibles that make us human.

This game purchase includes:

• A 38-page PDF, with dozens of illustrations by Xan Farley
• A full audiobook version (as MP3 files)
• An online play tool to quickly create characters in Google Sheets

Eventually, you'll also get access to a video where a puppet narrates the entire game rules. I don't know if that's good or bad; it's just true.

Physical copies will be available through Compose Dream Games (Canada, UK) and Indie Press Revolution (US). This section will be updated with links when purchasing options become available.

Huge thanks to all the backers of the 2025 Kickstarter campaign.

You can watch the game played here:

If you're dealing with financial hardship (or just on the fence about picking up a copy), you can download the "demo version" for free. The demo contains the full game text, but no illustrations, pretty formatting, audiobook files, or access to the spreadsheet tool for online play. You can reach the demo download page by using the password "no-art".