I found the ring when I was sixteen.

It was buried deep in my grandmother’s things, in an old dusty chest in the closet. Everything in it belonged to my great grandmother, at least, that’s what my grandmother said.

I had spent the summer looking through old photographs and antique letters, curious about my past for the simple reason that I had no other part about myself with which to be curious.

Diceless Universal, by Michael Raston, is a very simple Universal Deterministic RPG. Only four pages long, the rules of the system are barely worth calling rules. Being deterministic, the rule section mostly details how the GM describes the world, and the players react. It is shared storytelling at its most basic; little more than a collaborative argument.

But I talked about that kind of play earlier. What I’d like to discuss now is the very last page, where the system details its progession mechanic: what it takes for characters to level up.

Darkest Days is a dark fantasy RPG designed by Bell Moon Games. A bit souls-like, the game sees its players as former legendary heroes returned to life by ancient ritual, in a desperate attempt to save the world from demons and monsters. It has an interesting “pip” system for skills, which gives you bonuses from both your stats and your equipment.

One of the more interesting parts of the Darkest Days ruleset is how it handles skill checks. In most modern RPGs, when a player wishes to undertake a task, they are given some measure of difficulty. Most systems call this a “difficulty rating” or a “target number.” You have to roll “better” than this number to succeed at your task.

Okay, but where does this number come from?

Bally walked all the way through the castle to the other side. He had to turn around several times because the settling stonework had begun to sag into the doorways, jamming the solid wooden doors shut. It was becoming a process to work through the winding maze of hallways.

At last he reached a door to the outside walls. Clamering his way through the stonework, he slipped out of the castle and across the lumpy hills back to the cliff overlooking the sea. Was it a shorter walk than before? Had a large part of the cliff fallen away into the blood-dark waters? He didn’t know. He didn’t much care, either, come to that. He’d rather just sit back and watch as the Spot grew imperceptibly larger.

Sellswords, by Pagentry Games, is, quote: a tabletop roleplaying game about the sorrows of war and those who sow them. It’s medieval in its trappings, though magic and monsters are not in the expected setting. Instead, the world is plagued with war, banditry, and politics. It’s a world filled with the worst excesses of power-hungry warlords draped in religious finery and exotic furs.

The PCs play as mercenaries, masters of brutality and flexible morality, who will do anything and serve anyone for the right price. Perhaps they will do horrific things for the right reasons, or be righteous for the wrong reasons, but only one thing is true: they serve only themselves, their coin, and Lady Fortune.

Sellswords is a diceless game, and rather than concoct an elaborate method of juggling points to pay for results, like Noblis or the Four Points System, Sellswords has a far more elegant system for deciding what happens: GM fiat.

Cast Away, written by by Joe O’Brien & Reilly Qyote, is a survival RPG. Your characters are survivors of a disastrous event, anything from a shipwreck to a zombie apocalypse, and must manage their health, fatigue, food, and shelter in a hostile aftermath.

The system is quite good at what it sets out to do. This is a game of struggle and strife, fighting to survive, and every mistake you make or failure you suffer results in more trouble for you down the line. Failures beget failures, and death for your character is permanent. This game is so good, in fact, that it brings up a significant question about RPGs in general:

This is a difficult game. You’re not expected to survive; not without some serious luck. You’re going to fail, fail hard, and you’re not even allowed to roll up a new character. This game is hard, and if you fail you’re done.

Does that sound like fun to you?

There was a crowd, or what counted as a crowd, these days. Almost thirty people.

They had tried their best. That fact alone made Bally more angry than anything else he had heard the entire evening. He watched as the small group of peasants sauntered their way up the hill towards the castle gates, waving their three torches and two pitchforks. A scythe was there too, which was a nice touch, but all in all, their heart wasn’t really in it.

A two-fer, eh? Okay, let’s go!

The Great Ork Gods is an RPG made by Jack Aidley. It’s a one-shot comedic game, designed to be played and forgotten about in an evening. At its most basic; the players play brutish nasty hate-filled Orks, as well as the Orkish gods who hate the Orks as much as the Orks hate them.

One Wrestling Ring to Rule them All (stylized as 1WR) is a Wrestling RPG by Dice Kaptial. The players play as wrestlers who must fight and compete for the entertainment of the onlooking audience. A bingo-card of nine “goals” increase the audience’s score as they are met, including things like one of the wrestlers doing a heel-turn, or performing a specific move during a specific round.

Blood Red Sands, by Galileo Games, is an exploration of Competitive RPGs.

I must admit, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game quite like it. When I talked earlier about Competition in RPGs, I focused mainly on the idea of what competition meant in a largely collaborative medium. I talked about how characters might fight each other, but the players themselves never should, and the differences between seeing RPGs as “Non-GM Players vs. GM,” or “Players vs. the Adventure,” or even “Players vs. the Story.”

Now, here comes Blood Red Sands, an RPG that throws out those rules and gives the players Victory Points.

Victory Points!

Bally almost tripped over the mumbling monk. Teek had layed out on the stone hallway, his head ackwardly jammed against the wall as he muttered in his sleep. Bally let out a curse from his lips as he hopped over the recumbant penetant, catching himself expertly just as Teek snorted and coughed.

“Oh my,” he muttered as he opened his eyes. “Bally? Is that you?”