Playing the part of exiled citizens from a distant empire, the players of Orichalcum do not play “characters.” Not really. Instead, they take turns in randomly selecting five “pillars” — important aspects of their lost culture — and drawing them on a map of the empire’s land. The exiles describe their memories of said pillar, and then draw their own version on their own land, explaining the differences between the original and the hollow imitation.
Goblins? is an RPG. In it, you play as a goblin.
It is not unique.
In recent years the prevalence of Goblin-focused RPGs has exploded. There’s Goblins in Shadow, Noblesse Goblige, Gobs of Gobs, Hannukah Goblins, The Goblin Warrens, Goblin Country, You are 100 Goblins, Now Go Save the World, Goblins and Grimoires, I’ll be Taking That, All the Kings Goblins, Journey through Goblinland, Those Little Bastards, We Gank at Midnight, Goblin Market, Disgusting Little Freaks, Stacks of Goblins, GOB, Goblin Karting, and Three Goblins in a Trenchcoat; and that’s certainly not all of them.
I Have Gone This Far is a Solo Journaling RPG played with a deck of cards, a falling-block tower, and a means of recording your story. It uses the Wretched and Alone SRD, a system for creating bleak journaling games with established win and loss states. In I Have Gone This Far, You play the part of a charlatan and con-artist who has beguiled the locals into believing that you know something of demons.
Mausritter is a rules-light fantasy sword-and-whiskers game inspired by any number of similar stories, including Mouse Guard, Brambly Hedge, The Rescuers, etc. It combines a lot of rules and ideas from many games I’ve mentioned here, including the character creation method from Into the Odd, inventory management from Knave, layouts from Mothership, and other concepts from places like Goblin Punch, Moonhop, and Last Grasp Grimoire.
Stats are the simple three of Strength, Dexterity, and Will.
Highwinds is a space opera RPG, with elements of fantasy thrown in for good measure. The game encourages you to “Take the role of resourceful heroes on the edge of space and fight pirates, save people from killer robots, and explore ancient vaults locked in astral space.”
Focused on combat, the game only has four stats for its characters: Accuracy, Dodge, Initiative, and Toughness. You pick your skills, your talents, your equipment, and off you go to swash your buckle across the stars.
Powered by FATE Accelerated, Iron Edda Accelerated is a Norse-mythology inspired Mecha-RPG about warriors fighting alongside the bones of dead giants and metal monsters. Ragnarok has come to the land, and the evil dwarves are sending their mechanical constructs to destroy everything you hold dear. How will you survive the coming cataclysm?
You have a lot of choices: perhaps the most overt answer is “by binding my soul to the bones of an ancient giant and go Kaiju it up,” but that’s only one option.
Session Zero is a card-based solo character creation game. It is, in short, a quick and easy journaling game to build a creative backstory. You draw at least five playing cards from a shuffled deck, and based on the prompts you write out significant moments in your character’s history before the beginning of the game.
It’s called Session Zero, because that’s what a session zero is. As a gaming term, session zero is, natch, what comes before the first session.
Inspirisles is an all ages RPG, with a focus on storytelling, empathy, and cooperation. Its secondary purpose is to help teach you Sign Language.
Now I could leave it at that, but that would do the game a great disservice. It is as creative and well designed as any system, pulling narrative inspiration from Arthurian legend and mythology. It focuses on collaboration, world-building, and teen-adventures in the style of YA novels and 80s classics like The Neverending Story, Labyrinth, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Hopelessly Devoted is a NSFW solo-journaling RPG, and this is going to be an uncomfortable post for some of you. If you don’t want to hear it, that’s fine, see you next time. For everyone else, some ground-rules:
First and foremost, I will not hear any dissing of the sexual roleplay community. The RPG community should know what it’s like to have people totally misconstrue our hobbies in a manner that details their hangups more than it does ours.
Apocalypse World does something that no other RPG that I can think of does. It deals with sex.
Now…some of the more experienced players out there might have just whispered “Dominate” under their breath. Or perhaps “Frozen Witchfire Embrace.” Or even “Charm Person.” Or…gods protect us… F.A.T.A.L.
Because yes, despite what I said, a lot of RPG systems deal with sex, and almost all of them do so poorly.
No, I can’t say poorly…they do so casually.
