A blogwagon initiative started by Lady Tabletop on the Dice Exploder Discord server that’s making a bit of waves, and a way for me to unpack and debrief this year of tabletop RPG obsession.

This past year I finally managed to actually run a few campaigns! I’d like to have an ongoing, long-term game, for now I’m happy to have casual pick-up groups meeting regularly with like-minded freaks.

Pointless Stats

• I played 4 sessions outdoors. Way to get some fresh air!
  • The climax of my Orbital Blues game was at a riverbank at sunset.
• I played 2 sessions online.
• I ran 6 different games this year, including 3 campaigns.
• I played 5 sessions without a dedicated GM.
• I recorded playing 19 different games.

Campaigns Completed

For this list, a “campaign” is a series of connected games that:

• were played with a closed table (every player at every session)
• had a dedicated session zero
• played more than one session

Cyberpunk RED

My favorite part of RED is easily the setting: Night City in the Time of the Red is when corporations are at their weakest, yet still have a finger in just about every aspect of life. The Dark Future has advanced, and now features AI assistant smartphones with the possibility of viral internet fame. I’m not particularly fond of the system, even after playing for over a year I still needed to consult skill descriptions and pull up the to-hit table every combat.

I’m kinda burned on crunchy trad games and skill list games after this one – we had a lot of play culture clashes, communication issues, and asymmetric knowledge (players knew setting and rules better than GM) that kept us from having the most fun. But, we finished it, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of other campaigns I’ve been a part of.

Orbital Blues

This was a new game for everyone involved, and while the players were more than eager to meet me halfway (one built the crew’s spaceplane in Kerbel Space Program and got it to reach orbit!) I wasn’t completely comfortable with the system or the sandbox in the back of the book I dropped them into for the first few sessions. Giving it a bit of time (and more aggressive Blues checks), we discovered the system was lightweight and easy to work with. As the crew caused chaos, the sandbox reacted, and pieces fell into place, giving us a story of our very own. After 6 sessions, we had an explosive climax and some very sad space cowboys skipping town.

Star Wars d20

Andor S2 got one of my friends thinking things, and we did a spy thriller one (three) shot set on Courscant. I wanted to play WEG Star Wars, but our characters definitely didn’t have that amount of plot armor. We trad game’d this one – I know for a fact the guy running this didn’t read the skills chapter (we used Advantage at some point). Definitely not my style.

Regardless of the system, playing Star Wars with classic extended universe lore is fun. (Also Andor is excellent.)

The Wildsea

Wildsea’s setting and culture drew me to the game, and the flexible core system kept me coming back. Twists are an excellent addition to the FitD dice pool, and you can steal them for any similar game. Our Wildsailors got pulled into a bait & switch situation as they discovered an analog horror deadmall straight from the 90’s. This caused a ton of dramatic irony for the players as we knew exactly what was happening but our sailors lacked any context. While the cultures and sailing loop might not have been relevant in the depths of the mysterious pre-V mall, the game as a whole is incredibly charming, and the table is clamoring for more.

Daggerheart

I played a short campaign using the Age of Umbra campaign frame and ran a one (two) shot using the generator in the book and some tables from Worlds Without Number.

In short: this game isn’t a trad game, it’s a narrative game with a bunch of abilities like those you’d find in a trad game. As a certified WoDu freak, this was like catnip to me: I get to do my usual gimmick and make up enemy abilities on the fly, spending Fear to justify it to the players; and players get to chose from cool abilities and have the ultimate plot armor: no-selling death. The one-shot was the best kind of chaos, and involving the players in the worldbuilding resulted in a strange land we found compelling.

The campaign was more of a mixed bag: the GM seemed to be expecting the game to operate like a trad game and it doesn’t quite work that way. We had a bit of difficulty getting into real trouble (nobody made a death move, despite my best efforts), but I did get some juicy melodrama as my wizard’s former student came back looking for blood, and that’s enough to keep me hooked. For next time, I’ll need to make drama more directly plot-relevant and hooked to another PC, possibly in a PC-NPC-PC triangle.

Open table campaigns

A format new to me this year: a series of RPG sessions with an interconnected story and characters, but not necessarily the same players. A casual, drop in, drop out experience.

FIST

I ran the reality-twisting, fractal-infused Mandelbrot Set campaign over three sessions and absolutely loved it. The recent revisions make it easier to run, and it’s jammed full of absolutely bizarre situations for the squad to run into. You will be shocked as FIST finds ever new and creative ways to engage the enemy, using tools from one reality to solve problems in another.

For a one-shot, I ran mathematical thriller House of Cards and Numbers where FIST infiltrates a casino run by a sinister organization. Great fun with tons of opportunity for shenanigans, Hitman Trilogy style. Turns into an action-packed train chase and snowy mountainside escape in back half. (We were running short on time so I had to cut out the third act entirely!) Plenty of tactical options available to players at all times, and procedure and NPC behaviors, including a full-on villain monologue I encouraged my players to skip when they got bored (they did not get bored). Free on Itch.

I still love FIST: I’ll bust it out at every opportunity. The high camp inspirations of Metal Gear and The A-Team combine with the flexible WoDu chassis to let just about anything be possible while still keeping enough grit to be threatening. You can complete the mission by running in guns blazing, but it’ll take a few mercs, and you want to keep the one you started with, right?

Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast

I can’t believe how effective “rule 1: the rules don’t really matter that much, just relax and have fun” was, but when there’s no way to get injured or die, the art is fun, and the game is described as a lost collection of fanfics with some chapters missing… yeah, just relax and have fun, run the game on vibes. Who cares if we’re exactly following the rules, they’re just fun prompts to get character moments. I guess what I’m getting at is, sometimes I want a cage that says “have fun!” on it.

I loved this game, and I can’t wait to play more of it. Every session grows more and more resonant in my mind.

Brindlewood Bay

I only knew about the show-stopping Theorize roll going in, and… for a casual, low-prep, pick-up game, it’s excellent! It perfectly sells the fantasy of watching some kinda trashy detective show you can’t get enough of, and in the moment the dream logic of RPG’s makes everything gel together. We’re still dialing in the core gameplay loop, the Meddling roll, and the various Crowns, but I’m excited to see what the Murder Mavens get up to next. The official scenarios are also hilarious and ripe for meddling.

2400: Junior Hybrid Battle Cryptids

This was a surprise hit with my one-shot group: 2400 is incredibly easy to pick up and play, this microgame’s theme is broadly appealing (eve-RY bo-DY knows THIS ca~-DENCE), and we were quickly able to whip up a bickering family of cryptids who discover plot hooks everywhere they look. I ran this GM-less with a bunch of random oracles (guess I’m collecting those now), with the core system and tables giving us a ton to work with. Doing an awful freestyle bar then rolling a fistful of cubes was a highlight.

One-Shots

Any RPG session that was intended to be a standalone or didn’t get renewed for a second session.

Ruins & Rogues

Tim B.’s lightweight dungeon crawling system, featuring a cute core mechanic. I was able to quickly get a weird blorbo and send them into a dungeon, hoping for their survival. In true OSR fashion, fighting isn’t the best way to resolve fights, and the answer to most problems wasn’t on our character sheet. I played this online and ran into some awkwardness with the delay (plus I realized halfway through I was spoiled on the adventure, whoops), but I wouldn’t say no to more of this. I’d take it over B/X!

5e ‘24

Unfortunately for me, proximity to 5e players means sometimes I have to play 5e. (I wanted to play Monster of the Week but the table was full.)

I randomly selected a pregen Rogue and got settled in with some funny banter (sentai themed game). I got bored very quickly in combat when it took 30 minutes (!!) for a turn to get back to me. I did get some help from the table to find good bits, but there’s only so many ways we could find to describe Attack then Hide.

Bless 5e players, they’re stronger than me. In spite of my gripes, I had some fun. You think I’m gonna turn down the chance to make anime dub noises then scream-whisper “SNEAK ATTACK!!!”?

Pokeymanz

We were doing a Mystery Dungeon type game and I didn’t know who the lore characters were, so I just followed the rest of the table’s lead until we got into a fight. Character creation was a lot of fun, and delightfully easy. The Savage Worlds exploding dice and the goofiness of being a talking animal thing was more than enough entertainment for me.

I wanted the Blaziken to Blaze Kick my Spheal at something – just the image is making me grin.

Level Up: Advanced 5e

It’s 5e with funky dice for skills. We did the Voidrunner science fantasy (Wars coded) setting.

Definitely not what I’m looking for, at least with a pregen in a pre-planned plot. We had Long Rests after every fight so there was no tension.

I appreciate the additional options everyone gets! Some of them are kinda fun, and they’re effects-based, giving me a fun prompt to explain how my pilot character dodges the laser blasts heading his way.

Mothership

This was an impromptu game set up at the last minute, using material from a handful of sourcebooks smashed together. While we didn’t make an aggressive number of panic checks, we did poke around the vacuum-sealed location until there was nothing left to do but Risky RPG Hijinks, leading to an encounter with an alien! Miraculously, our last shotgun shell took it down long enough for us to escape in one piece. Problem-solving with common sense while risking death was a ton of fun.

Also someone put the Speed Sandwich in here. Nice!

Monster of the Week

A cheeky little pick-up one shot, using the new playbooks. It’s great fun! While I didn’t seek out chances to use my Monstrous playbook moves until the climax… I used them to create a third act twist and set up a bizarre mystery TV show, which is exactly what I was looking for. I’d love to check this game out in a longer campaign – it’s a PbtA favorite, after all.

Golden Sky Stories

We had a drastic setting change to a Rankin/Bass style holiday special, which combined with a large table unfamiliar with the rules to result in what I think was not the intended play experience. But, I was charmed by the rules snippets I did see, and I was more than happy to meet the game halfway. Next time, I’d like to play with a smaller group with the setting in the book, and focus on warming the hearts of children.

Draw Steel

The only note I wrote for this game was “forced movement gud.” This is all you need to know to play the game with decent efficiency.

I wound up liking this game a lot more than I thought I would, given my gripes about 5e above, but I had a large number of options available to me, and even if “kick” was my most used Maneuver, I had to carefully position every time to ensure I was kicking for maximum damage.

There’s a lot of fun worldbuilding in the rules text, particularly in the character backgrounds and motivations. It’s an aggressively opinionated game, which I found engaging and exciting.

Remix

I’m still kinda obsessed with the WoDu family, the child of Basic D&D and the 2d6+mod thing from Apocalypse World. However, the mechanics-adverse group I played with didn’t want to bother reading any lists that went past one page, or roll for stats, so this was a miss for them. I’m still on the hunt for the right group for this, one as obsessed with FIST as me.

Oh Captain My Captain

My first time playing a GM-less, prompt-based game! This was… actually a lot of fun. Using a generous amount of “yes, and” or “no, but”, we were able to spin a captivating tale of our captain of industry looking for one last grand stock market pump & dump scheme in a cross between Wolf of Wall Street and Succession, ending with our captain betraying us for a cabinet position in the White House. (Really hope this doesn’t become too topical in the near future.)

This game’s great, and since it’s diceless and does character creation on the fly, you can pull it out and play with any group of friends. I’ll see about twisting the arms of folks to play a bit more frequently.

Superlatives

Next year’s campaign

Not necessarily a game I played this year - I’ve been getting hopped up on the collaborative worldbuilding and DIY elfgame juice, and with the right table (I can probably assemble it from the players around me) there’s some exciting collaborative gaming on the horizon for me.

Games I could use for this campaign include Daggerheart, Nimble, World of Dungeons Remix, Fabula Ultima, or maybe Vagabond or Dragon Slayers or a 2400 hack.

Next one shot

It’s gotta be 2400. I was skeptical when the Itch page said “if you grabbed a game you could be playing by now” but it’s right! It’s the essence of Into the Odd with just enough rules to keep us on the same page. There’s a bunch of microgames included, and the associated community’s made quite a few hacks to choose from, so I’m confident I can match whatever mood comes my way.

Best GM experience

Out of the various games I ran, I had the best time running Mandelbrot Set. Maybe I’m on the same wavelength as CLAYMORE, maybe the weird fractal setting excused any weirdness that cropped up, but I spent maybe 10 minutes rolling on tables before each session and had hours of fascinating material ready to go. Excellent for open tables and dedicated campaigns – offer unlockable Fractal Traits to make PC’s even weirder.