I wanted to end this project with a discussion of this game, because for all the myriad of games I have mentioned in this journey of ours, Wanderhome differs in perhaps some of the most significant and profound ways from all the others. Based on the Belonging Outside Belonging system (also called “No dice, no masters”) from the Dream Askew and Dream Apart games, Wanderhome is, quote: “a pastoral fantasy roleplaying game about traveling animal-folk, the world they inhabit, and the way the seasons change.

In Nowhere Kingdom, the players take the role of a council of advisors and gentry charged with suggesting policies and proposals to the ruling Demons of the Kingdom. Thankfully, these demons are not evil; just mildly cruel, mostly bored, and they only get to rule the Kingdom for a year — their price for overthrowing the previous tyrant. As the game progresses, random problems land on the council-table and the council-members must all come up with proposals to solve them.

Noumenon is an RPG…and frankly, that’s almost all I’m prepared to say categorically about it. Noumenon is a system designed to facilitate an exploration of a surreal dream. Characters wake up as the insect-like Sarcophagi trapped within the Silhouette Rouge, and they barely have time to look around before they are approached by a well-dressed three-eyed elephant-headed being who guides them to a sweeping staircase with only thirty-three steps that reaches all the way up and out of a hundred-story-high cavern.

Loman John stared into the darkness. He could hear the steamer-ship—could always hear the steamer-ship—before its dim lights came into view. The fog was low in the evenings, and even the strongest lanterns could not pierce the mist for more than a kilometer at most; but the hissing grind of the engines were unmistakable, and it carried even in the Cliffside fog. The layfolk called it fog, but Loman John knew more names.

Do Not Read This Journal is a horror journaling RPG, but I hesitate to call it a Solo experience. Certainly, the process of journaling in the game is akin to other Solo RPGs, along with its cards and oracles. The significant difference is, once you have finished your journaling — your “turn,” as it were — you tuck the rules into the first page of the journal and pass it on to someone else.

Hero Quest is the best game ever made. The best thing about Hero Quest is the gold. Every quest grants your characters gold that can be used to acquire cracking equipment that improves your character’s chances at surviving their next quest. Okay, but is Hero Quest really an RPG? Perhaps, perhaps not. If it is, it certainly leans heavily into the strategy-board game side of RPGs, similar to the RPG-like Gloomhaven or Betrayal at House on the Hill.

I feel like the name Demon Crawl — Gothic does a good job of explaining the tone and style of the game, so I will instead focus on its inspirations. As a table-top strategy RPG, it was inspired in part by action games like Diablo and Doom. If those sound like strange inspirations for an RPG, I understand the instinct. As I’ve explained before, being inspired by computer games is not exactly uncommon among RPGs, but the kind of inspiration that Demon Crawl has taken from Diablo and Doom is not exclusively their tone or setting.

“Never!” Yolanda Allingdale hitched up her dress and began to run. Not the expected trot of a petulant child, or the flurry of lace that marked any good girl’s proper retreat to their room; but a bracing stride of a run that carried her out of the room and halfway up the mansion’s stairs before her mother could raise a single protest. It was difficult to run like that in such thick and tightly fitted clothing, but Yolanda had practice.

Paradox Perfect is, quote: “the improv comedy sci-fi TTRPG of absolute absurdity and chronological chaos! Generate a bizarre Utopian future, roleplay even stranger time-travelers to defend it, and embark on an adventure through history to save the timeline from alteration - before your past, present, and future change along with it!” Paradox Perfect uses the standard die rolling mechanics of a Forged in the Dark game; rolling d6s and calling 1-3 a miss, 4-5 a hit with a complication, and 6 a straight success.

Revels in the Heavenly Hall is, quote: “a game of violence without dice, powered by autonomy and collaboration in a one-shot framework that lets you sketch out a battlemap, arrange fighters on it one by one and then smash them into one another with reckless abandon. Its aim is to simulate tactics — not only good tactics, but awful ones too; ones that you would be ashamed to have thought of in a setting where the stakes are high and the story hinged on you being good at much of anything.