Sometimes, it’s the little things.

For example: when Michael Donnahill was seven, he saw the 2090 eclipse as it blacked out the sky over the English Isles of the EU, what was once called Great Britain before the food riots. He sat on a grassy hill on what his grandfather still called the Isle of Wight, surrounded by thousands of onlookers as they all stared up into the sky, wearing their thin black glasses.

It was moderately cloudy that day, but everyone could still see the dim burning disk as it was eaten away, sliver by sliver, behind the thick fog of clouds. Michael watched as the world grew darker and darker still, his heart racing as night fell faster and faster, until 4:56 on the twenty-third of September was as dark as midnight in winter.

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve decided to put my theory to the practice.

Woe to all who step down this dark path.

There’s a longstanding cliche about the separation betweeen theory and practice. Some people think about things, other people do things. “Those who can’t do, teach.” The bigotry and condescention between the two groups is just as longstanding; get a chemist or mathemetician talking about the differences between the “theoretical” and “applied” branches of their field, and watch the sparks fly.

That’s right, I’m going to design my own RPG. It’s going to be a process, and certainly take more time to consider all the various issues that crop up. As such, I will be moving the design posts to Saturdays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I will begin posting another writing project, Noriama. As with most of my stories, the idea that struck me first was a retelling, in this case a futuristic look at the vanishing Roanoke colony.

Okay, let me first take a step back and say this unequivocally: I don’t think Errant Challenger is a bad game. This is a rhetorical device, yeah? Just go with it for a second.

Errant Challenger, by Fauix, is still in its Beta at time of writing. It’s a fairly straightforward system, easily graspable by most anyone familiar with RPGs.

It’s a bad RPG.

I mean, look at it! It’s not so much a rule-book as it is a word document exported to PDF. The cover is poorly structured AI mush. There’s no real setting, just a chunk of fantasy pablum. The system itself doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done twenty time over in different systems.

Damn my fingers, I never thought I’d write a journal like this. Not one for writing, me. Spent my life doing a bit of this and a bit of that, as they say. Never caught. Was always proud of that, nothing could ever get pinned on me. Now, here I am in the middle of the desert. Nothing but sand and wind. Going to die here, so might as well put down my life on paper. Some fool thing to do before the sun cooks me alive.

My name was Robert Chickering, though I never used it much. Always a different name, me. Took what I needed when I could from those who had too much, and kept what I had from those who wanted it. Traveled around a lot, from the Americas to Europe and even further east. Managed to always stay one step ahead of the law, got while the getting was good.

Against the Apocalypse, designed by Oleander Garden, is a game about war, last stands, isolation, and death. It is a game where the players are soldiers in a war against the Demiurge, who sends their hollowmen every Sunday in an attempt to kill the players. They have little in the way of supplies or hope, and the game will end the way all wars must, in death.

The game is, in a single (compound) word, Anti-narrative.

Divided into two parts — the fighting and the downtime — the game encourages the players to unfold their character’s lives in the manner things would happen, not should or could. The book asks players to be honest with both themselves and their imagined world: the goal is not to tell a story, but to simulate life.

Errant, published by Kill Jester, is a, quote: “rules light, procedure heavy, classic fantasy role-playing game in the vein of the first few editions of that role-playing game and its many imitators and descendants.”

Another one?

Not to complain, but the RPG medium is rife with OSR D&D-likes. Rife, I say. What is there to be gained with breaking down yet another one, when we could be talking about interesting games like Rosewood Abbey, LORDSWORN, Pine Shallows, Lumen Ryder Core, Edelweiss, The Long Shift, or All the While?

What is to be gained, I think, is purely an excuse to talk about that first line in the description: Rules-light, Procedure-heavy.

Fitzwilliam G. Hastings sat up. At first, he was relieved. The sudden pain in his chest had lessened considerably. In fact, it was gone. Whatever it was, it had obviously passed, and he could get back to his usual Monday evening activity during Tax season, organising his stack of spreadsheets and ledgers that had been sent to him over the weekend by his panicked clients. It never failed. It didn’t matter how much money you had, or how familiar you were with it, everyone always put off working on their taxes until it was too late, and April 15th was staring them down, and desperation drove them to throw piles of paper at Fitzwilliam in the vein hope that he could make it all go away.

Iron Halberd, by Level2janitor, is a medium weight OSR Fantasy RPG. Recognizing the variety of definitions in the world, the game clarifies OSR to mean that the game is deadly, the story is player-driven, resource management is important, and the system itself is compatible with most other OSR resources.

Anyone familiar with OSR systems will be quickly familiar with most of Iron Halberd’s offerings. Stats are randomly generated, the world is deadly, and the focus of the story is on the player’s actions, rather than the GM’s Mary-Sue villains. Inspired by Dungeon Crawl Classics, Knave, and 13th Age; the system has rules for warbands, strongholds, crafting, hirelings, and long-travel.

But what does “medium weight” mean?

Endeavour, by Armiger Games, is a playset for the Paragon RPG system, which was made famous by AGON, the epic myth TTRPG. Inspired by the hopeful and optimistic Science Fiction genre — specifically the original Star Trek — Endeavour sees your characters traveling throughout the galaxy, discovering new species, alien cultures, and strange artifacts in your quest to learn more about the universe.

AGON, on the other hand, is about retelling epic adventures in the style of the Odyssey. Your characters travel from island to island on their journey home, subject to the whims and wills of the Gods.