“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, role-play 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.

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.

Arthur Von Gusse sat quietly, sipping his tea. It was some dreadful Asian blend — nowhere near as pleasant or aromatic as a solid Brittianian tea; what was the country coming too? The King was becoming far too multicultural, Arthur mused. When Queen Virginia was alive, the Empire always had the best, whether it was English or not. Of course, the best often was English, and if it wasn’t… well, a short war would soon see that it was.

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.

It is a fact universally acknowledged that once a pirate has spent enough time at sea, the Horizon looks different everywhere on earth. This is not how a sailor begins their career. When they first step onto the swaying ship, young and fresh-faced, they are first overwhelmed by the majesty of it all: a distant expanse of unending blue, swallowing up the past, future, and anything else that the sailor brings with them.

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.