The Big Store and Nathan D. Paoletta

What is The Big Store?

The Big Store is a tabletop roleplaying game where you play confidence tricksters running a game on a greedy mark. Each time you play you tell the story of a crew running a con game. Each character has a job to do (like the Roper, who brings in the mark, or the Insider, who runs the titular "big store" to make the sting possible). The mark, and the world around the cons, is played by a "game master" kind of role called the Manager. The players come up with a general plan for how to build a false reality around the mark that convinces them to part with their money. Then you play out the game by seeing how your plans are complicated or foiled by the Manager, the fall of the dice... and possibly the other players. It's a collaborative game in that you're all working towards a common goal, but has some of the underhanded elements we love to see in these kinds of stories. Ultimately, it's a game where you explore how con games are built and see how well you can pull one off on a greedy mark who deserves what's coming to 'em!

What was your inspiration for designing this tabletop game?

I'm a big fan of these kinds of stories, and The Big Store is directly inspired by movies like The Sting and Brother's Bloom and TV shows like The Rockford Files and Leverage. I find it really satisfying to watch professionals doing their job well to create wild and fantastic circumstances in which greedy and misanthropic marks get what they deserve. Like many things that are (probably) more fun to play as a game than experience in real life, I wanted to find a way to bring these stories to the table to explore the big ups and downs of the "big store" classic con game. It's a niche that players don't need a lot of genre knowledge to enjoy, with eccentric language and tropes that make it fun to explore. It's fundamentally just an interesting space for collaborative play.

What are some surprises that some players might encounter when playing?

So, con games are generally very structured, very specific endeavors. A lot of the drama comes from seeing how well the con artists anticipate the reactions of the mark and what contingency plans they have in place for sudden changes. As an audience member, the compelling part of the story is often that moment where it looks like everything is about to fall apart... but it's actually all part of the plan! The Big Store creates lots of opportunities for those moments to emerge in play, with rules that help the players fold mischance back into their scheme to keep it all running. There's also some nuance to how characters work that I think only really become apparent if you play the same character through multiple games. It's designed primarily as a single-session, pick-up-and-play kind of game, but you can play out multiple cons with the same characters and I look forward to players mastering the tools they have on their sheet over time.

What was your favorite part of development with this role-playing game?

I got to do a lot of research on the "golden age" of con games (well captured by the movie The Sting). Getting into more of the history was super interesting, and I was able to translate some of that into the big-picture kinds of con game "plans" I put in the book as models for your own games. The most popular (and effective) games of the era were well-known by cons who could assemble ad-hoc groups to run them as they moved through the country. Games like "The Wire" and "The Rag" hinged on a location staffed by shills and bit players hired for just a few hours to play as bettors or investors, just to lend realism to the mark's experience. That location was called the big store, which I adopted as the name of the game. So, that history is interesting and also grounds the game in some real-world context, which makes it easier for players to run with their ideas. But of course, the best part was playtesting and experiencing all the wild, creative stuff players come up with as they put together their cons!