GMS_XPLSN

i love a good list. i love making them, performatively, and i love ignoring them. lists make you look as though you’ve thought about something, like you have a plan, like something is going to happen, it’s ok, i’ve got a list.

lists are among the greatest works of fiction known to man. lists are the good intentions that pave the road to hell.

i maintain a few RPG lists – small harmless white lies that i tell myself

1. games to run in 2023 – retitled from ‘games to run in 2022’, giving you an idea of how well it’s going
2. RPG read list – a litany of shame, a white whale of a lie
3. games to play in 2023 – a great work of fiction. i don’t play games, i run them
4. RPG buy list – i usually add to this list as i buy stuff, and ruminate the others back and forth
5. games to run – i don’t even know what this is? maybe it’s just there to reassure me that i will run these games one day

list the first – games to run in 2023

• masks: a new generation (magpie games)
• a trinity continuum game. aeon? assassins? (onyx path)
• symbaroum (free league)
• wicked ones (bandit camp)
• timewatch (pelgrane press)
• star trek adventures (modiphious)
• agon (evil hat)
• mork borg (free league/stockholm kartell)
• the walking dead universe (free league)
• werewolf: the apocalypse v5 (paradox/renegade)

ha ha ha. there are games on this list that haven’t even been released yet. werewolf won’t be out till august/september, although i did pre-order it, and the walking dead universe kickstarter will deliver around october/november. i’ll not be running them this year, they’re a head start on the 2024 list.

i need to find the right group for masks: a new generation, i think. i’m worried that the focus on emotional consequences and the ebb and flow of stats might be a turn off for players. most can handle one, but both feels like a hard sell. i could just be worrying over nothing though; my vampire group picked it up really well when i was worried it might be a stretch.

i want to love the trinity continuum games from onyx path. i loved the first editions. i’ve run aberrant multiple times, and adventure! is a thing of beauty, bottled lightning.
the new editions are, i find, really crunchy and unfocused. i’ve not brought them to the table yet, so i can’t say for sure, but i feel that play will be interrupted by book referencing every time we roll dice.

now i have read symbaroum, and it looks like a deep lore world designed to be explored and to kill characters.
it looks like a good time.
i just need to find a gap in my schedule to run it.

wicked ones looks to be amazing fun. it used the forged in the dark rules from blades in the dark, which is one of the best games of recent years, and is directly inspired by the 90s video game ‘dungeon keeper’. players are classic d&d monsters building a dungeon, raiding the surface world for supplies, and defending against crusading heroes.
again, i just need to find a gap in my schedule to run this. i think any of my groups would love this.

timewatch is a source of great personal shame for me, it’s my original unread book. i backed the original kickstarter, contributed to the playtest, ran a couple of games from the advance pdf, then moved house just as it fulfilled. the book got packed away, and then didn’t seem like a priority read because i’d read the advance pdf, and then sat there for years.
now i look at it and think ‘shit, i should read that’, but i’ve moved on slightly from gumshoe games in my head. i will read it one day, and run it. kevin makes good games.
so whilst timewatch is on my ‘to run’ list, it’s also on my ‘to read’ list. this is bad list venn diagramming.

star trek adventures is a beautiful book. when i first opened it and saw the lush two page art spreads i literally said ‘wow’. then i put it on my shelf because i don’t actually care that much about star trek.
i need to generate the interest in star trek before i can read it, and subsequently run it.

agon is by john harper, who gave us blades in the dark, so it has the kind of pedigree that means it’s constantly compared to its older sibling. it’s not a fair comparison, because they’re very different games. they’re both deconstructed games, in that they break down the semantics of an RPG and build a game based on intent rather than traditional conceits, but that’s where the similarities end.
i think this game needs a small group who enjoys exploring clever mechanics and shouting, some form of unholy hybrid of introverted game nerd and extroverted habitual tank player. i also think that agon requires long term play to fully reap the rewards, as you see the progression and patterns and take it in turns to shout the loudest.

i only bought mork borg this year on a whim. i didn’t understand why it was so expensive until i held it in my hands – the production values are high end. embossed pages, strong inks and good paper, silver gilt, ribbon, clear artistic style and vision, a setting that’s evocative but almost absent of detail, and old school style rules that singlehandedly turned old fashioned grognardism into the style du jour.
one of my groups would fall over themselves to play this, and it does seem like a wonderful one shot engine. i cannot see a long term campaign working.

i mentioned werewolf and the walking dead universe earlier, we’ll not mention them again.
which leads us to the two new games that i have managed to run this year – vampire: the masquerade v5, and exalted essence – both of which are the current editions of old white wolf games.
there are already two posts about my vampire game on this blog, it’s been done to undeath, and i intend to write about exalted essence in a later post.

either way, they’re both ticked off the list.