A Long List

2023-08-16

Wait, wait!

Not finished yet, I guess…

Call it an errata, if you wish, but the truth is there are simply too many games and too many complex aspects of RPGs to ever really be “finished.” Even in the process of writing this, games have come out that are far better examples of, say, experiments with Game Balance or explorations of real-time than the examples I used.

And that’s nothing compared to the subjects I haven’t even broached. I could spend ten thousand words on the subject of non-American RPGs, (such as Das Schwartze Auge, In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, or Tormenta). I could spend hours building lists and catagorizing rule-inserts and independant hacks. I could do a progressive historical dissertation, akin to The CRPG Addict, and chronologically explore the evolution of RPG systems. I could focus entirely on exploring MOSAIC Strict game design. I could look at how systems gamify relationships, the effect of Splats, defining RPG genres, cross-game rewards, cutscenes, two-stat games, one-pagers, or do a mathematical breakdown of all the common kinds of die-rolling mechanics.

But rather than continuing this project forever, I’d like to do a quick lightning round. What follows is an alphabetized list of RPGs and systems that I find interesting or important in some fashion, and I either don’t have the time or content to do a deep dive into.

(As a side-note, many of the games I have referenced and explained through this treatise are still in development. I made the choice to not specify versions or editions of the games I’ve mentioned, as some of them don’t have official versions. It is possible, therefore, that certain aspects of the games that I have highlighted may have changed since publication. Such is life.)

52 Fates: Turning the die-rolling mechanic into a card-playing mechanic is one of the obvious ludo-narrative changes to make when dealing with the Western genre; look at Draw, Silver City Legends, or Dirty Aces for examples. 52 Fates is a strict fantasy game, however, with four-card hands that equate to your hit points. There are also a few other mechanics that make 52 Fates more of a strategically focused game, sparing some of the pain of the goblin dice. An elegant little system you might be able to hack into your own RPG.
Above the Earth: A superhero game where you are given one-hundred d6 at the beginning of each session, and any die rolled is removed from your pool. Session-long resource management is not a particularly new mechanic, but when the resource you are managing is the number of rolls you can make all session, well that’s a new spin on things. A simple mechanic with an interesting twist that forces you to think further ahead than usual.
Alice is Missing: RPGs have played with taking things out of the game…why not take out talking? Alice is Missing is played entirely through text-messages, no talking, and a deck of cards as an Oracle. The game is narrative-focused, diceless, GM-less, and focused on telling the story of the missing titular character. With a carefully crafted structure, Alice is Missing straddles the divide between games like Darkspace and Fiasco.
Artifacts of the Tarot: In many fantasy RPGs, artifacts are items of ancient power that may have wills of their own. A book may seek a great hero to fulfill its destiny, or a magic sword may reject a warrior with insufficient ambition. Artifacts of the Tarot lets you play as these items, telling their stories instead of the adventurers who wield them for but a while.
Armour Astir: Advent: Mech battles between giant mountain golems, divine metallic juggernauts, and blood-powered animated ruins from centuries ago. A gently asymmetric RPG, where you can pilot a mech as a wizard, transhumanist arcane cyborg, holy avatar, or pact-bound witch; or forego piloting mechs entirely and take part in the story as a soldier, commander, diplomat, or engineer. I always appreciate systems that play differently, depending on your choices.
Ascendancy: A Cyberpunk RPG made with the Resistance system, Ascendancy refuses to let the narrative themes in the world’s backstory go unaddressed by the ludo-narrative. As former psychic-cyborg weapons, your characters must grow and learn both about themselves and the world they live in, as well as managing/reacting to the expectations of others. A fascinating combination of FATE, Powered by the Apocalypse, and a double-class character advancement system make for a unique RPG well worth checking out.
BALIKBAYAN: A fantastic blend of magic, technology, cyberpunk, and fantasy, this narrative no-dice-no-masters game manages a beautifully poetic mix of melancholy and hope.
Banda’s Grove: Slice-of-life quantum camping; it’s a family-friendly legacy board game and RPG rolled into one! Similar to Wanderhome in aesthetic and sensibility, Banda’s Grove focuses not on wanderers, but on a single campground that other people wander to. With a cluster of minigames about developing the campground, insuring campers have a good time, and evolving relationships among the players, Banda’s Grove might be one of the best RPGs to combine complexity, family-friendliness, and cooperative play all into one. It embodies the best of “fun for all the family,” having enough to keep adults and/or children interested from beginning to end.
Blade Bind: While many games have embraced the uptime/downtime style of play, interspersing more flexible narrative play with a detailed system surrounding a specific event, (combats, heists, a sports meet, etc) Blade Bind has created an elegant and engaging strategy system around each swing of a sword. Designed to be played in quick one- or two-session stories, the game does a fine job of forcing you to think like a duelist as you clash swords.
Clown Helsing and Flexorcists: The prevalence of one-page RPGs has spawned an industry of “small” RPGs, games that don’t fit on one page, but probably won’t last beyond a single evening or two, unless the players adore the concept. Clown Helsing is one of the better comedic ones, as is Flexorcists. Both combine simple character creation and comedic combat into a surprisingly coherent and entertaining whole. Worth an evening if you want a laugh, but probably best kept in the tool-kit as semi-regular palate cleansers, or if someone’s had a bad day and doesn’t feel up to the usual gritty dark grimdark.
The Colors of Magic: Not, in fact, based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, The Colors of Magic uses an innovative deterministic system involving colored candies like M&Ms or Skittles instead of dice. The game’s “menu” details exactly what each color means in the confines of the story — an unabashed victory, a complicated success, a catastrophic failure, etc. — and each player has a specific number of these candies for each session/campaign. Using a candy involves eating it, which turns your character’s successes and failures into a steadily diminishing, if tasty, resource.
Costume Fairy Adventures: D&D instituted a “Kits and Outfits” mechanic to handle some of the micro-management of character inventories. Kits and outfits provide a collection of useful and necessary items that characters are assumed to have if they possess a specific kit or are wearing a specific outfit. Costume Fairy Adventures simplifies this even further by adopting a Final Fantasy X-2 mechanic of outfits providing straight bonuses and abilities. Wear the Silk Tophat outfit and you can conjure small objects out of it. Wear the Sorceress Gown and you can curse anyone with small quirks. Wear the bardic Ruffled Tunic to get a bonus to helping other people, as long as you roleplay your performance. A delightful ludo-narrative of presentation not only changing who you are but also what you can do.
The Curse of House Rookwood: Gothic supernatural horror and family drama. Suitable for everything from Addams Family spookiness all the way to Clive Barker body horror. A fun little system for building your own cursed family and advancing through the generations until the curse finally takes its fatal toll…
Dreampunk: Using cards instead of dice is a fairly simple mechanical change, and several narrative-focused systems have opted to use Tarot cards instead of playing cards to inspire the action. From there, it’s one short step to the surreal dream-like art like the cards found in Mysterium, Dixit, or VENN. The narrative framework of Dreampunk allows for a system that uses these surreal cards to change the dreamscape in accordance. Another interesting offering in the “using different tools” arena of RPG design. Of course, they provide their own if you don’t have the above games.
ECU: Eldritch Care Unit: Along with Monster Care Squad, part of a subset of games that focus on healing monsters rather than killing them. Bonus points for ECU, as it also deals with the unmitigated cosmic horror that is the American healthcare system. You have to love a horror game where dealing with HMOs and co-pays is as much a part of the challenge as Lovecraftian monsters.
Embark!: Designed for almost any setting, Embark! is a rules-light-ish system designed to grow your characters classlessly, through skill use. You gain XP through every use of a skill, rather than killing monsters or completing quests. When you gain enough XP in a skill, the skill is raised. Without classes, you gain feats, spells, and specialties based on your actions, rather than your decisions during “level-up sessions.” If you’re tired of chosing a class and then sitting back on your laurels, this is definitely worth a try.
Fangs: As Tunnels and Trolls is to Dungeons & Dragons, Fangs thinks the best thing about Vampires: The Masquerade was its world-building and tone. Fangs chucks out complex system mechanics, opting for a simple d6 rules-light system that gets out of the way of the Gothic mileu. If you want more vampires than d10s, check this one out.
FIST: You play a member of the titular mercenary unit, caught up in paranormal conflicts and supernatural proxy wars, equipped with the finest equipment your money can by, as well as your own mysterious abilities. An interesting exercise in combining Powered by the Apocalypse rules with OSR sensibilities.
FORGE: Retroclones and modifications of D&D are dime-a-dozen, and all have something to bring to the table. The Black Hack, Dungeon Crawl Classics, A Dungeon Game, and more, all mixing and matching mechanics and systems to recapture the feel of cracking open the red box for the first time. FORGE is one of them, and it’s quite well made. It has rules for solo and GM-less play, mass combat, building, crafting, and all sorts of other fiddly bits. Well worth checking out if you’re curious about OSR play, but want a bit of crunch to your games.
Frankenmonster Creaturestein: Your stats are your body parts, which you can mix and match as required. Your character sheet is an Exquisite Corpse. Ludo-narrative at its finest.
Glitter Hearts: Powered by the Apocalypse for fans of Sailor Moon, Power Rangers, and pulpy queer-power adventures. Don’t overthink this one, it’s just cheery fun.
The Goblin Warrens: A micro-RPG that fits on a single business card. Each player plays five goblins of different ability, represented by differently-colored dice. A great little system that could easily be hacked into another game as a minigame or opening funnel-adventure.
Godeater: Post-apocalyptic Fantasy, where you travel to distant and magical lands…which happen to be the corpses of dead gods. Religion is always a bit of a hangup in RPGs, usually being handled as either an alternative magic system or solely a narrative construct. Godeater is a simple and elegant rules-light system with a creative world-design that makes both the divine pantheon and the world itself into a cosmically horrific obstacle. Includes advice for adapting to other rulesets, so definitely worth checking out for people who want to dabble in dark fantasy.
Godsend: A diceless hack of Legacy: Life Among the Ruins, in Godsend you play two different characters; a divine being, and the chosen avatar of the divine being on your right. A brilliant way to keep everyone on the same team while still providing for conflict between the mortals and immortals.
Gubat Banwa: Tactical combat inspired by Lancer, Pathfinder, and Final Fantasy Tactics/Tactics Ogre games. With a well structured and engaging combat system that is comparable to its inspirations, Gubat Banwa’s greatest strength is in its lore. A rich and detailed world filled with distinct cultures and inspired mythologies, Gubat Banwa is a brilliant RPG for people who love to tell melodramatic war stories of heroes who can shatter kingdoms with their blade.
A Guide to Casting Phantoms in the Revolution: A one-shot RPG-cross-board-game, Guide is worth playing at least once to see how french revolutionaries handle summoning demonic forces. The tower is pretty cool too; I love feelies.
Legacy: Life Among the Ruins: A Powered by the Apocalypse game that is half map-builder, half traditional RPG. You play characters from a specific family across multiple generations. Another applicant for the term of “Legacy” RPG, Legacy is well geared towards long play-to-find-out games where minor choices early on can have major ramifications later in the game.
MOSAIC: Not a system but rather a set of game-design principles, MOSAIC Strict texts are independant hacks and rules designed to be the lego-bricks of TTRPGs. Well worth hunting down if you’re interested in exploring new kinds of bite-sized play.
Noblis: A diceless game that involves you playing beyond-godlike beings, akin to Neil Gaiman’s Endless. A masterwork of dreamlike style and ethereal tone, I admit to liking the world-building of 2nd edition over 3rd, though I like some of the mechanics of 3rd edition over 2nd. The perfect example of how diceless play with godly characters doesn’t mean a lack of challenge or drama.
Of That Colossal Wreck: Inspired by exploration simulators, Of That Colossal Wreck includes rules for exploring ruins by building towers of cards. The perilous ruin you are delving into may collapse at any moment, and each room you explore is another pair of cards added, similar to Dread in its tension-building mechanics. Even if you use the alternate method of using dice to determine when the ruin starts to collapse, Of That Colossal Wreck is an excellent ruleset for exploring ancient and crumbling structures to find out what mysteries and stories lie within.
Praxis Arcanum: A Universal RPG system, Praxis Arcanum is focused on replacing the standard character sheet with a deck of cards. The cards are not just your stats, but also part of world-building and narrative construction. Embracing a “play-to-find-out” style, Praxis Arcanum’s ludo-narrative is how your actions change the world while the world changes you in turn. A rich and interesting design worthy of playing and hacking.
Quasar: A quite young (in Beta at time of writing) Strategy Combat TTRPG, Quasar hopes to blend the PVP mechanics from games like Warhammer with cooperative skirmishes and space-opera heroism. The system already has a simple yet intricate design that promises a plethora of intriguing strategic decisions. Worth keeping an eye on as they develop their system, if you’re interested in more tactical play.
Rainworld R2: A sci-fi Cyberpunky game with a richly imagined world and solid mechanics. If you’re looking for gritty Cyberpunk without GURPS level rule-crunching, this is a great place to start.
[ROOT.system]: Cyberpunk crossed with green apocalypse, [ROOT.system] combines cybernetics with a dampening-field that cuts off all radio communications. Couple that with a background system that you can use to randomly assign backstory events to your character, and you have some creative game- and ludo-narratives to play in.
Rod, Reel, & Fist: Way back when, an RPG series came out for the Gameboy called Legend of the River King. It was kin to the other console RPGs at the time, except you caught fish. Rod, Reel, & Fist has followed the same lineage, and is a TTRPG about catching fish. Adventures include an introductory sandbox, a tournament, a timeloop, a Legacy Mode with an evolving adventuring region, and a tower defense minigame about protecting your town from eels. It’s bloody brilliant.
A Series of Improving Exercises: There is little I can say without spoilers. It’s a game of sorts. RPG? Perhaps. I put it here mostly for its similarities to Do not Read This Journal, and its augmented reality play. A fascinating experiment and worth a look.
Shattered: Dripping with tone, Shattered is an adult dieselpunk post-apocalyptic RPG with a fairly complex ruleset. Brimming with variety, with races like sentient mushrooms, robots, ghosts, and mutants; and different mechanics for shooting, martial arts, psychic powers, magic, building your own zombie, and flying your own airship. The dice-mechanics are a little odd, requiring a chart to match your skill level to the dice you roll, but I’d still say it’s worth looking at if you like rules-heavy systems, diverse character-building, and gritty grimdark settings akin to Warhammer or Shadow of the Demon Lord.
Slayers: A game that tries to have each class play differently than each other. As monster hunters for hire, the abilities of your classes result in your play feeling different for each role. The Blade rolls die after die in a long combo string until they miss. The Gunslinger has six dice, or “bullets,” that it can use before reloading. An interesting attempt at finding a middle ground between standard OSR separation of table and world, and the Augmented Roleplay of .dungeon, Inspirisles, and LARPing.
Sodalitas: A one-page-ish RPG designed to be played by, quote, “many enthusiastic players.” Designing a game to be played by more than five people at once is brave indeed. Combining players into a “guild” allows for progression through teamwork, and makes for a fascinating system. Suitable for younger players, this is a system that practically begs for an enterprising teacher to adapt to use with their students.
Songbirds 3e: Songbirds 3e is “a tabletop roleplaying game about undeath, supernatural powers, and the blue dreams of the moon.” It’s wonderfully weird and solidly built. Inspired by a plethora of sources, Songbirds is just quietly and unassumingly good. With an Eldrich Fantasy tone and style, there’s a lot to love here.
Squamous: Call of Cthulhu is, shall we say, a dense system. The ruleset isn’t bad, but it is complex, and some people may not enjoy needing to check the rules every time they want to try grappling or get tripped by a zombie. Squamous fixes this by having its entire ruleset fit on a single piece of paper. Add the changing of “sanity” to “lucidity,” and preventing the consequences of “madness” from playing your character for you, and you’ve got a great alternative for those who like Cosmic Horror, but want more elegance in the ruleset.
Steel Hearts: Made by the same mind behind Demon Crawl - Gothic, Steel Hearts is a perhaps more polished attempt at quick and clean combat. With an Anime Mecha framing, Steel Hearts does a lot of great things with interesting combat mechanics, and is well worth a look for anyone who is tired of the stop-go combat of other tactical systems.
Stillfleet: A weird-science universe of semi-horrific adventures await among the floating ancient space hulks of long dead civilizations. Your characters — workers for the Worshipful Company of Stillfleeters — alternately explore the dark and dead hulks, and maneuver through the political machinations of civilization. A great blend of horror and sci-fi with solid world-building.
Substitution: Breathless is a tense, if rules-light, game system; combining it with a steampunkish Travelers-like game narrative makes for a fun combination of casual fun and nail-biting tension. A good introduction to a system more often pared with suspenseful horror.
Sunderwald: Any game that changes and grows with you while you play is worth paying attention to, and codifying the natural evolution of a gameworld in its ruleset is an intriguing choice. Its method of developing the book and world through play means that each setting of Sunderwald is distinctly different and unique, with each success granting the group the right to help define their race, region, or the world at large.
Sundown: A narrative focused Cyberpunk RPG, Sundown focuses on trans-humanism as a means to explore identity, ability, and society. Every transhumanist trait you take at the start connects with your character’s backstory, reinforcing the idea that our lives shape us, both mentally and physically. If Eclipse Phase is too rules-heavy for you, Sundown could be a good narrative-focused alternative.
Tailfeathers Academy of Magic: Some people love the fantastical setting of young wizards and witches studying at magical universities. Some people feel certain IPs have been poisoned by bigoted Terfs who use their popularity as justification for their horrific opinions. Some people would do well to look at Tailfeathers, a combination of student roleplay drama during the school-year, and deep tactical combat during the Quidd — um, cough… Kazzam matches. If the setting isn’t that important for you, take a look at Strike!, the setting-agnostic universal strategic-combat system Kazzam is based on. Worth looking at if you want to scratch your strategic itch.
Termination Shock: A space-opera RPG with a complex trait system based on which of three stats are the highest and lowest. A complex system of advantages and dice mechanics that makes all three traits important round out this innovative ruleset. Worth at least a look for you system-first aficionados.
There’s a Wolf In Those Woods: an experimental murder mystery game, the players need to discover not only who-dunnit, but also who everyone else actually is. With established character traits, tells, motives, and methods, embodying a character in a murder mystery has never been so RPG-like.
Trespasser: Similar to Valiant Quest, below, Trespasser is a tactical combat RPG, but with a focus on long-form campagning, taking your characters from a four-peasant-apiece funnel quest all the way to overlords of a mighty stronghold in a mid-apocalypse style world. Characters have classes, themes, and the ability to mix-and-match your abilities, while still remaining comparatively light on the rules.
Valiant Quest: An example of OSR Strategic combat, Valiant Quest is a great middle-ground between Cairn’s story-based growth and AD&D’s mechanics-focused advancement. Characters gain XP through multiple methods, including reaching a deeper level of a dungeon, surviving a slain ally, or — if you’re a bard — by writing and performing a small song/poem about something that happened in the last delve. With a clean randomizing mechanic for creating your character, Valiant Quest is a solid system worth playing.
Zyborg Commando Resurrection Overdrive: It’s Halo cross Night of the Living Dead, and the slick space-marine action crossed with an 80s B-movie horror/comedy aesthetic manages to create a fascinating tone piece. Zyborg is able to touch on the horror of war in an unsubtle and unapologetic manner, while allowing for campy comedic undercuts that manage to remain thematically relevant. When you’re a zombie in a battle suit ordered to wipe out alien bugs while struggling to control your own desire to feast on brains, you have to wonder how black the humor has to be before it stops being “so funny because it’s true.”

There are a lot more; this is hardly an exhaustive list. Poke around and you’ll find a lot more. This is just a taste of games that I found interesting, either because of a unique mechanic or creative world-building.

Good Playing!