Electric Bastionland is a game by Chris McDowall, author of Into the Odd (a pretty influential OSR game). One of its key selling points are the Failed Careers (equivalents to classes or kits). In Electric Bastionland, every character has a failed career (and a colossal debt), which helps explains why they’d be willing to risk theirs lives delving dungeons in the pursuit of treasure. Of the of the most fun (but also saddest) failed careers is the Good Dog.

Electric Bastionland also has a novel setting, one that I’ve characterized as “anarcho-Fabian,” and basically a satire of democratic socialism in Britain. The city of Bastion (the only city that matters) has no (known) central authority, and is instead run by autonomous borough councils. Anything necessary to live can be gotten for free (free housing, free food, free healthcare), but in the British tradition it’s all of poor quality and takes forever to queue for. Almost everyone is in a union, the concept of unions has devolved into either social clubs or secret societies. In general, capitalism runs amok, and with the frontier completely exhausted (every other city and nation has been destroyed by Bastion or has been completely hollowed out by emigration and market forces), capitalism has turned inwards to increasingly surreal hyper-exploitation at home.

Anyways, the game is fun and pretty easy to play. There’s only so much mechanical depth, but it’s great for short campaigns and for running dungeon crawls.