Every year I try to look back and make a list of the games I played. I failed to do this for 2022, and I took my sweet time doing it for 2023. Anyway, here’s the list:
13th Age: Ran a short adventure (Swords Against Owlbears), and started an ongoing campaign using 13th age for the D&D adventure Dragon Heist. Its going… okay? I like the system, but converting a 5e adventure to another system is often quite a bit of work.
A Wolf By Any Other Name: A New World Magischola larp game, where everyone is a wizard student locked in detention and also there are werewolves. The scenario presents werewolves as a (wrongfully?) maligned minority, so its an opportunity for people to try to stand up and do what’s right. I played a character who was anti-werewolf, and I went pretty hard on that, being a source of social antagonism. Several players thanked me after the game for taking that role on and providing adversity. Which I really appreciate, because I felt like such an asshole.
Apocalypse Keys: Ran a 2 part session to try out the game. A bunch of horrifying monsters try (and fail) to stop an extraplanar library from devouring the archives department of DIVISION. Whoops.
Band of Blades: Finished up my Band of Blades campaign, which took pretty much a year total to run. This is longer than I originally intended, but it was a game with a lot of great moments that still sticks with me. If dark military fantasy is a genre you’re interested, I would definitely recommend trying this at least once. (But be careful not to linger too long in the first few areas, or the campaign might overstay its welcome.)
Cozytown: A nice easy going town-drawing game, sort of an anti-Quiet Year where instead of dealing with adversity and scarcity, you add nice new things to your cozy town. Our town was skeletons in heaven, kept companion by their ghost dogs and angelic crystals, having a super chill time in the afterlife.
Dungeons, Dishes, & Dragons: A cooking larp at Becon, using lego construction for cooking. I liked the cooking minigame, and it did a fun job of simulating the chaos of working in a busy kitchen. People had some great costumes in this.
Dungeons & Dragons: Colin finished up his Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign this year, which was a pretty fun campaign. Its similar to Tomb of Annihilation, in that it has a sort of hexcrawly-wilderness survival portion, ending in a big dungeon crawl, though I think both the hexcrawl and the dungeon crawl are bigger in Tomb. A solid campaign though with some climactic set pieces and plenty of choices for the PCs to make.
I also played a series of D&D Adventurer’s League games at Gameholecon, playing Barbie the Barbarian.
Forbidden Lands: I started the year eager to run this, a Year Zero Engine dark fantasy hex crawl. My favorite bits were the hexcrawl parts, the actual mechanics not so much. I feel like I got my mileage of putting some stickers on the map and exploring some weird random encounters (like a wandering cult that seemed to be everyone’s focus.)
Hell is Other Vampires: This was a larp event at Becon, where everything was stripped down to a simple scenario ending up in a Mexican standoff between a bunch of vampires that hate each other. Everyone has a random scenario role and a random weapon, and the scenario points everyone at each other. An absolute blast.
Matters of State: This is a political discussion/voting game that was in playtest at Forge. I played a civilization that used Generative AI for its decision making, which basically boiled down to being very confident in random decisions. I went all in on this, rolling some dice to determine my policy preferences, and then very confidently backfilling in the reasoning for them.
Monster of the Weak (Midnight Frontiers): I got to play in a Wild West themed game at Forge, where I was a grizzled old prospector who stumbled into helping to solve the mystery.
Necronautilus: You’re ghosts, on a space-ship, working for death and using magic words to overcome challenges. Absolutely gonzo, the rules are a little barebones but this is solid for a one-shot or short series.
Paranoia: I played a Larp scenario at Be-Con, titled Absolutely None of This is My Fault, where we were all high programmers, trying to achieve our own agendas, and occasionally keep Alpha Complex running. I had a blast with this, and even won the “Friend Computer’s Best Friend Award,” because I was the only player who remembered to vote.
Pirate Borg: I started running a game of this, featuring lots of fun pirate hijinx, swashbuckling, and salty sea dogs. I was skeptical about Pirate Borg, but its a refreshing take on the typical OSR play.
Savage Worlds: I played in a multi-table event at Gameholecon, featuring multiple parties exploring a spooky manor during a Halloween party. There were some issues with the event, but I had a lot of fun playing Lacey Apples, movie star.
Shadowrun: This was my jam, back in my college days, spending hours of lonely fun poring over rulebooks trying to optimize my character. I played in a Shadowrun tournament at Gencon on a whim, and my team got 2nd place, so I was hooked gain. I played in an event at Gamehole and then started playing in the local Shadowrun Missions (organized play) group.
Spacewurm vs. Moonicorn: Possibly the weirdest PbtA game I have, I finally got this to the table at Forge, where Spacewurm and Moonicorn faced off for the fate of the galaxy. A great pulp sci-fi adventure romp, but everyone needs to be 110% on board.
Subversion: Subversion is kind of an anti-Shadowrun, where you do odd jobs to help the community, with characters built from familiar cyberpunk tropes. The dice mechanic also seemed kind of reverse-Shadowrun, but I don’t remember much more than that. Seemed mostly gimmicky.
Tiny Taverns: Sabe ran a short campaign. A fantasy game where you’re the staff at a tavern. Cute, with rules for seeing how well you do your mundane tasks, but from the player’s perspective it seemed like it relied upon the GM a lot to make things happen. A fun premise though.
Trophy Dark: Sabe ran the first session of this, which got wrapped up early in 2024 Will we get through the wintry forest to complete the Carol of the Bells? (Spoilers: yes, but at what cost?)
Velveteen Heart: The last game of Be-con, players are preschoolers playing with their stuffed animals. A nice game to chill and explore your inner child.
Willow Rants 