Evaluating a Game by it's Third Party Output

 A short post today....because better to post a bit than not at all! While digging through stuff to keep my sanity amidst the long and arduous work days I noticed that my current OSR/Indie darlings....Old-School Essentials and Shadowdark, to be specific, have a metric ton of output from third party publishers online. Shadowdark is measurably immense in the volume of content out there, and just browsing Drivethrurpg.com led me down a rabbit hole and I suddenly have like twelve new books ordered and on the way. OSE is not much different, either.....it's slightly obfuscated by having an identity that is shared with B/X D&D and all the other retroclones it is in direct competition with, but it also has a serious volume of output from the 3PP corner of this hobby.

BRP, to contrast, gets a modicum of love from some very obscure angles in the 3PP space, most of which is actually dominated by the Miskatonic imprint for 3PP from Chaosium and almost all of that is for Call of Cthulhu and not BRP. 

I have a working theory that the more energetic a support base a game has is dependent on just how easy it is for the fans and interested authors/artists to 1: generate content with the rules in question; 2: get that into a presentable PDF/POD form; and 3: the extent to which those 3PP feel that they retain creative control in this process. So the less creative control a 3PP feels they have, the less likely you are to see a high volume of support. There's a 4th factor at work here, too: if a game has enough of a following it will generate 3PP output, regardess of the other factors. This may explain why Pathfinder 2E has a modest but noticeable amount of third party content, but only from those who love the game enough to write for it and also don't mind the vagaries of the ORC license, which I have heard some differing opinions on. Meanwhile the third party output for 5E remains sky high; but the latter is probably driven by creators who also like making money and know that, even today with 5.5E as fractured as it seems, it is still the top dog in town and will sell the most product. 

Anyway.....just some thoughts. Now I must continue to peruse the dozen or so new Shadowdark books (and a few more OSE books) I snagged. 

Permissive vs. Restrictive Design (Or: game systems that let you color inside vs. outside of the box)

 A recent observation on one of my Starfinder/Pathfinder game nights was that some of my gang of players really dig the Pathfinder (and Starfinder) system and relish finding synergies and feat/skill/spell combos and stuff to make for more interesting or effective characters. It's not quite the wild west of the old 3rd edition days where build design and min/maxing was the subgame everyone was so busy playing that actual gameplay was like an afterthought, but it can be noticeably more convoluted and rules-bound than some less restrained systems.

To contrast, Cypher System, and old favorite of mine, is effectively about providing a loose mechanical set of rules that can apply broadly to most situations, and the specifics of how a thing works or what that looks like in play is narratively under the control of the players. 

Then there's D&D 5E which holds a middle ground between the ultra-permissive Cypher System and the ultra-conformist Pathfinder; you have a lot of rules on specific mechanical effects and actions, but within those limits you can generally find some descriptive wiggle room, and its skill system is almost entirely free-form, with lots of area for narrative interpretation. 

What I am realizing is that half my group likes the more creative and expressive RPGs, ones which don't require elaborate system mastery and reward creative expression in play, vs. the other half of the group which loves finding mechanical bits to work together and deploying them within the carefully defined scope of the rules. 

For myself, I prefer the more open ended rulesets, I realize; I do love me some Pathfinder, but only until the harsh realities of the system mastery requirements butt up against the fun and narrative flow; Pathfinder is one of a growing set of games that actually provide defined narrative flow rules (encounter vs. downtime rules and such where you are allowed specific types of actions depending on what mode you are in), while other games such as Cypher System will let the group define such constraints as coincide with the needs of the story, or at least don't encourage restricting the story for the sake of a mechanical contrivance where possible. 

This is not to suggest that a system like Cypher is freeform; it's got rules. But those rules are in service to the plot, and flex within it. It's one of the key reasons Cypher System is so good as a multigenre and weird adventures system; it's mechanics are designed to encourage and exploit creative play. Pathfinder, by contrast, only allows creative freedom when a rules lawyer isn't looking....or put another way, it only  allows for more freeform gameplay when someone breaks the rules.

This has got me to looking at the game systems I have in these terms. Which ones will allow for more creativity and fun within their designs? Which ones want to do that but their mechanical stucture is too weak to allow for it? Which ones are mechanically oppressive and are only fun if you are looking to, as the title says, color within the box?

I know where I put Cypher System: square in Camp Creative, with a rules system designed to encourage and support that creativity. There's the intermediary levels, such as as a game where its rules are loose and freeform, but maybe its not so great at encouraging creativity; I might consider a game like Advanced Fighting Fantasy to fall into that category. There's also a hybrid category, where I think D&D 5E fits: it has "in the box" restrictions on some mechanical elements and then is freeform in other areas such as the skill system. And finally we have the endgame of mechanical rigor: Pathfinder being the aforementioned poster child, but other systems exist out there that fall into this bucket as well, such as the Battletech RPG, Traveller and maybe even Cyberpunk Red.  

More to come!

January Gaming Review

 At the end of 2025 I predicted I would play a lot of Starfinder and Pathfinder this year because I am getting stuck in my ways. That is half right; I would say that is true, but part of my ways include being fickle and annoyed with the systems of choice. Right now, after the last month of running both Pathfinder and Starfinder each campaign is hitting a story arc conclusion which means I could comfortably take a break and try something else for a while....or keep going to the next story arc. 

The problem with Paizo's two systems is that they work best with a serious time investment in absorbing the rules and really meshing yourself in an understanding of the mechanical elements of both the structured intention of play and the possible emergent play. This is a problem when you have tiny slivers of time in your daily life to actually devote to preparing for such elaborate game sessions; one can run games off-the-cuff or with a mildly structures campaign arc as I tend to do, but its a rough ask in a game like Pathfinder where a GM should plot out scenarios to include suitable downtime, or to consider carefully the wide array of magical items that could eventually be distributed as useful loot by the level-based mechanics of the system. If you don't take the time to do this, your game can rapidly devolve into loads of encounters mixed with roleplaying that may (at least to me) feel like stalling before the next set-piece encounter. 

Sometimes, in fact most of the time, I really prefer a more relaxed emergent gameplay element. I love game systems where I don't necessarily have to think about every encounter in advance, and so systems where random encounter tables where the element of chance plays an important role are quite appealing. I love random treasure table options because it is never that fun to me if you simply have zero chance by the system as written of getting an amazing magic device just because you're not the right level for it. You can technically break the mechanical design of Pathfinder by granting higher level magic items as loot, but the system starts to creak at the seams when you do this, and it creates power disparities that are evident in play. 

Indeed, with Pathfinder and Starfinder I have at least a couple players who are often absent, but by the rules as written their characters need to keep leveling up even if they are non-participatory for a session or two because the game design is so tight that it really can't handle PCs of varying levels very well. This has always been a bit of an issue in D&D and its cousins with level-based design, but it was generally handled better in prior editions; PF2E and SF2E both only really work well when everyone is on the same page in terms of level and power.

I have also complained about how Pathfinder handles skills in the past. While I have mellowed on this (or more accurately, just gotten used to it), this continues to be a rough spot for the players who often want to do something interesting, only to be told by other rules lawyers at the table that no, in fact, you cannot do that because you lack the requisite skill feats and such for it. This is a severe drag on the players' creativity. My last pathfinder session only had the old veterans who know Pathfinder very well, and they had a good time because everyone was sympatico, but the absence of the players who want to think out of the box was noted by me, at least, as a sign that they may not be showing up because its hard to have fun in a game system that needs that fun to fit neatly into the mechanical box and is not into the creative expression elements. 

That led me down to the rabbit hole of realizing that as a GM while I can run the mechanically rigorous system, I would really rather be running a game system that was neither mechanically rigorous nor so procedural; a system which actively encouraged creative expression and emergent gameplay. Obvious systems exist for this purpose: Cypher System comes to mind, but any game system which encourages this style of play will work. Shadowdark, for example, and even Tales of the Valiant, which offers plenty of randomization and does not lock content such as magic items behind level-based mechanics. 

A good example of what I am talking about: my level 1-4 range group includes players who want characters who have skills that let them tinker with and make or install augments (magical and cyberware stuff). But actually doing this seems to be rather heavily gated by a range of skill, feat, and tool requirements that are incredibly difficult to achieve at these levels, even though a majority of the augments are meant to be for this level. It also requires parsing out multiple different sections of the book to get the full picture on this. It is, in short, complicated.

To contrast, imagine doing this in Mothership, Savage Worlds, Traveller or Cypher System: it is essentially a non issue, and the absence of structured mechanical prerequisites means that the system itself can breathe a little, and let these things happen more organically according to the needs of emergency gameplay and story.

So yeah....I think for February I really need to think about some alternative systems that fit the play style I am more in the mood for. 

The Death Bat's 2025 Year in Review

2025 - Oh What a Long and Unpleasant Year

I have a confession to make, one which I think is a sentiment others might feel: when the world is going to hell in a handbasket, it can have a real impact on one's desire to enjoy simpler pleasures in life. Gaming, for example, requires a certain amount of personal time investment in both effort, thought and emotional commitment. It can be very hard to provide that level of commitment when Real World problems are sapping that time and energy away from you. So while this is not a blog where I write about all the other crap going on in the Real World, it is a blog where I try to focus exclusively on hobbies, interests and escapism...and this year was a challenging experience. I mean, I finally had to start assigning myself a quota on blog posts to force myself to write, because I could feel myself slipping away from these little entertainments in life. Hell, I got rid of my Saturday gaming night this year, because I simply didn't have enough energy left in me due to the interference of the Real World.

But luckily this is not a blog about the Real World, so lets talk about the noteworthy aspects of gaming in 2025:

Deathbat's Game of the Year for 2025: Starfinder 2E

Who knew....I really love this new edition of the game, and it is 100% compatibility with Pathfinder 2E. The new design and focus makes it a much easier and more accessible experience, and a real pleasure to GM. I am looking forward to running this one more than any other game (except maybe 13th Age 2E) in 2026.

The RPG I Played the Most in 2025: Pathfinder 2E

Close runner up is Mothership, followed by Tales of the Valiant and then there was that D&D 5.24 campaign I ran to give it a fair shake. 

Best New Sourcebooks in 2025: BRP Creatures, Monster Core 2 and Monster Vault 2

A three-way tie! Both Pathfinder's Monster Core 2 and Tales of the Valiant's Monster Vault 2 came out this year, and not a moment too soon. I love the updated stuff in the Monster Core 2, and I really love the Monster Vault 2, which is entirely new stuff, something I didn't think was possible given how many monster books Kobold Press has already come out with. Meanwhile there is the BRP Creatures book, which provides at long last a decade's long "most wanted" book for Basic Roleplaying, now providing enough content that a person could effectively replace their D&D life with BRP if they wanted to.

Best RPG I Didn't Get a Chance to Play in 2025: 13th Age 2nd Edition

I have only been able to read the PDFs, still waiting for physical books, but I am very much loving this mildly revamped new edition of one of my favorite D&D iterations, and it could not have come a moment too soon....I predict I will run a lot of 13th Age in 2026.

2025 PC Game of the Year: Deadzone Rogue

Look, there's not a lot to Deadzone Rogue, it's a FPS game about a dude on a derelict spaceship who has to solve the mystery of what's going on by shooting a million rogue robots and mutants. Every time he dies a computer recreates him and he starts over, but luckily carries his experience forward. It runs like a charm on every handheld I own which means its an essential game for my travel kit.

2025 PC Game I Played the Most: Tom Clancy's Division 2

Per my Steam metrics it turns out I have played this game a ton every single month. I did an entire second playthrough this year, in fact, and am working on the DLC expansions that came out. I like it, and similar to Deadzone Rogue it runs on all my handhelds like a charm (fair disclosure: I have not tried running it on the Xbox Rog Ally base model, but I may try it just to see; its surprising how well this device works with games, actually).

2025 Best Game I Played This Year That Was Not New: Little Nightmares I and II

Yeah, I tried them out on a lark and ended up loving them. Finally about to start the newest one. I understand purists don't like the new one as much since it not a continuation of I and II, but let's be honest, by the end of I (which II is a prequel to) left your little raincoat-clad survivor as Death Incarnate, so I am not sure where they'd have gone with an ending like that.... 

2025: The Year of the Next Generation of Handheld PCs

This year we got the Lenovo Legion Go S, the Xbox-themed Asus Rog Xbox Ally series, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and also I understand that all the usual suspects still pump out very nice high end (and high priced) handhelds, such as OneXplayer. Both of my Steam Decks suffered catastrophic failures this year, one of which was clearly a hard drive failure, and for my OLED model I am still trying to figure out what happened if it is recoverable. This motivated me to find replacements. First I sold my old Asus Rog Ally original model, then sold my Legion Go original model, which went to a good home. Then I snagged a SteamOS edition Lenovo Legion Go S with the Z1 Extreme chip, bought my wife an Asus ROG Ally X, and then as the year closed out I managed to get in succession (yes, I have a problem) a MSI Claw 8 AI+, Xbox Rog Ally base model, and a Lenovo Legion Go 2. After the Legion Go 2 I decided I was done for now; there was no purpose to getting the Xbox Rog Ally X model which was inferior to both the MSI Claw and the LeGo 2 (as the fans call it).

Oh yeah, and the family upgraded to the Switch 2 when it came out. My son uses it exclusively as a Pokemon device, but my wife plays a lot on it. I continue to enjoy Switch 2, even though I am not really a good Nintendo guy, but I concede....I really love the new Kirby games that came out on it. 

This may sound excessive....and it is. I could have stopped with the Legion Go S which does everything I want, but I really enjoy messing around with this handheld tech, and I know it goes back to my youth when I would dream about the idea that one day this level of gaming fidelity in a handheld model could ever exist. Seriously, I was thinking about how cool handheld devices were when I was ten or eleven years old, and I have owned pretty much every handheld device for gaming that ever came out in the following decades. It's an illness, I know.

I'll probably be writing more about my experiences with this new generation if Intel 7 and Z2 Extreme powered chips in January. 

2025: The Year of the Walled Tabletop Gaming Garden and the Collapse of D&D 5.24 as the One Game to Rule Them All

   This year really saw the division rise between gamers who play D&D 5E, and those who play D&D 5.24, Tales of the Valiant, Daggerheart, Pathfinder 2E, or "insert here." The end result of the WotC OGL kerfuffle from two years back has born much fruit, but gaming now feels a bit corralled. Of these different options I feel like Paizo is working hardest to keep their corner of the market, as if Kobold Press, while D&D 5.24 moves forward on the momentum of a fanbase that is divided in a way I haven't really seen since the 4E days, albeit with less vitriol....probably because 5.24 didn't really change enough to merit anger, but what it did change just feels pointless, unfun or stupid. The number of times I have read an argument about why 5.24's method of "all humanoids are represented by a generic set of NPC stat blocks" is just fine, actually, and the system doesn't have any depth in stat blocks so there is totally no difference between a thug or scout and an orc warrior or lizardfolk is totally normal; the argument for the fans is literally, "The game isn't deep enough, get over it." Meanwhile, an even slightly more thoughtful design on the game could have simply included the customization by species rules from the original 5E DMG and it would have solved everyone's problem here, even mine. Unfortunately almost all of the changes in 5.24 ultimately feel like this: poorly thought out, solving a nonexistent problem, or tackling the problem (if there was one) poorly. I suspect 2026 will see D&D collapse further, and I hope the Daggerheart guys, Paizo and Kobold Press are there to scoop more players up.

2025: If Tabletop was a Hot Mess, Computer Gaming was a Dumpster Fire

From Games as a Service models collapsing to Microsoft publicly trying to murder the Xbox Console in favor of their Game Pass subscription model, to developers taking flack for using AI tools in their development, while other developers use AI generated voices to replace voice actors, its just a hot mess. To be clear: AI (or rather, the programs such as LLMs which are coming out of generative designs) as a tool for programmers to use makes sense to me. But the thing that freaks people out the most is when it looks like AI is used to replace human creativity; because the only people who don't seem to recognize slop for what it is appear to be Big Tech. (EDIT: That's not fair to Big Tech, they know exactly what they are doing, which is theft; it's the tech bros who will argue that slop is fine actually and not theft.)

On top of all this, the rapid development of AI Data Centers are causing RAM shortages and price spikes, and making the prospect of affordable computers in 2026 look dim. Just in the last two months you can see prices spike, and I'm actually really happy I managed to both upgrade my own personal tech and do a ton of hardware upgrades at my place of business earlier in the year, before the prices went out of control. You can find cheap laptops and desktops now, sure, but those machines have specs that were embarrassing in 2019, let alone now. 

2025: Was a Year of All Time

It sure was. I'd like to think things will be better for 2026.....but yeah, I don't think it's going that way. I think 2026 will unfortunately be the year that makes us look back on 2025 and go "Wow, remember when all the stuff we were dealing with in 2025 was just silly stuff like dumb game issues, short sighted and malicious Big Tech decisions driven by accelerationist philosophies, corporate greed and cowardice, life in a kleptocracy and a never ending river of AI slop? Yeah those were great times."

The Seventh GM Inspiration: Six of the most useful Randomized Encounter Table Books

The Seventh GM Inspiration: Random Encounter Resources

I thought a bit about how to discuss this, because I have an opinion that sometimes a book or site full of randomized tables can end up being paralyzing to GM inspiration and design, and other times it can be a valuable tool to breaking GM writer's block. Often, whether a chart is useful in the design of a scenario or during actual play can be crucial to its overall value. To that end, I thought I'd group these together and point out a series of randomized table resources I have found to be the most useful. I will note their utility for random generation on the fly (at the game table) and second their utility for background design and inspiration between sessions.

First off...I already addressed this book specifically earlier in the Inspiration series for December, but I will point again to Runequest Cities as an invaluable resource for random encounters and city design. It is equally useful for generating encounters during play and also sculpting out material between sessions. I will not count this one in the following list, but if I had to, I'd rank it #1 of 7. It's only downside: long out of print.

#6. D20 Toolbox 

This harkens back to the 3.0 D20 era of gaming, but the D20 Toolbox (once published by Alderac, now apparently available online through World's Largest RPGs on drivethrurpg.com) was an excellent quick idea generation resource and full of at-the-table encounter generation tables. It had equal utility in both situations and before I retired my copy I got a lot of use out of it in my 3.0 and 3.5 D&D days.

#5. Ultimate Toolbox

After D&D 3.5 came out Alderac released a successor to the D20 Toolbox that I also quite liked, and it contained useful entries for rolling up deep character backtrounds and NPCs, expanding on all ways on what its predecessor did. I found the book, which was written to be roughly system agnostic even though it was still mainly a D20/3.5 styled product, to be mostly useful in setting up scenarios and characters, and less useful for on-the-fly encounters, but it was a great book.

#4. The Book of Random Tables: Ancient World

This is a more recent acquisition, and a fun resource mainly for background development but you can readily roll for things like quick names, ingredients, items found in a market or a room and such on the fly. It's utility is restricted to archaic era gaming, which is to say, games set in a Romanesque or pre Roman era or something approximating such (so for my settings I used it in The River Kingdoms of Anansis and Oman'Hakat), so its utility is rather specific, but its well worth it within that subgenre.

#3. Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide

This is a copious tome full of good GM advice but the back of it contains some of the most useful monster encounter tables I have found in a GM Guide. Excellent resource for on-the-fly encounter generation, and could also be used to randomly plan out encounters. Specific to 5E style games, but within that scope it beats out all of the encounter tables I've ever seen WotC generate for regular 5E.

#2. Mork Borg 

The entirety of Mork Borg is more or less a system designed to encourage out-of-the-box, on-the-fly gaming with a high degree of randomization, so the system deserves special mention. In particular, the core rules, plus supplements Cult Feretory and Cult Heretic encompass a trifecta of dark and macabre end-times gaming goodness in a world that resembles a flaming heavy metal record chucked on an 80's record burning bonfire. Of special note is the random dungeon generator in the back of Mork Borg, which so far is how I have done all my Mork Borg one shots. The system is geared for and works best in my opinion on the fly; if you take too much time to design a scenario in Mork Borg you are likely to overthink it, which often happens in some of the copious volume of third party resources out there that sometimes hit the mark and other times completely miss the point of this system.

#1.  GM Gems

Published by Goodman Games, I believe this book has now been reinvented in a larger format for Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I have long used the original one which was allegedly system neutral but was clearly meant to be for D20 D&D/Pathfinder 3rd edition style sytems. This has long been my #2 go-to resource for quick idea and encounter generation in a pinch, and the book includes some pretty elaborate encounter tables for things such as inns and taverns, weird people you might meet and all sorts of oddities not often covered by other random table books. It's only failure is that over time there could be diminishing returns as you gradually use up all the neat stuff in this book from over-use. Equally useful for on-the-fly encounter generation and idea building between sessions, and when I go to a game I have GM Gems sandwiched in with my copy of Runequest Cities and "Random Ancient Tables" for quick use.

This column is a bit of a bonus before the holidays: I could easily have made GM Inspiration columns for each of the six resources I list above. But thematically I felt a discussion of these books as a collective works well together. Besides! I have some other more specific books I want to talk about for Inspirations 8 through 12 coming up.

The Sixth GM Inspiration: 0one Games

 

The Sixth GM Inspiration: 0one Games

This is yet another inspiration I use a lot, but in talking about it it ends up being a free plug for a great product. Specifically, I have been leaning on the incredibly wealth of interesting old school styled maps from Mario Barbati's 0one Games on Drivethrurpg.com (link above), over the many many years I've been gaming. These maps are, similar to Dyson's, filled with stylistic old school sentiment, but that doesn't make them any less useful to a modern gamer. In fact while Dyson's maps are great for short scenarios or 2-3 night sessions, if you want some serious dungeon delving and don't want to do your own cartography then 0one Games can provide some serious weight to your needs. 

All of the maps they produce are either in a white-on-blue or white-on-black format that is a familiar look to gamers from the 80's, and TSR modules in particular. Most include areas to take notes, and maybe some brief titles to engender the imagination, but just as many are more like well-executed maps with nothing more than evocative or suggestive title to go by. The net result is that you can take the Palace of the Vampire Queen, the Megacity Underdungeons, Mysterious Island, Pirate's Galleon or pretty much any of their hundreds of available maps and make them your own. Although they are all available for purchase and therefore are not a free resource, you can get some pretty decent maps for as low as $2 and the larger packages are often quite worth it. I have purchased a lot of 0one's maps over the years and gotten mileage out of them through three editions of D&D and two editions of Pathfinder now. 

It's a bit old (dating back to 2016) but the Blue Book is a free download showcasing a lot of the maps here, so it may help you decide if a few purchases are worth your time. Check it out!

It does look like 0one Games is still going strong, too. New products are out that I realize I haven't seen before, including Rooms with Flavor which I will now be checking out. Anyway, definitely take a look....for the lazy or time-strapped GM 0one Games is a valuable resource.

The Fifth GM Inspiration: Borrowing from Films

The Fifth GM Inspiration: Borrowing from Films

The idea of watching a movie and taking inspiration from it is nothing new, but a while back I took it one step further when I realized some films provide really solid, timeless plots that can translate well into the sort of "buddy adventure" scenarios that most RPGs tend to cater to. An important part of this borrowing process isn't just finding a movie with a plot that can easily translate into a scenario or campaign, though; part of the fun is the other part: genre translation. 

My favorite example comes from a campaign I ran in my early Starfinder 1st Edition days some years ago, when I was trying to figure out what to do with that edition (the new 2nd Edition is much, much easier to figure out, btw). I wanted to explore the implied and explicit elements of the universe as given, but was having a hard time conceiving of what that would look like. While watching films for a movie night I put on Conan the Barbarian (the original Schwarzenegger version) and realized that, nestled within this simple reimagining of Howard's barbarian was a classic group of adventurers (Conan, Valeria, Mako and Subotai) exploring a series of dungeons (The Temple of Set, the Even Bigger Temple of Set, and the Old Ruins along the coast where the last stand takes place), against a nefarious opponent (Thulsa Doom and his cronies Rexor and "the other guy") with a medley of side quests mixed in (finding the sword in the ancient king's tomb, the witch, King Osric, etc.). 

The thing is, if you borrow from this for a typical fantasy game not only will it feel oddly familiar, but the players likely have some familiarity with the source material (at least, if they are Gen X or millennials; Gen Z might be genuinely surprised by a borrowed plot from this film). But take the film and reskin it as a high octane scifi space fantasy adventure, and you may have something special going on. For example:

The Wicked City of Shaddizar becomes a remote outpost on a desert world;

The Temple of Set could still be a temple to Set in Starfinder, or maybe its Apophis now or any other serpent god; and maybe its ancient abandoned ruins left behind by a lost starfaring race of serpentfolk and the cult has moved in recently;

The Even Bigger Temple of Set is now a giant, ominous space station with the ability to move through Drift space, floating from world to world calling the pilgrims of Apophis (or Set, or Apis, etc.) to bring forth tribute. Sneaking in to this temple could require stealing pilgrims' identities, and the bowels of the great station revel the debaucherous parties of the elite priesthood and the high priest himself, who has funded an armada of reavers to cross the galaxy in search of artifacts sacred to his god;

The group could find that they are commissioned by the Governor of this space sector to find his daughter, who unbeknownst to him has genetic ties to the ancient serpent folk aliens, and seeks her heritage. Or maybe she's just swept up by the priest king's amazing hypnotic skills. Either way, they have to find a way to infiltrate the station-monument to the serpent god, rescue her against her will, and make a daring escape. This could lead to a holdout in more lost ruins of the ancients, where there are technological traps still waiting to be used against those who would infiltrate the ruins, or against their enemies if they can be as clever as Conan and his pals were in the film.

So, good stuff! And now it may not look so obvious to anyone that you've taken the story beats of Conan the Barbarian and turned it into Starfinder: The Cult of Apophis campaign plot.

Some more examples I have used or plan to use:

The Transporter, but as a thematic riff on a D&D campaign with horse, dragons or other means of travel as the core form of transport;

Hellraiser, but its in Mork Borg, and the dungeon is the house, and the cenobytes....are probably just a version of themselves in Mork Borg, I suppose! Extra credit if you take the core plot of Hellraiser and figure out how to put it into a really strange RPG genre like, say, Cypher System Rust & Redemption or Numenera; or maybe Hellraiser, but the plot is taking place in the archaic era of GURPS Egypt or GURPS Rome; or stick it in Call of Cthulhu and make it all mythos-appropriate.

Black Hawk Down but its Eberron during the great war and the skyship has crashed in enemy territory.

It's Pulp Fiction, but written through the lens of In Nomine or Nephilim ( to drag out two fantastic and currently very extinct games); I actually got to be a player in an In Nomine campaign which was riffed off of Pulp Fiction, in fact, and it was serious fun. The contents of the suitcase took on special meaning in that campaign.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe but its on a backwater world in the Traveller universe. The players are trying to uncover the plot, but don't realize the government has been suppressing their secret alliance with Droyne visitors who have been selling technology to the backwater world.

Starman, but the players are now the alien visitors trapped on a remote world in the Imperium of Traveller with no easy way off.

Weapons, but the entire weird plot is taking place in some remote township in Dragonbane, or the entire plot is happening on a colony world in Mothership and involves mind control not through voodoo but nanotech.

The Mansion of Madness (see my review in October) from 1971, but set in the fantasy system of your choice, and the mad doctor behind the "miracle treatment" for the mentally afflicted is really some sort of aberration. This was the plot of my lastest Pathfinder story arc, in fact. I practically ran it beat for beat like the movie until the players, who had far less patience and decorum than the movie's main character, finally lost it and decided to start smashing things.

Streets of Fire, but its Cyberpunk Red (or Cypher System Neon Noir, or Mothership) and otherwise played straight. Actually, for a weirder match imagine Streets of Fire, but the endless city is somewhere in Call of Cthulhu or the Kult universe, or maybe its Savage Worlds Supers or Cypher System Supers, and the larger than life heroes of the film are recast as actual vigilantes and idealistic metahumans. Wilhem Dafoe's villain takes on new meaning in this context. 

And so forth! There are innumerable examples, and to be honest the stranger the mix between choice of film and choice of game, the more interesting the translation can get.

The Fourth GM Inspiration: Dyson Logos

 

The Fourth GM Inspiration: Dyson Logos

Dyson's Dodecahedron

Dyson's Delves

If I am going to use the 12 Days of Inspiration to highlight all of my favorite GM resources, I would be completely remiss if I did not bring up Dyson Logos's blog and books. I have gotten more mileage out of Dyson's postings on his site and used almost all the content of his Dyson's Delves books on Lulu in my campaigns over the last dozen or so years. Seriously! His cartography is incredible, providing evocative maps that don't always come with a keyed scenario, but contain enough conceptual imagery and "spatial evidence" of adventure to readily spark the imagination. His Delves books include many maps but also many keyed locations which I have adapted into scenarios in my own campaigns on numerous occasions. In fact my current Pathfinder 2E campaign is on map three of three of Dyson's maps I adapted to manage the first 6 or so levels of the campaign plot. Hell, while writing this I noticed he has hardcover editions of his Delves books which I decided I must have and ordered them (my old paperbacks are really falling apart).

There are a lot of maps you can find and develop online into your own games, but Dyson's maps are far and away the best in terms of being universally applicable to any fantasy RPG while still evoking a fantastic old school feel. I am sure most of you who still enjoy the print bloggosphere for RPGs already know who Dyson is, but on the off chance you haven't, and you enjoy customizing generic maps into your own scenarios, then you definitely should check out his blog and books at the links above.

It is Settled (for now): Mothership and Tales of the Valiant

 So I have at last wrapped the D&D 5.5 campaign (we have loose plot threads, so who knows, maybe it will be revisited eventually) and Wednesday night formally begins with a Mothership ongoing campaign. I am plotting for around 5-10 sessions, but maybe we'll get more out of it; who knows! Mothership is a very fun game, but it is easier to do one shots and short campaigns with it than it is to do protracted campaigns....similar to Call of Cthulhu, the group can only sustain so much horror before it transitions from spooky fun to "wow how aren't we dead yet."*

I have had an infrequent Friday group as well, which my son was occasionally running Pathfinder for (and I ran Shadowdark for them before that). The group expanded to six players with last week's return to form, and I began running Tales of the Valiant at long last! It was a good session 0.5, with some char gen followed by a bit of gaming. I am introducing the variant concepts to them as we go (such as lineages and heritages, luck, doom, dread and so forth) bit by bit, in a completely new world setting I devised jut for TotV. I had initially planned to use preprinted modules but after reading through everything I had I decided most of them sucked for purposes of my GM style and what I wanted out of the game, and so I devised my own low level intro campaign module instead. I meticulously followed the encounter design rules outlined in the Gamemaster's Guide and have so far found them more satisfying than 5e/5.5E's traditionally more vibe-based guidelines.

Anyway, this mix seems to work for now! I have plans soon to try out Cairn 2E, Fabula Ultima, Outgunned, The Electric State** and possibly a return to Savage World's Pathfinder edition. We shall see.....but the important thing is, lots of options that require no further engagement with D&D 5.5.  

*Or, alternatively, "We have all lost multiple PCs, does anyone have a living PC who remembers why we landed on this haunted space station in the first place?"

**RPG and the original book only, we will not speak of the Netflix movie. 

As the Werewolf Changes

 During last night's game I was surprised to notice that Jackalweres no longer have a problem with silver in the 2025 Monster Manual. So in checking out the other lycanthropes I discovered that hey, it turns out in D&D 5.5 you can harm werewolves with anything, normally, now. They get a few extra HP and a slight AC boost but lose all the mythological flavor of the thing they used to be.

This got me to thinking about how they looked in other systems, so I thought I'd plunge down that rabbit hole a bit to see:

AD&D 1E/2E: Can only be harmed by silver or +1 weapons. So at this stage in the game, low level PCs who have trouble finding magic weapons really need to carry a silvered weapon with them just in case.... In rereading their entries I assume they transform as an action but maybe it was as part of their movement. I seem to recall running AD&D where they could move, transform and attack all in the same combat round, which makes sense in the longer 1E turn cycles.

D&D 3.5: Gain damage reduction 10/silver but only in hybrid and wolf form, interestingly! Shapeshift is an action. Looking at the old format for D&D 3.5 stat blocks on monsters reminded me of how convoluted and information dense they were; how interesting to see that the 2025 MM swung so far to the opposite direction that the current stat blocks feel anemic and drained of all color and flavor.

Pathfinder 1E: Have resistance 10 to all attacks except silvered weapons! Change shape is a move equivalent action, and they induce lycanthropy on a failed saving roll following a bite.

Pathfinder 2E: They have shapeshift as an action, and are vulnerable 5 to silvered weapons. Lycanthropy is induced on a failed save.

D&D 4E: they have regeneration 5, but silver stops their regeneration. They shapshift as a minor action, and they do extra damage against bloodied opponents. Instead of imparting lycnathropy as a disease they induce moon frenzy, which behaves a bit like the confusion spell (but does not end with the inflicted turning into a lycanthrope, interestingly). Diseases and curses in 4E were notoriously weak and ineffectual.

D&D 5E (2014): resistant to nonmagical or silvered weapons, but shapeshift as a standard action. Still have some flavor text that leans into making werewolves interesting in a traditional way. If bitten, on a failed save you just have lycanthropy now.

D&D 2024 (5.5): They gain 13 hit points and get a better AC, but lose any special resistance to ordinary damage, and silver is not even mentioned. They can shapeshift as a bonus action. Lycanthropy if bitten, but you have to reach zero hit points for it to take effect.

Tales of the Valiant: Werewolves are resistant to non-magical damage (silver is not mentioned here either). They induce lycanthropy as a curse after biting someone who fails a save.  

How about some of the other games out there? Let's see:

Swords & Wizardry Complete: mirrors AD&D 1E; so they can probably shapeshift as part of their turn, and are immune to nonmagical, non silvered attacks. Lycanthropy is automatic in an opponent reduced to 50% of their hit points by the werewolf.

Dragonbane: Werewolves hate silver as it deals full damage (along with fire) and messes with their senses. They take half damage from non-magical weapons. taking even 1 point of damage from the werewolf induces both paralysis (potency 9) and lycanthropy, and can only be cured with powerful magic or wolvesbane. And on its monster attacks a 6 induces a berserker frenzy in which your party probably dies!

Basic Roleplaying/Call of Cthulhu: They have regeneration, are immune to most damage (silvered weapons will do full damage and kill them on a serious wound, though), and taking any damage from a bite induces lycanthropy, which can maybe be avoided on a luck role if the bite also severs the limb that was bitten. Nice! The BRP statblock addresses magic and fire doing full damage as well.

Cypher System: they are level 4 creatures, which normally would mean 12 health but they have 24 health. They can cause lycanthropy if you are sufficiently injured to be reduced on the damage track. They take a long time (1D6 rounds) to shapeshift if caught in the act.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG (GURPS): These things are terrifying with damage resistance 15 against all attacks except silver (which does double damage and ignores the DR), and they regenerate 1 HP per second (GURPS combat rounds are 1 second long, so for D&D purposes that's 6 HPs of regeneration for a D&D round). Interestingly Dungeon Fantasy punts on the lycanthropy as a bite-induced curse with some flavor text about how the local temples try to keep that under control, and the rest of the statblock ignores it. GURPS Werewolves from the 3rd edition sourcebook of course does a lot more that I won't belabor here.

Fantasy AGE: They show up in the Bestiary sourcebook, and can induce the lycanthropy curse on a stunt, with the difficulty being based on how many stunt points are applied. The inflicted makes checks each night until the full moon; if they don't kick it before the full moon they go full lycanthrope. There's a section on lycanthrope vulnerabilities, but silver is mentioned as only one possibility, with the GM encouraged to customize for the campaign.

Mythras: Mythras punts on this one terribly and you need to go dig in the wolf section to get a sense of it. Ostensibly they are emulating older, more archaic notions of shapeshifters rather than more modern takes on lycanthropy, I guess? 

Mork Borg: It's actually a character class, the Cursed Skinwalker (in Feretory). You die, and your body is possessed by an animalistic presence, returning you to life as a cursed skinwalker. a bloody, skinless wolf is only one of your options. Tangentially werewolfish, but it wouldn't be Mork Borg if it was conventional now, would it? 

Okay, it was at this point that I ran out of energy (I was looking at The Fantasy Trip's take, which is to lump werewolves and vampires together as cursed/diseased species when mental fatigue just overwhelmed me). I have to say, if you want a werewolf to be scary, then there are two games that do this exceedingly well: Call of Cthulhu/BRP and Dragonbane (with honorable mention to GURPS/Dungeon Fantasy). The least scary edition of the the werewolf can be found in the current D&D Monster Manual for 2025, which is a real shame; it really lacks any of the color and vibrancy of the mythology it derives from. Curiously, they have done a better job with some other monsters in the book (medusa got a slight improvement imo, for example) so it is a shame to see them drop the ball here just because, apparently, someone might not want to be bothered with finding a silvered weapon? Weird. Very weird. Aside from D&D 2024, the next worst take on werewolves is (imo) Mythras, which puts the least amount of effort into the concept, delegating lycanthropy to a paragraph in the wolf statblock section.

This is making me want to consider Dragonbane for gaming in the very near future now, though. 

Observations on Running Three D&D-Types At Once (D&D 2024 vs. Shadowdark vs. Pathfinder)

 Running Shadowdark back to back with Pathfinder and D&D 5.5 has been an interesting experience. I have observed the following in running what is essentially 3 "D&D likes" at the same time:

1. D&D 5.5 has some nice (small, but nice) improvements on monster design...subtle, but makes a difference in actual play. Monk still feels very broken; you have to want, as DM, to design the encounter to actively kill the monk to have a chance of doing so. In running the game I am still hauling older books with me to fill out missing content in the newer edition, which is annoying. Overall though its still D&D 5E, just now in a slightly more abbreviated edition. I concede that it's fun....but maybe a tad long in the tooth. I now think D&D benefits from a bigger reset with new editions. This was not a big enough reset.

2. Pathfinder is proving the most enjoyable in terms of pacing vs. rules complexity; it falters only when player familiarity wanes (so a player with their act together progresses quickly; then a player who does not know what they are doing stops the game on their turn...stuff like that). I have adjusted to the system well enough, and feel like this is proving to be my "comfort zone" for a D&D-style game right now. I appreciate that it is easy to build a challenge for PCs in PF2ER that feels meaningful. My biggest gripe with the system these days is adjusting to all the modified content, stuff that is still there, but was "scrubbed" of old OGL references.....think kholo vs. gnoll, for example. Search the Monster Core for the Brain Collector! He's hidden away in there. Stuff like that.

3. Shadowdark feels simple....almost too simple....but as a result it's rules get in the way the least; the pacing of the game feels much smoother and faster than its more robust cousins as a result. Shadowdark also cleverly removes most "get out of jail" spells and effects from the players....truesight and feystep type stuff which can turn in to convenient "bypass encounter" mechanisms are simply absent from the game. The GM can include this stuff if desired through treasure and boons....but entirely at the GM's discretion.

This is, all in all, too much D&D-like for me to run all at once, even if I am enjoying all three games. I am now, in consideration of how much I am enjoying the rules pacing in Shadowdark, once again looking to another rules-minimal system: Cypher System, for a future non D&D-like game. 

Doing Too Much Gaming - Bad Time Management Theater

 I don't know why, but it seems easier for me now to get too many games going, even when I can arguably state I have less free time....or, in some cases, a need to value free time in which I am not doing anything in particular if I want; you know, things like reading, watching a show, going for a hike, cleaning the house, stuff like that. "Downtime" one might say.

So lately I've been wrestling with the fact that I have a periodic Tuesday night game online a friend GMs, the Wednesday night live game I have been running since the dawn of time (more or less), and the Saturday night game I have run on and off again for ages....and lately have been managing weekly due to my renewed interest in Pathfinder 2nd edition. Then there's Friday night: for a few weeks I experimented with playing in a local Pathfinder group which washed out due to GM health issues. The remaining players talked me in to running on that night, and I elected to run Shadowdark. It was fun! But then the common problem with RPGs rears its ugly head: weekly sessions. Repeatability. Time consuming dedication to a routine. I shoulda offered a one-shot! My bad.

On Wednesday I complicated things even worse by winding down Mythras and resuming D&D, now shark-jumped right to D&D 5.5. It's actually been perfectly fine; despite some elements being weird, I rather like most of the oddball little changes I've encountered so far, and some of the more subtle changes in monster design do make the newer monsters stand out as a bit tougher. It's hard to kill the monk, but you can do it with a bit of tactical consideration, so I no longer think the new monk is "that" powerful...just sometimes, in encounters not designed to overwhelm the monk.

But the point is that A: after stupid hand-wringing about design differences in the new edition it is all clearly just more nonsense sprouted by the Internet Machine, and the new edition is functioning just fine (even if I have to edit my orcs and drow in from the earlier iteration of 5E for now); and B: yeah, I didn't just double up on the D&D experience, I tripled-up on it, running D&D, then Shadowdark, then Pathfinder each week. So now I am at risk of burning out on too much D&D-like gaming again, and also not getting enough of the other non RPG fun stuff done I would like to do (which is mainly keeping up on my reading but hey, that takes a lot of time, too). 

There used to be a time when I could run two games a week (really, back in the day I only ran a weekly game on Wednesday and a bi-weekly game on Saturday) and it was just fine. What the heck happened??? I need to figure out a way to get this all under control. At bare minimum, I need more time to prep for the games I do run; Tuesday night should be my time to prep for Wednesday and Friday night my time to prep for Saturday (unless I am taking the missus out for the evening...although the missus was showing up to play Shadowdark so I guess that counts...?) Honestly, I know it all kind of went off the rails post covid, as that is when the addition of online gaming, the need to fill time with "things to do" made VTTs viable, leading to a tendency to overfill time with gaming. Newer games do admittedly need less prep time, too; back in 2010 when I was running Pathfinder 1E I really did need about as much time to prep as the game itself could take; and as many GMs may recall from those editions, it took some time to learn good shortcuts, tricks and techniques to reduce the GM workload; not so with the new D&D, new Pathfinder, and Shadowdark...these games reduce GM prep dramatically. 

Ah well....first world problems, I guess ...and honestly just the sort of problem to worry about when I'm avoiding a glance at my 401(k) retirement fund these days ;-)

 

Pathfinder 2E Remastered Returns to the Live Table

 After some interrogation last week my players indicated for Saturday night game a return to Pathfinder 2E was their preferred option, so here we are! I was finding it a bit tough to get motivated at first but that changed when we decided to pull PCs from an older Roll20 game, and in doing so I realized I had all the work done for a lengthy series of scenarios in a long campaign. I love when I discover stuff I had forgotten I wrote up! Saving literally everything I have ever written proves handy.

As it turns out, Pathfinder was a pretty smooth and fun play experience. We are all pretty familiar with the system, as I started running PF2E campaigns when it first came out, and all of the players in my current Saturday group were in the level 1-20 campaign I ran from 2019-2021, and are veterans of some other shorter campaigns. I think that I set PF2E aside when the Remasters started coming out for the most part, with a couple false starts on Roll20 before I just gave up for the time being (for some interesting reasons having to do with player personality issues). 

Now, coming back to the game table for PF2E Remastered, I realize that this really is the most entertaining way to play this edition. It's ridiculously easy to run the game as GM; PF2E has clearly been designed with ease of use in mind for the guy behind the screen. The complex minigame on the player's side of the table is an interesting journey for all involved, but once you've gotten familiar with the quirks of the system then it becomes easier and easier to appreciate, I would say. 

I still have some quibbles with it, but at this point I will tolerate my irritation at the skill system (which I wish was more robust and flexible like the older PF1E skill system) as it is far easier to accept this than it is the many weird and off-putting design decisions in the new edition of D&D 2024/5. So for me, at least, this is a lovely way to get back to the D&D-like gaming I enjoy without it being D&D exactly. Which is funny, because that is exactly what PF1E did for me and my group many years ago. 

Also, a side note: running Mythras for several sessions really hammers home how much easier PF2E is in terms of combat mechanics. The fascinating aspect of Mythras combat is just how dirty and deep it can get, but it does so by requiring a lot of book-keeping on every creature, and the constant popping of specials rapidly wore out my group (I have suggested to them that we should do Open Quest instead). So Wednesday this week I am going to run one more session of Mythras, and then suggest to the gang that we try Shadowdark next, or convert our Mythras PCs straight over to Open Quest. That will let us have all of the murderous intent with far, far less tedious book-keeping to keep track of how many specific limbs have been impaled or hewn from bodies. 

The Ever Changing Gaming Prospects for 2025

So! The conundrum set off for me by my dislike of the design direction of the current edition of D&D has led to a close evaluation of options. It has led me down the following path:

Mythras - So I am actually running Mythras on Wednesdays now, which is not much of a stretch as I have run Mythras on and off over the last several years. My goal this time is to maybe, just maybe, stick with it for longer than a short campaign. We shall see; the problem is that my intrigue at the style/approach Mythras offers is often occluded by the more conventional approach D&D and Pathfinder take; or put another way, sometimes deep simulationism and verisimilitude are not as fun, long-term, as slightly gamified fun can offer.

D&D 5.5 - One of my friends sort of talked me into giving it a try, to look at the good options and maybe hold judgement on the bad bits until I see how it plays at the table (and over time). I decided this is a possibility, if I run a campaign that is new, built ground-up on the implied expectations of the new edition. I did devise a decent campaign outline so far, but I am still not feeling overly motivated to run D&D 5.5; my theory is that secretly, maybe even almost unconsciously, I am just really burned out on it all and this is as good an excuse as any to take a break. 

Dragonbane - I want to run this but I feel like it needs an expansion rulebook to hold long term interest, and I am regularly thwarted by my players' threats to roll all mallards. 

Pathfinder 2E Revised - this actually looks like the best overall prospect to me for continuing a D&D-like style of play without all the finnicky expectations of a new edition that foundationally change the core feel of the game. That said, Pathfinder 2E Remaster has its own special issues, not least of which is trying to figure out what monsters have been arbitrarily renamed or remastered into analogous replacements (e.g. gnolls now being kholos and such). But, aside from that, and my general irritation at may little design decisions in the system, it is still shaping up to maybe be the best choice for me. Except, of course. for.....

Tales of the Valiant - So it's basically D&D 5E, but with some nice revamps, and its main problem is not offering enough player choices (yet). But that aside, it is sort of the default no-brainer for me to continue gaming with. My group does seem deeply interested in D&D 5.5, but I think if I push hard enough I can get them to at least give this a shot. 

In digging through my collection I also found a few choice relics that I would like to play but which often get neglected when time to plan something comes up. Specifically:

Swords & Wizardry Revised - this lovely remaster of the S&W Complete rules, now with two additional rules/monster tomes filled with new content and classes are really my favorite iteration of the OSR (aside from OSE). Alas, my only problem with running it is that I am just not sure I could get most of my group to tolerate going to back to an old school state of mind. Last time I ran it (and OSE) I find about half the group would rather sit out a few sessions than bother to play an OSR game. Yeesh!

Forbidden Lands - I was really enjoying reading up and learning the intricacies of this Year Zero Engine based game and in looking at it again I realize it would be a fascinating experience to play. All I need to do is figure out how to "make it my own" in the sense that its default world assumptions are not always in alignment with what I want to do with it.....note that this is the exact same problem I now face with the new D&D books, they have shifted away from D&D as it has existed in prior editions (though maybe not as extreme as FL in terms of the implied world assumptions), but who knows, maybe I could find time to absorb the default setting and figure it all out as it is intended.

Cypher System's Godforsaken and More - Cypher System is a great game, and easy to run. I love a lot of it mechanical elements and focus on story. It has a good series of sourcebooks for supporting fantasy play. Maybe I should consider looking to it for my D&D-likes. It certainly is flexible enough to support the campaign settings I want to adapt to whatever system I pick.

GURPS Fantasy and Dungeon Fantasy - I have never been overly keen to run Dungeon Fantasy because it is essentially taking the core strength of GURPS (its generic, universal flexbility for realistic gaming) and wedded it with D&Disms. If I want D&D dungeon delving, there's always D&D. Same problem with Classic Fantasy for Mythras. But there is regular GURPS and the Fantasy sourcebook (and Magic). It's main problem is one of scope and work; I'd need to put a lot of effort into building stuff out for a game, and at my age I no longer have the time and interest to deal with GURPS's level of fiddliness (Mythras is on the edge of my tolerance level). But! I used to run GURPS all the time with a fairly low level of prep, though usually for modern day or SF games. Maybe I can find a happy middle ground here. Worth thinking about at some point.

Savage Worlds - With the Fantasy Companion and the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds books this would seem to be a no-brainer, but for various reasons I can't quite pinpoint easily, I was finding myself less than satisfied with the system in a recent Supers campaign I ran. I think the sense of gravitas and engagement with the mechanics were not there. Almost....dare I say it....too simplistic and swingy for my tastes, although maybe also my fault for picking a genre (comic books) my group was not terribly into or familiar with. The net result was disppointing, at least to me. So maybe doing fantasy with SW is actually a better bet as the group is most definitely more familiar with this genre and the system in that sense.

Okay! So enough pondering on this for now. 

Death Bat's review of Last Year's Projections

 Well here we are again! Another year, another review on last year's predictions and projections for the outgoing year. How did my plans and predictions stack up?

Predictions:

D&D 2024 Releases but Beyond Isn't Ready - near as I can tell I am spot on about this; that demo with fully 3D figures that looked like a CRPG? I don't think there's any evidence that exists right now, so far as I can tell...

Tales of the Valiant - I predicted it would be successful and might eat some of Pathfinder's market share but not penetrate the core D&D crowd. I think I am wrong on the first count and right on the second count. Instead, it looks like TotV will be its own niche corner, and won't really eat anyone's market share, instead becoming yet another variant with its own core crowd thanks to Kickstarter.

D&D-Spin Off Fatigue - I expected this to happen in 2024, and I think to some degree it has happened, as the "alternative to D&D" market has indeed fragmented into something like a dozen different variants from Daggerheart to Tales of the Valiant, Pathfinder, Shadowdark and all the existing D20 variants out there. It's so bad that I think D&D 2024 is effectively succeeding by being an anchor with the most common ground in the middle of it all. 

Fewer new IP and Gaming Properties - I am not sure this is true. It seems like there are a metric ton of new IPs and games out there, or on the way, but what I am missing is where people are collecting their information. I rely largely on ENWorld for my gaming news, and they are only "so so" at things not related to D&D. 

Goals:

Mothership - I wanted to run more Mothership in 2024. I did run a one shot in January and a two parter at the end of the year in December. I did not run another lengthy campaign, however. I forget offhand when the Mothership Boxed set finally arrived, but I recall it was sometime in May. That waiting for the new edition to release proved to be part of why it didn't take off; it finally came out, and as is often tradition for Kickstarters it took me a while to get back in the mood to deal with it. I also realized that my last really successful online Mothership game was a bit of lightning in a bottle; you sort of need the right kind of group to really pull off Mothership. I don't know that I currently have that sort of group right now. Some of my players, sure! But others.....hmmmm not so much.

Dragonbane - Despite wanting to run this, I have not as yet gotten around to it. 2024 was a year where I found little time to mess with new mechanics, and ended up sticking to the "familiar and easy," which is to say, lots of D&D 5E.

Traveller - I did run a short Traveller campaign early on. I stopped running Traveller for one very specific and disappointing reason, about which I won't dive too deeply here, but let's just say that I wish players would let the dice roll and not fudge crap all the time (read: cheat). I am unsure of how to fix this problem other than to run games of somewhat more complexity, making it harder to easily cheat on die rolls, or to take over some dice rolling (which I really prefer not to do). In general I sort of assume that this happens on occasion from certain people, but it was a bit excessive in the last Traveller game I ran, and was substantiated by others. As a result, I really lost my taste for running the game for my group. And honestly....it's impacted me kind of hard ever since, and I am extremely reluctant to run certain game systems with entirely player-facing die roll mechanics as a result. If certain players (and there are only certain ones here, mind you; others in my group are great and honest!) desire to cheat to insure their "victory" then why not just play a video game, watch a movie or read a book? 

Post More - Pssh 'nuff said! I totally slacked off on posting for most of 2024.

Pace Myself - I think I did okay here. I have gamed less often on Saturday, which is often a trouble night for me, especially now that I live a 25 miles south of the city where the gaming locations we meet are at.

Miscellaneous:

I made some offhand comments, and wanted to mention those:

Rivers of London - Chaosium has not done much new with it, but its still there being promoted. In this day and age a game with maybe one sourcebook in a year or two is becoming increasingly common. I did buy the first novel in the series the game is based on, but haven't read it yet. 

Esper Genesis - They actually came through! The print edition of the Technician's Guide arrived a few months back, so kudos to them for getting this out at last. A pity it arrived in the wake of a new edition of D&D and took so long I suspect it will be harder for Alligator Alley to get the trust of Kickstarter backers.

GURPS - I suggested GURPS could have a new edition but won't. In their defense, they did get a good reprint with nice binding. I think, based on my observation of the market and the interesting directions it has gone, that GURPS is probably best off as a niche game system with a core fanbase that can remain ignored by the broader community.

13th Age 2nd Edition - I suggested it won't come out in 2024 and I was right. Another Kickstarter waaaay behind deadline. I am looking forward to this one when it comes out. Will it come out in 2025? Maybe, but it will arrive to a saturated market. Unless WotC releases the new Monster Manual and it turns out to be garbage for some reason, causing a wave of dissatisfied DMs to look elsewhere.

Pathfinder - I suggested maybe Pathfinder's increased costs will lead to a shrink in market share. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I know I have fellow players who have commented on how Paizo's books are getting too expensive to keep up with now. I think the costs are driven by the unionization of their workstaff, which is a good thing, but also a rough spot to be in a largely non-union, low-profit corner of the business. I suspect 2025 could be a make or break year for Paizo. 

Okay, next I'll make some predictions for 2025 and set some goals!

Scrutinizing Systems for 2024 - or "What to Play While Waiting for D&D Totally-Not-6E" - Dragonbane, Traveller, Cypher System, Tales of the Valiant and More

 I guess Wizards of the Coast is A: not selling to Tencent (good), and B: not releasing their books in May, which seems like a good time to do it, but apparently they said they will still be working on them in May so now the holidays seem like a stretch too. This is good news, though! It means we should all be trying other things while cooling our jets on trad D&D experiences so we can be ready for whatever the new thing is going to be.

For me, it sort of boils down to a handful of games which have my attention, and not all of them are "unlike D&D" since Tales of the Valiant is in the mix, but hey, you know what is coming out in May? Tales of the Valiant, that's what! So yeah, going to be playing some of that for sure.

I have in my hands Dragonbane Core Rules and Bestiary, the expanded books that will nicely replace or compliment their initial Boxed Starter Set from last year. The Starter Set was a fine product on its own merits, but there is additional content in the new Core Rules for GMs to make it worth checking out, and the Bestiary is a no-brainer whether you stick to the Starter Set or get the Core Rules, it's full of good stuff that is all new content. Dragonbane manages to sit in a hard to achieve sweet spot for me. I like to call this zone the "point at which a game can work to power one or more of my campaign worlds without requiring me to simply ditch said worlds and revise them to match the game's setting and rules expectations." Secondarily, it also fits the category of "alternative fantasy systems which are unique or interesting enough to explore on their own merits, but close enough to D&D in terms of content and accessibility to be an easy sell to players." 

I could go on and on about Dragonbane like this, but it boils down to some simple facts: the game provides a robust system with enough content that you won't find yourself wishing something was in the game that isn't; it offers a setting but does not demand you use it; it provides enough content that you feel like it could substantively replace D&D for a protracted campaign without you feeling like you wish you had access to all the D&D stuff when running or playing. For me, Dragonbane accomplishes all of this, and in the smallest form factor in terms of content for a "robust fantasy RPG" that one could imagine and still fit it in to a single carry bag. 

A lot of other fantasy games out there fail at these requisites I set. Some of my demands are more specific to my tastes; for example I like the Dragonbane skill system (and I also like the D&D skill mechanics, especially once you get back to 3rd edition), but I dislike game systems that eschew skills entirely without good reason. I can forgive an OSR emulator like Swords & Wizardry Complete for this, as skills weren't a thing in the 0E era of D&D, but it means that the S&W experience will forever be limited to merely emulating that style of play, afterwhich there will be no further modifications to the game system. I was modding skill systems in to Tunnels & Trolls and AD&D back in 1982 after experiencing Runequest, so for my experience in a hobby that was at the time a venerable 8 years old I will forever see skills as OSR and necessary to a proper gaming experience. 

Anyway, aside from Dragonbane, which looks to hit the sweet spot in a unique way few other systems have come close to, we have Traveller, which is getting a renaissance of upgraded rulebook editions as well as more content of a general sort of use beyond running Imperium Campaigns. I have a real keen interest in more Traveller soon, tempered only by the fact that I know Mothership will finally be released soon as well, and Mothership is the very genre-specific Traveller counterpart.

Monte Cook's Cypher System is also about to finally release more books, too. Rust & Redemption is the one I am specifically keen on, their Cypher sourcebook for post-apocalyptic tales. I feel that Cypher System works best when you can have weird settings that cater to improvisation, and I expect their post-apoc genre book will prove to be well worth it. 

I should also mention Pathfinder 2E v2. They have more tomes on the way, including the ever important revision to their Bestiary series, and the Player Core 2 to complete the class range my group is used to dealing with. Although my group understands that the backwards compatibility is 99.5% they still seemed more interested in waiting for the rest of these core books to release so we haven't done anything with Pathfinder 2E yet. I personally am more interested in playing it at the game table; Pathfinder, along with D&D 5E and others, can easily devolve into "Find a battle map, populate with virtual tokens, watch encounter turn in to fight because the players have hammers and see nails all over the map" kind of experiences. I guess what I am trying to say is that VTTs work really well on average when you are focused on a map and minis, and are at times terrible when trying to just enjoy the game for its more exploratory and discovery/role play based elements.

I have other games, too. Vast Grimm still commands my attention and several new books released for it, making the world of Vast Grimm a more comprehensive and interesting place to explore. Mork Borg continues to fascinate me, and I think a live campaign should be in order; I am intrigued to experience t least one deliberate attempt to play the game for multiple sessions to see how it works for long hauls. Finally, I still have a shelf full of Free League Titles I need to explore in actual play, especially and in particular Alien RPG, Blade Runner RPG, Forbidden Lands and both CY_Borg and Pirate Borg. 

Don't even get me started on the brilliant 5E reimagining of D20 Modern in the form of Everyday Heroes! Ever since I snagged it last October I've been obsessing about what to do with it, and the array of weird cinematic properties they have congealed around the game to provide support is impressive. That I would even contemplate a campaign in the universe of Universal Soldier, Rambo or Escape from New York is a testament to how engaging and interesting the EH team has been with these sourcebooks. It does crack me up, though, that each sourcebook seems to start with a "I never even heard of or watched the movie this book is based on until I was hired to write it," followed by a thoughtful and engaging approach to taking a wildly dated action film from thirty years ago and turning it in to a must-play setting. 

As always, the problem is too many cool games and not nearly enough time! 

Deathbat's Goals and Predictions for 2024

 Well the new year is here and along with it comes a slew of blogs and vlogs talking about new year predictions, goals and rampant, wild speculation. For my part of this, I am going to lump my post into a list of predictions and goals for myself:

Goal: run Mothership - easily achieved! I am starting the new campaign next Saturday (sesh zero was last Saturday, obstructed by work).

Prediction: D&D One will release but D&D Beyond will be in poor shape for an "early access" portal of online graphics-focused gaming - I actually think that we won't be anywhere close to seeing a properly ready product on D&D Beyond in the way most gamers imagine it will need to be. We're going to see a product that only hints at that demo WotC showed us, instead.

Goal: run Dragonbane - also easily achieved! I will plan to run this, probably on Saturday, after the Mothership campaign.

Prediction: Tales of the Valiant will arrive and be a big hit, may eat in to Pathfinder's market share but won't steal casuals from D&D. Much as I'd like to imagine it could, I don't see it happening. But I do believe that Kobold Press is well known for putting out good products, and that will garner attention within the more "core" RPGer crowd that may be seeking a D&D alternate. It's target of 5E compatibility will make it an easier sell.

Goal: run Traveller! Now that the newer release books are all in my hands I have a keen interest in building out a new Traveller campaign, and I might consider using The Great Rift set to do it. Probably a goal for later this year due to my interrupting the flow with Mothership in January.

Prediction: We will get D&D-like (what we used to call heartbreaker) fatigue in 2024 as numerous other D&D-inspired games finally release in response to the revamped D&D plus the post OGL kerfuffle. Examples include Tales of the Valiant, of course, and the second set of Pathfinder 2E revised book, but Shadowdark is a thing, as is a 2nd edition of 13th Age allegedly supposed to release some day, and there are a fair number of other D&D-based post-OGL products named last year which I recall as being scheduled for release this year.

Goal: Try to get at least 2 posts out every week this year on the blog. I'll try! It is a good writing exercise, this as always has been less about writing for an audience (yeah, may explain some posts lol) and more about writing for myself to keep my own interest engaged.

Prediction: We will not see a lot of new IP or gaming properties this year as the market is too knotted around D&D at the moment. Once the new D&D books and whatever happens with D&D Beyond finally drop, we will see a sag in the market for a bit, and possibly some waning interest over time, followed by maybe some more creative endeavours in 2025. This will be my "bold" prediction. Will see if it comes to pass next year.

Goal: pace myself. I am honestly getting older, so I keep reminding myself, and it can be hard to run two games a week these days while managing a business and family. I need to keep that in mind and not be shy about letting my gamer cohorts know that sometimes Wednesday or Saturday nights are just not good for gaming. Also, whenever possible, I need to foster more local IRL gaming because the VTT experience is just never really going to cut it for me. 

Okay, that's it for my gaming predictions and goals of 2024! I wish I had more of a non-D&D sort for predictions, but it's hard to come up with anything noteworthy. To that end:

--I could say "Chaosium will give up on Rivers of London" for example, but that's hardly a prediction and more just an observation that they backed a really esoteric IP (for the states, at least) and didn't do enough promotion. 

--Or I could speculate that we'll reach January 1 2025 and still be waiting for the third Esper Genesis book to arrive (I am going to call that one now), but that's mostly just a recognition that something on the business/publishing end of the publisher for that book series has gone very south and that I suspect the real reason that they haven't produced the book is lack of funds. 

--Likewise I could predict that Steve Jackson Games may announce a new edition of GURPS this year but I doubt it; I think the core developers/writers at SJ Games are too old and tired to take up the mantle of a new edition, and GURPS has languished in its own special corner of the cottage industry for so long that no new blood exists to come take up the task. 

--I could also predict 13th Age 2nd Edition won't see release this year, because they probably want to wait until well after D&D's next edition has saturated its way through the audience and generated a new group of expats for a different variant edition, but who really knows, Pelgrane Press publishes to the toot of its own horn. 

--I could also predict that Pathfinder, despite now having better, more organized and comprehensive books out, will flounder in the market due to the perceived buy-in being too high for most gamers, but it will still appeal to the subset of D&Ders who crave a bit more dynamic mechanical flair in their games. We'll see!

Anyway, Happy New Year!  

Deathbat's 2023 Best and Worst in Tabletop Gaming (and VTT)

 I got to try a variety of different new RPGs this year which was nice....I didn't stick to my usual barrel of tried-and-true regular games entirely, and as a result some interesting gems such as Mork Borg and Vaesen rose to the surface. I did a lot of collecting and reading this year, but much of it was focused on indie zine RPGs (see that series I have temporarily been ignoring!) and I managed to get aquainted with an entire subset of the hobby that I consider to be a movement toward hyper-focused, art zine style minimalist RPGs with a goal toward simple but effective rules and exotic, creative settings. This style of RPG is essentially a reproach to the modern obsession with giant books, huge campaigns, lavish color paintings for art and big price tags. I also got heavily in to collecting and reading the many offerings of Swedish gaming giant Free League Publishing, which relies on its own special brand of game system (the Year Zero Engine) to build various RPGs. 

What I didn't do this year was make a clean break from D&D though I did do so, fairly decisively, with Pathfinder 2E around --I want to say March?-- of this year. An inter-player conflict and a generally negative response toward the way Pathfinder 2E plays (using Roll20) from about half the players left me with a really bad taste in my mouth for the whole experience, which was made worse by the fact that I as a GM was really enjoying the system from the GM perspective. I subsequently got to be a player in another game, and while I did enjoy it, I found the excess tedium , of the mechanical gravitas of PF2E less to my liking as a player. Now that the new books are out, I am considering a re-entry, but I am also a bit gunshy.....and I know that choosing Pathfinder again may mean some players simply won't show. 

Anyway, here's my take on the Best and Worst for 2023!

RPG of the Year for 2023: Basic Roleplaying System

The new edition of BRP (5th edition) brings lots of minor tweaks and clarifications and a tighter focus, while still containing all the content of prior editions and the framework for any number of BRP powered genre adventures. It does not incorporate the Call of Cthulhu 7E changes as such, so that's about the only issue one might have with it (if you love the 7E changes, that is), though it does remain compatible and you could easily mesh the two iteratons together with minimal or no effort (as I have already done). So this is my Book of the Year overall!

Best RPG Discovery of 2023: Mork Borg

Sure its been out for a while, but Mork Borg was new to me! Sort of....I think I got the RPG a year or two ago, but found it perplexing as to full intent and set it aside. Following the OGL kerfuffle in January I decided to start exploring other RPGs (and simpler ones following the March meltdown as I call it), and Mork Borg rapidly grew to the #1 place on my list as I was able to finally grokk its deceptive emergent complexity out of a simple mechanical premise, and its elaborate yet deliberately obscure setting. Mork Borg may or may not be an ideal system for long term gaming, but it is most definitely a game you can pick up and play at any time and have fun with (as long as you enjoy brutal, grimdark Swede-punk eschatonic nightmare worlds, that is!)

Worst RPG Trend of 2023: Eternally Delayed Books 

There's a BattleZoo Book that was supposed to release months ago (EDIT: literally hours after writing this I got a notice the book "Strange & Unusual" is shipping today, so I guess this one is off the list). There's An Esper Genesis book that's like three years or more past due now. I'm still waiting for the Mothership 1E boxed set and it may not be out until March or later. For my own purposes, I've cut back on backing Kickstarters. By the time the books arrive I am often completely disinterested in the game at that point, having played and finished with it, and the new product is not enough to engender new interest. For various reason 2023 has felt like a tipping point for me: I am done with wondering if or when these products will ever manifest, time to stop pre-ordering or backing these uncertainties once and for all.

In a sense this issue has been around for many years and is as old as Kickstarter, but with one exception all of the delayed books I am waiting on are pre-orders or an ordinary sort, so I guess for me at least 2023 is the year this issue hammered in to the old noggin that its a bad idea.

Best RPG Style of 2023: The Zine RPG

I've spent a lot of time blogging about it this year, so it is no surprise that I think the new style of RPG fostered over the last few years has finally become its own cottage industry and now holds it place as a special subset of gaming in contrast to more mainstream RPGs. The focus on creativity, artistic exoticism, minimalist design and a very conscious effort to foster ad hoc play styles are all fairly unique to this new style of RPG, and those elements which are not unique still get realized in new and unique ways.

Worst Flub of 2023: Wizards of the Coast's OGL Kerfuffle

I won't belabor the issue, but WotC's attempt to destroy the OGL and force third party publishers into draconian contracts where they get a cut of the take backfired and caused the core supporters and fandom to lose trust in WotC. While the giant can no doubt continue with a broader casual fanbase, it will be interesting to see how this impacts them next year when the next edition of D&D arrives, ready to push people into WotC's online D&D Beyond playspace, located just west of micrtransaction hell, I am sure. What we're seeing here (I think) is the idea that D&D as an RPG may now be transcendent to RPGs as a hobby...the hobby will continue on and find new corners and darlings, while D&D itself becomes more, just, "D&D the hobby" and very occasionally a D&Der might be tempted into seeing what the whole other "tabletop are-pee-gee" hobby is all about. Honestly? It's kind of already like that, but the really interesting things is going to be whether or not the concept space of D&D Beyond and a focus on online microtransaction-based VTT gaming can sustain in a hobby who's key appeal has traditionally been that you can socialize around a table. Maybe, in the end, this just further bifurcates the hobby.

Best VTT Environment of 2023: PlayRole

I have to say that Role20 has done a lot to improve this year, so its a good VTT to play with, but my accidental discovery of PlayRole.com was rather profound, and our experimenting with it has proved to me that it is not only a viable place to run games, but preferential to my style of play. We're about to start a full fledged Mothership game tomorrow using PlayRole, so I expect to have a lot more to say about it as we go forward, but my current experiments with OSE, Mork Borg, Dead Mall and UVG has so far been rather satisfactory. 

I'm out of "Worsts" so is one more "Best" to ponder:

Best Revision of 2023: Pathfinder 2E V2    

Not much to say here, other than the new books (Player Core and GM Core) are considerably better organized and laid out, and I really appreciate that. The color scheme is nicer on the eyes, the focus on a new player experience is better, and the minor changes (Mainly extracting OGL content) are non-invasive for the most part. It is enough to tempt me back to trying Pathinder 2E again even though I've had a string of unfortunate incidents with it leading up to March when I abandoned the system entirely due to disgruntled player issues.   

I'll mention a runner-up: Swords & Wizardry Complete was revised by Mythmere Games (and is also back to publishing it), and the revision is very nice indeed! It's mostly the familiar system, but a bit more exposition and some minor but relevant additions make for an even more complete 0 edition retro experience.

2024 Expectations

So for 2024, what do I foresee? 

I'm focused on trying out more of these cool games I have read and discovered in 2023. I want to try out the Mork Borg spin-offs (CY_Borg, Death in Space, Vast Grimm and Pirate Borg) if opportunity presents itself. I want to use Liminal Horror to run The Bureau module, and Runecairn (or regular Cairn!) look fascinating.

I am 100% on board for 2024 with a not-too-distant BRP powered supers game, and I want to play a straight up Open Quest 3 game, especially now that Open Quest Dungeons is out. I am ready for ducks and mallards alike, because I still want to run Dragonbane and am disappointed the chance never presented itself in 2023. I would like to try the Alien RPG and Blade Runner RPG as well, but we'll see; I have never been as good at running IP-property-based games as I have more original fare. Most importantly though I plan to run a ton of Mothership and Traveller 2E, and I predict 2024 will be a big year for me when it comes to science fiction RPGs. We'll see!

I also want to chill out on collecting next year. I did a pretty good job this year, overall, but probably not by volume (I still bought as many books as ever, just many are smaller zine RPG books). I still need to reduce my overall collection, or my descendants will be cursing me in the future with the mess I leave behind. 

I may not get another chance to post before 2024, so see you all in the New Year!

The 2023 Death Bat Year in Gaming and Looking to 2024

 What a weird year it has been for me. I spent a lot of this year overworked and with less free time for fun than I would like, but on the plus side I got a bit better at managing what free time I did have. My son, who is now 12, monopolizes a fair amount of that, but he's also very into D&D now and plays in a school group as well as my Wednesday night group....which doesn't play D&D as often anymore, but hey, we're starting a new campaign this week, so there ya' go.

This year kicked off with Wizards of the Coast annihilating trust in their shepherding of Dungeons & Dragons through the OGL, resulting in numerous spin-off games appearing under a creative commons or new license (ORC) through Paizo, including the revamped Pathfinder 2E v2, and the imminent Tales of the Valiant from Kobold Press. It's a boost for existing products like level Up! A5E RPG, though honestly Morrus and his ENWorld crew are not really the sort to dramatically capitalize on the negative hype aimed at WotC, and they continue to do their own thing. 

I spent a lot of time this year deep diving into the alternative and indie RPG market that I dub "zinerpgs" because most of these seem to have spun out of the zine scene where small publishers and authors (usually one and the same) along with their art-generating college buddies create elaborate, minimalist, starkly artistic and utterly weird entries into the market. I stalled out a bit on that project of reviewing all I had found but need to get back to it. Maybe 2024 will be a slower year for me....sheeya right!

This year I did manage the following:

First and best, I got the Wednesday group back to live nightly gaming again. This has been a welcome relief, as I tend to associate facetime on web events with work; it is not fun for me. My Saturday game remains on Roll20 out of necessity, but even then I am thinking about making Roll20 a bi-weekly deal and interposing a live event every other week.

As a player I got actual action in this year. I played in a campaign of Pathfinder 2E run by a friend; found that being a player in this edition is more frustrating and unfun (imo) than being a GM. Another friend in Seattle has managed to run a lot of Victorian Gaslight Call of Cthulhu for much of this year until unfortunate circumstances led to that group collapsing (temporarily; three of us wish to resume it in January). He has also run a fun bi=weekly D&D 5E game I have played in for the better part of the year using the Kobold Press Southlands campaign.

I have run live games this year of BRP in a near-future hard SF/Cyberpunk setting, Pathfinder for Savage Worlds, D&D 5E at very high levels (levels 15-20), a couple D&D mini-campaigns on Roll20, an aborted Pathfinder game (what I like to call "the one that made me gun-shy over Pathfinder"), Vaesen (a game I'd describe better as Dark Fantasy and less horror), Call of Cthulhu (both modern day and Cthulhu Dark ages, using the 6th Edition of the Dark Ages rules), Mork Borg (which was a blast but I have not been sure what to do with it next; it is most decidedly a beer & pretzels dark metal RPG), and at the start of the year we had a 1st edition Gamma World holiday campaign wrap up. Fun stuff! I may have blogged less this year, but at least I kept the gaming up. There might have been a game or two I forgot about....OSE maybe? I think I ran that all last year, though.

Of those games I ran, I came away a bit cool on Vaesen (fun but hard for me to get in to, which is damning if you're the GM), happy that Mork Borg was so fun (but also realizing it is best used sparingly), excited for the Call of Cthulhu games, but also realizing I need to give it a rest a bit so my idea engine can recharge, and for BRP I am now intrigued at the idea of exploring how many oddball genres I can get out of it. I really enjoyed the Savage Worlds Fantasy and Pathfinder adaptations, but I am not 100% sure my group did as when I suggested returning to it they all seemed "m'eh" so I think the joyful simplicity of Savage Worlds may not be as endearing to them as it is to me. As for Pathfinder.....man, I want to, but I've had some issues and bad experiences with running it now and that is proving tough for me to get over. D&D remains viable and my energy to play it is recharged, thankfully, but I plan to ditch it entirely for Tales of the Valiant unless whatever WotC pumps out for new editions next year knocks my socks off. My suspicion is it will be a product aimed to steer me toward their online platform, and that will be a no deal situation. Meanwhile, Kobold Press is more or less continuously making smart and fun books and their grip on Shard Tabletop is where I'll put my online money. I am confident the Kobolds won't forget their analog wood-grain table crowd.

My biggest issue this year has been wrestling with GM burnout. Playing more helped a bit, but I have never been very good as a player (I know too much how the cheese is made, so it can be tough to feel invested unless the GM is shockingly good at running things). I got pretty tired of D&D for a bit, but I feel more interested now, especially as I did get a chance to explore other games there, and that, if anything, helped hammer home that the grass is not greener on the other side, and what really makes things fun is what I put in to it more than what system I am using. Getting to play D&D 5E for once was a godsend, and my friend Mike runs a mean, tight game in the Southlands, loads of fun.

For 2024, I hope to run a good long fun D&D 5E game in my Pergerron setting. I think the Roll20 Saturday group would like to do part 2 to an older Pathfinder campaign in Oman'Hakat, and I may be up for that. I have strong plans for a Traveller campaign, maybe before we do D&D or Pathfinder on Saturday, especially now that it seems they finally have some real character sheet support. The 2022-2024 revisions of Traveller have been great books, not really necessary but welcome nonetheless, and I may even use them to continue the campaign concepts I started in the BRP campaign earlier this year. 

Beyond that, I have some hopes of experimenting with Dragonbane, which I almost ran but never quite got to this year, as well as Mutant Year Zero. I'm hopeful that Friday Knight Games finally coughs up the gigantic Kickstarted boxed set of Mothership 1E this year so I can resume running that. Steve Jackson Games is making a big monster book for The Fantasy Trip, too, and I am thinking about what sort of logistics it would take to give TFT a spin. And, of course, Mork Borg and its evil cousins Death in Space, Vast Grimm, Pirate Borg and Cy_Borg call for my attention the next time I have a week with nothing better going on. 

I'll try to do more blogging, too! I have found lots of RPG bloggers on Substack, may forge a new blog over there as well to see how it goes, but I am reluctant to abandon this one as I have so many years behind it now. We'll see, who knows.