RPG Medium

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.

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. Ideally a friend, of course; someone who is interested in these kinds of games and delights at the idea of a non-solo journaling experience.

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. At the same time, Hero Quest did do something that was prevalent in early RPG games; your character sticks around after every quest.

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. Instead, they’ve taken inspiration from the action-based nature of the games themselves.

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. In addition, however, this silly game about time travel has an additional mechanic: Resolve.

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.

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. You’ve sold them charms, spells, and means of protecting themselves from an imagined threat…until suddenly your charge becomes possessed.

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. HP and Gold are found by rolling 1d6 each. Inventory items are cut-out squares that you fit onto a small grid that is your backpack. Magic is used by wielding runes which can be used three times before being recharged by performing a unique task. The game is more about exploring than finding a single villain to thwart, and is a wonderful example of OSR gaming.