RPG: 2025

Last night we convened in person to complete Stuart's West Country Vaesen campaign, and also eat festive treats.

According to my records -- yes, I'm that sort of nerd -- I have played the following role-playing games in 2025:

• Alien in February (Stuart's Space: 1999 hack), March (the "Chariots of the Gods" campaign; I don't recall this!), and Stuart's Expanse-style custom campaign in September. I've enjoyed Stuart's games more as, while I like the Alien system, the setting does nothing for me.
• Cthulhu Hack in October and November. I'm not sure about this game. It's fiiiiiiiiiiiine, but nothing about it convinced me to use it instead of Call of Cthulhu. Stuart is thinking of running it, but I'm not sure I will again. I'm glad I tried it though.
• Old School Essentials from May to June. I converted the Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign "The Chained Coffin", and it worked fine. It was enjoyable enough, but the pacing and setup of the campaign is a bit wonky; it's full of fun and evocative encounters, but the inbuilt time limit forces the players to rush straight to the climax, so they miss out on a lot of the fun. OSE is a solid system and very easy to run, and it was fun to play classic D&D again, for the first time since the 1990s.
• The Quiet Year in February. I'm not sure if this is an rpg or not, but it's close enough. Interesting to play, and I would like to have another go at it someday.
• Shadowdark in March and April. This was requested by Ben and I wrote about my thoughts here. I like Shadowdark but there's something that's not quite right about it for me.
• Star Wars d6 in June and August. This was the first time that I'd played SWD6 since about 1997 and it reminded me of how much I like the game. I'm planning on running it myself in early 2026.
• Vaesen from August until, well, yesterday. I very much enjoyed this campaign. This variant of the Free League Year Zero system is a bit loose and wonky -- I was rolling 15d6 for a lot of things towards the end -- and doesn't feel as robust as Alien, for example, but not so much that it ruined the game. We all enjoyed how it's a less despairing and nihilistic approach to investigative horror than other games, even my beloved Call of Cthulhu, and the emphasis on folk and local horror, rather than eldritch aliens from beyond space and time, is another nice change. Of everything we've played in 2025, I'm most keen to play Vaesen again; I have insidiously made Stuart aware of a Japanese campaign setting for the game, so we'll see what happens there...

In 2026 I'm hoping to run some Star Wars d6 -- as noted above -- and I would of course like to cross something else off my unplayed list. There are quite a few games I'd like to play, including Coriolis (the new one), Dragonbane, and Forbidden Lands. Stuart may have been bullied into convinced to run his long-promised Ars Magica campaign, and Ben should be running some Pendragon in the new year.

What was your favourite rpg played in 2025? What do you have planned for 2026?

Five Alive!

In a fearsome feedback loop that threatens the very fabric of not much at all, Adam at Barking Alien followed up on my first five role-playing games post with a post about the five rpgs he's thinking about most right now. Or then, when he wrote the post. That seems like an excellent idea. Let's have at it!

• 13th Age. I'm often thinking about 13th Age because I think it's an excellent game and I very much enjoyed running it in the past. I read 13th Age Glorantha the other day -- I backed as a Kickstarter in 1873 or thereabouts and never got around to reading -- and while it's massively incomplete, it has a lot of very good ideas. It's another layer of complexity on top of the base game -- I refer to it as Advanced 13th Age to no one because there's no one else here -- so I don't know if I'd run it, but it did make me excited to play 13A again, in some form.
• Break!! I've got an idea for subverting the bright and cheery feel of Break!! with an apocalyptic horror campaign influenced by The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Kingdom Death, and few other bleak and depressing things. I can't quite decide if this is a terrible idea, or bold and exciting. Perhaps I will play it to find out!
• Call of Cthulhu. I am almost always thinking about Call of Cthulhu. It has been too long since I last played.
• Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This is a bit of a cheat as I'm working on a couple of books, but I am thinking about it and it is an rpg, so...
• Star Wars d6. I've got a rough idea for a pirate campaign, a mix of original content and some published adventures I've got lying around that would fit well with a bit of bodging. This also ties in with another post I really need to get around to publishing one day. This day? No.

M People

I was noodling around with a project yesterday and realised that a lot of my favourite D&D-type monsters begin with the letter "M". So in the spirit of those old "make a campaign from only ten monsters" or "only use the Fiend Folio" posts of yore, let's see what's brought to us today by the letter "M"!

We will be using the AD&D2 Monstrous Manual, of course, for it is the best of the D&D monster books that isn't the Fiend Folio. Onward!

Mammal. An inauspicious start, but we have Ape, Carnivorous and Gorilla in there, so there's some pulpy potential.

Manscorpion. Not bad. Monstrous creepy hybrid bastards. Intelligent enough to have a society, and with manscorpion wizards! Nice and pulpy. I'd perhaps give them a tendency towards aggressive mansplaining and other forms of misogyny, just for the pun.

Not from the Monstrous Manual, obviously, but we must always make time for Iain McCaig!

Manticore. These have long been a favourite monster of mine. Lion-bat-scorpion-man monstrosities that are really angry, probably because they are lion-bat-scorpion-man monstrosities. Glorious.

Medusa. Another classic and another favourite. Can't go wrong with snake haired women with stone gaze powers. In the AD&D2 MM we also get the male version, the maedar, who are aggressively dull even by AD&D2 standards, and I will probably ignore them.

Merman. Fine, I suppose. I would probably blur them into sirens and play up elements of capricious horror, maybe even bring in some Deep One aspects.

Mimic. Great. Everyone loves mimics. Of course, I would have them be able to disguise themselves as anything, including people, probably. Imagine if the village blacksmith splits down the middle into a giant mouth and tries to eat you. Imagine!

Mind Flayer. Classic D&D enemies, but I've never much liked them, despite my Cthulhoid proclivities. Maybe I'd include one as a Big Bad type villain, squatting in a dungeon somewhere.

Minotaur. Another classic, literally. I've always liked minotaurs as a player-character option, so I'd include that too.

Mist, Crimson Death. I'm not a big fan of malevolent weather, but perhaps you could make this the centrepiece of an adventure and get away with only including one of them.

Mist, Vampiric. See above. Maybe the crimson death has these as its henchmen. Henchmists.

Mongrelman. Great! Horrific and sad. Monstrous but not necessarily monsters. They also fit into that Low Hit Dice Humanoid niche that every campaign needs. I love these guys.

Morkoth. Weird undersea hybrid thing with a very specific environmental effect, I wouldn't imagine lots of these in an M Campaign, but like the crimson death and mind flayer I could see them as the focal point of a one-off adventure. I'd probably put them into some sort of uneasy alliance with the mermen too.

Mould. Terrifying to me in real life because of a severe allergy, somewhat boring in game terms. They feel like a Gotcha! monster from the old days and if I drop anything it'll be these.

Mould Men. Fine, but we've got a similar and more visually interesting monster coming up, so I'd probably quietly fold these into them and hope no one notices.

Muckdweller. I would probably never use these in a standard campaign, as there are too many other Low Hit Dice Humanoids that would get used instead, but limiting myself to M-monsters gives them a way in and you know, I quite like them. They are Lawful Evil but I'd still put them into a sort of cute little guy role like a sort of amphibious Moogle, just a cute little guy with a burning hatred of land-dwellers.

Mudman. Great visual, boring monster. Another one that I'd probably use as the central idea in an adventure, rather than a common creature. Perhaps there would be some quest to return a mudman to human(oid) form, or at least find out where it came from and what created it.

Mummy. Yes, absolutely. Grade A superstar monsters.

Myconid. Mushroom people make for a great visual, and they are different and weird enough to feel alien, despite their intelligence and society. Like Groot but even stranger. I love them.

---

There's a desert or wilderness theme emerging with some of these monsters, with a bit of mythic Greece in there, and quite a few aquatic, or at least damp, creatures. A coastal desert perhaps, or a series or barren, hostile islands, with a swampy jungle area and some damp caves too. The number of hybrids suggest some sort of curse or experiments or cursed experiments, and I quite like the idea of a blasted "hot zone" that is home to the mists and rumoured to be full of treasure, Roadside Picnic style.

(Maybe the Zone produced the mutant hybrids?)

You've probably got the mind flayer, morkoth, and at least one mummy as "villains", maybe the crimson death and medusa too. Factions include the manscorpions, mermen, mongrelmen, muckdwellers, and the myconids; maybe there are enough manticores and medusas to form groups, maybe not. I like the idea of apes as a faction, although that's perhaps stretching the rules of the exercise a bit.

In terms of player-character options, although "Man" is technically there as an option, we are listed under "Human" in the MM, so I think I would limit players to the intelligent species above. And maybe the apes too. For fun.

Your turn. Pick a letter -- the first letter of your name, or roll a d26 if you have one -- and create a campaign from the monsters beginning with that latter. If you want.

Fantastic Five(ish)

Over at Tower of Zenopus, Blacksteel lists the first five role-playing games they played. I like rpgs. I like lists. Let's have at it!

The first rpg I played was Fighting Fantasy, except I don't always count it because my friend Gareth and I didn't properly grasp what what we were supposed to do, so we read through it together as a sort of collaborative solo Fighting Fantasy adventure. Still, we made choices and rolled dice and fought battles, and it is an rpg, so I'm counting it. Today, anyway.

Then there was a gap of a few years until around 1994 or 1995 when my friend Tim saw that I was a big Warhammer 40,000 fan and said something along the lines of "If you like orks with guns, then you'll love this" and...

We did love it. We played the heck out of Shadowrun for the next three or four years, until our group broke up as everyone headed off to university or went off to work or went travelling. Tim was a massive Shadowrun fan and had pretty much all of the splatbooks so he ran most of the games but occasionally wanted to play something too, and somehow we met Dave and Dave was a keeper of eldritch lore...

That was me done for. We played the heck out of Call of Cthulhu too and, unlike Shadowrun, that love survived "growing up" and has lasted through the years decades.

After that, it's a bit fuzzy and I'm not certain what my fourth or fifth rpgs were. We were teenagers with a lot of spare time, we were new to the hobby, and we played a ton of games between huge, sprawling Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun campaigns. I know Dave introduced us to Cyberpunk 2020, RuneQuest, and d6 Star Wars, and Tim encouraged me to get and run Traveller: The New Era, and Tim also ran a bizarre sleep-deprived game of Basic Dungeons and Dragons -- the Black Box -- in there too, so those are all likely candidates, but my gut feeling -- based on Star Trek: Voyager being on the telly at Dave's house when we went over to play -- is that RuneQuest was fourth, specifically the Games Workshop third edition:

My friends and I still remember this game as "the Battle of the Left Arm" because for some reason the hit location dice were wonky that day and all of the player-characters had their left arms either injured or severed in a battle with some broo.

Fifth though? No idea. Roll 1d4:

1. Black Box D&D
2. Cyberpunk 2020
3. Star Wars d6
4. Traveller: The New Era

Update: Adam at Barking Alien has also weighed in with a First Five!

Most Wanted

If anyone out there has unwanted copies of any of these books, I am willing to pay a fair -- as in, not absurdly inflated collector numbers -- price for them. Let me know!

The Revisitation

Following on from the role-playing games I have and haven't played, here are the games I've played but would very much like to play again before my body fails and my essence returns to the cosmos.

Or something.

13th Age - Probably my favourite version of "advanced" D&D. I think we still have much to explore with this game, not least a big old dungeon.

Barbarians of Lemuria - I enjoyed the last time I played this, only 13 years ago (!). I liked a few of the system mechanics and I also liked how the game captured the feel of pulp fantasy.

Cold City - Great fun. I would love to play this or its cousin Hot War again.

Dragonlance: The Fifth Age - The system is quite unlike anything else but I've only played it in short bursts; I'd like to give it a try for a longer term campaign to see how it goes.

Feng Shui - I'm not fully on board with the rules of the game, as I think they sort of get in the way of what they are trying to do, but I love the concept and setting, and I'd like to give it another try one day. Maybe with different rules?

Mutant Year Zero - It's a solid ruleset -- a descendant of which we played recently -- and I like the blend of base building and wilderness exploration, and how each feed into the other. I think my mistake when running it was in making things feel aimless and giving the impression that everything was randomly generated; if I ran it again I'd make more effort to highlight interesting locations and even perhaps create actual "missions" to give some added focus.

Pendragon - Just because it's Pendragon, and it's great, although I prefer a sort of loose picaresque wander about Mythic England as opposed to the Allegedly Great Pendragon Campaign, which really doesn't do much for me.

Rogue Trader - The ruleset is not the best but the setting has a great deal of potential; my previous attempt was more focussed on plot and story, and I wonder how a more freeform "space crawl" approach would go down.

Star Wars - The D6 variant. I played a fair bit of this in my teens and it was good fun, even if I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan. The expansion of the franchise in recent years has broadened the type of stories told on screen, and reminds me of the sort of off-piste adventures we had in the setting back in the dim and distant 1990s.

(Please! Where is Call of Cthulhu? Well, it gets played about once a year by my group so I don't feel the need to add it to the list. Just assume that I always want to play Call of Cthulhu Iä, fhtaghn, etc.)

Où est la Bibliography?

This is as much for me as anyone else, as I've sort of lost track of what I've done over the years.

I am the main artist or writer on underlined titles; everything else is a contribution as part of a group of artists and writers.

If you think of anything I've forgotten, or got wrong, then please let me know.

2001 The Girly Comic #1 - "The Wait" (art)
2005 Solar Wind #6 - "Donny Darto" (art)
2005 Sunny For Girls #2 - "Team Spirit" (art)
2007 Paragon #3 - "More Than You Can Chew" (art and writing)
2007 The O Men #2.5 - "Fluke" (art and writing)
2008 PJANG #1 - "Rooms for Writers" (art)

2009 B/X Companion (art)
2009 Fight On! #4 (art)
2009 Fight On! #6 (art)
2009 Fight On! #7 (art and writing)
2009 Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer (art)

2010 Fight On! #8 (art)
2010 Fight On! #9 (art and writing)
2010 Fight On! #10 (art)
2010 PJANG #5 - "The Ex-Men" (art)
2010 Old Dragon: Módulo Básico (art)

2011 Advanced Fighting Fantasy (one small drawing on one page. Other editions were released in 2012 and 2016)
2011 Carcosa (uncredited; one teeny tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it bit of art)
2011 Fight On! #11 (art)
2011 Fight On! #12 (art)
2011 Fight On! #13 (art)
2011 Lands of Ara Compendium 2011 (art)
2011 Too Much Sex & Violence #1 (art)

2012 Caverns of Slime (I have no memory of this! I think I probably did some art)
2012 The Complete B/X Adventurer (art)
2012 Death Love Doom (art)
2012 Fight On! #14 (art)
2012 The Girly Comic Book 1 (reprints "The Wait")
2012 Theorems & Thaumaturgy (art)
2012 Too Much Sex & Violence #3 (art)

2013 Old Dragon: Regras para Jogos Clássicos de Fantasia (art)
2013 Too Much Sex & Violence #5 (art)

2014 Dwimmermount (art)
2014 Dwimmermount Illustration Book (art)
2014 Forgive Us (art, maps, and writing)
2014 Petty Gods (art)
2014 The Secrets of Cats (art)
2014 Thulian Echoes (art)
2014 Zombre: An Undead Anthology (art)

2015 From the Vats (art)
2015 Petty Gods: Revised & Expanded Edition (art)
2015 The Secrets of Cats: Animals & Threats (art)
2015 The Squid, The Cabal, and The Old Man (art and maps)

2016 The Secrets of Cats: Feline Magic (art)
2016 Slugs! (art and a tiny bit of writing)
2016 Wormskin #4 (maps)

2017 Death is the New Pink (art)
2017 The Weird That Befell Drigbolton (art and maps)
2017 Wormskin #6 (maps)
2017 Wormskin #7 (art)

2018 Fish Fuckers (art, maps, and writing)

2019 Midvinter (art, maps, and writing)
2019 More Than Meets the Eye (art, maps, and writing)
2019 Adventure Anthology: Fire (new art for The Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children)
2019 Adventure Anthology: Death (reprints Death Love Doom)
2019 Barbarians of Orange Boiling Seas (art)

2020 Adventure Anthology: Blood (literally hundreds of pictures)
2020 Barbarians of the Ruined Earth (art)
2020 The Seed (art, maps, and writing)

2021 Comes Chaos (art)
2021 Green Messiah (art, maps, and writing)
2021 Oakfell Vale (art)
2021 The Excellent Travelling Volume #13 (I think I did a picture for this, but I'm not sure if it got printed)
2021 The Slave Mines of Vindicus the Terrible (art)
2021 Terror in the Streets (art, maps, and writing)
2021 Terror in the Streets: Huguenauts and Other Distractions (art, maps, and writing)

2022 The Curious Conundrum of the Conflagrated Condottiero (art, maps, and writing)
2022 The Expiration of Barrington Peake (art, maps, and writing)
2022 Strict Time Records Must Be Kept (art, maps, and writing)

2023 BEE-WARE! (art, maps, and writing)
2023 Big Bee's Pamphlet of Spells (art and writing)
2023 In the Hall of the Third Blue Wizard (art and maps)
2023 Magic Eater (art, maps, and writing)
2023 Winnie-the-Shit (art, maps, and writing)

2024 Fight On! #15 (art)

2025 Fight On! #16 (art)
2025 Altar of Madness (cover art)
2025 The Music of Ericha Zann (art)

Finished Sympathy

After my post about computer rpgs I have not completed, Jensan suggested I talk about the games I have managed to finish. There aren't many.

Update: I finished Baldur's Gate on the 8th of June, but it launched straight into Siege of Dragonspear so now I have to complete that.

Update: I finished Siege of Dragonspear on the 16th of June 2020. It's not very good.

Baldur's Gate II - I played this in 2001 or thereabouts and it remains one of my favourite gaming experiences. I adore this game. I never got around to the Throne of Bhaal expansion, although I do own it; once I've finished the first game in the series, I'll replay BGII and then finish the story.

Update: Battle Chasers: Nightwar finished 3rd of January 2025.

Update: I completed Chrono Trigger on the 19th of July 2020. I should probably do the New Game+ at some point, but I'll leave it for now.

Update: I completed Cosmic Star Heroine on the 20th of August 2023.

Update: I finished one playthrough of Dark Souls on the 22nd of January 2023. It only took eight years.

Dragon Age: Origins - I wanted to play this from the moment it was announced but it took years for me to get a copy. When I did play it what struck me most was how it wasn't much of an improvement over Neverwinter Nights; if anything it seemed like a step backwards. I didn't bother with the expansions or sequels.

Final Fantasy VII - Japanese computer rpgs were not easy to get in the UK when I was growing up. We got even fewer of the Square and Enix games than the US did, although we did get Terranigma and they didn't for some reason. As such, Final Fantasy VII was the first of that venerable series that I played, and I played it to death. I got all of the playable characters up to Level 99, broke the in-game clock, and even then didn't see everything in the game, but I did finish it.

Final Fantasy XII - As a story, this entry in the franchise is rubbish, and even seems to give up on itself by the end, but as a game it's one of the best rpgs I've played. It feels a bit like an online multiplayer rpg but with better, less random, content and no griefing from eleven year olds in Alabama.

Final Fantasy XV - I wrote about my thoughts here. but that was before I finished the game. I wasn't quite as enthusiastic about it by the end. The combat remained rubbish and if anything got even worse with the acquisition of an item that killed anything -- even optional megabosses -- with literally one button press.

Update: Golden Sun: The Lost Age completed 11th July 2024. It only took 21 years. 84 hours played.

Liberation: Captive 2 - Technically, I didn't finish this as it had about four thousand missions, but they were all variations of the first level and I completed the first five or so missions multiple times as a result of save game corruption, so I'm counting it.



Neverwinter Nights - It's good fun, but it's no Baldur's Gate II. Perhaps the best thing about it was all the community content; I downloaded and played loads of homebrew campaigns, some better than the original game.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch - A beautiful game, but an odd one. It's sort of like a Square Enix rpg crossed with a thinly-veiled Pokemon ripoff, and it seems aimed at beginners, but it's packed full of hidden and optional stuff that you have to work to uncover, and I can't imagine many newcomers doing that.

Update: I completed Phantasy Star on the 22nd of January 2022, the year of the game's 35th anniversary!

Planescape: Torment - It is just as good as its reputation suggests.

Skyrim - It is nowhere near as good as its reputation suggests.

Update: I completed The Witcher 3, plus expansions, on the 5th of May 2024.

There is a third list -- rpgs that I have bought but not played -- but we're not going to get into that right now, because it's embarrassing.

Unfinished Sympathy

My favourite computer game genre is probably role-playing games, I think in part because it's possible to be good at them without having the agility and coordination most other computer games require. For the most part, anyway. There are some exceptions.

Except... I seem to have trouble finishing the things. Although I have completed some, these ones sit in a fuzzy, indistinct limbo:

Baldur's Gate - I'm about two thirds of the way into this one. It's not as good as the sequel -- yes, I am playing them in the wrong order -- but it is good fun and of all the games here is the most likely to get finished. Update: Finished as of the 8th of June 2020, although it launched straight into Siege of Dragonspear so now I have to finish that. (I finished that on the 16th of June 2020.)

Battle Chasers: Nightwar - I just got this super cheap in a sale in August 2021. Update: Finished 3rd of January 2025. There's still some post-game business to do, but the main game is done.

Chrono Trigger - This is technically in the "now playing" category, but I have decided to take my usual approach with Japanese rpgs and spend hours upon hours building my characters to maximum level so that they can steamroller through the rest of the game. Update: I finished this on the 19th of July. It's got about fifteen different endings and I don't think I'm going to try to get them all. I will do the New Game+ at some point, because it feels wrong to not have my party at level 99 but I'll wait a bit before diving back in.

Dark Souls - I got bored. This may come as a surprise as it's one of the best games ever, except I don't think it is. Update: For reasons I don't understand, I decided to have another go at this in January 2023 and finished it on the 22nd. I didn't get explore every corner and find every secret, but I got to the final boss and shanked him. For anyone who care, I did the "walk away" ending. I may go back and get the other one too.

Divinity: Original Sin II - I got this as a Chrimble present in 2020.

Fallout: New Vegas - I only started playing this a few months ago and I have hit the level cap through wandering about and completing sidequests. I just need to go and do the main storyline.

Final Fantasy VIII - I haven't played it since 1999 and I no longer own it, so I'm never going to go back and finish it. I hit a wall in the game where my party was too powerful to continue, which is a problem I haven't seen before or since.

Final Fantasy X - I am very fond of this game, but I reached a certain point and could not continue for personal reasons that would probably seem absurd if I explained them.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age - This one's quite good, but I forgot I had it until I started writing this post. Update: Completed only 21 years late, on 11th July 2024.

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark and Shadows of Undrentide - I finished the base game but by the time I got the expansions I had uninstalled the original and now my current PC won't run them.

Phantasy Star - I have probably played this more often than any other rpg, but I have never got around to finishing it. I had the original on the Master System and I started it at least twice because my original save was corrupted. I started it again on the Wii, at least twice on the PS3, and I'm sure I started playing it via emulator at least once too. It's a great early(ish) console rpg but for some reason I can never finish it. Maybe in 2022, for its 35th anniversary. Update: And lo, in 2022 it did indeed come to pass. In four lengthy sessions in January 2022 I rattled through the game via emulator and completed it on the 22nd. I didn't get everyone to maximum level, but as there's no difference to the game if you do so, I don't mind. I did kill the "impossible" Saccubus though, for only the second time in all my many, many plays, so I'm considering the game finished. Now I can move on to the sequels. Ha ha ha.

Vagrant Story - I never quite got a hang of the combat system in this one and playing it is a bit of a faff as I have a US copy.

The Witcher 3 - I got bored again, although I can tell it's a much better game than Dark Souls. I think the combat system turned me off, as it's based more on the player's dexterity than it is on equipment and statistics, and dexterity is my dump stat. Update: I tried again, and 208 (!) hours later, on the 5th of May 2024, I finished it, plus the two expansions.

Xenoblade Chronicles - I stopped playing this one because I liked it so much I didn't want it to end, which is one of the best reasons to pause, I reckon. Ridiculous too, as it's had two sequels and two remakes since. Oh well.



One significant issue is that I have a stack of unplayed rpgs waiting for me when I clear this backlog. It never ends.

My Top "Four" Computer Games EVER

There was a #MyFave4GamesEVER thing on twitter.

I couldn't stick to four.

Oh Dear...

This is a bit embarrassing. Following on from the role-playing games I have played and the games I own but have not played, here are the adventures and campaigns that I own and have not played. Again, I am not including free stuff that's been shoved at me by Drive Thru RPG, nor am I including adventures from magazines, because that would be ridiculous and this is quite bad enough.

Adventure Number Ten - Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP)
Assault on Blacktooth Ridge - Castles & Crusades
Bad Myrmidon - OSR
Barrowmaze - OSR
Better Than Any Man - LotFP
Blades - Earthdawn
Blood in the Chocolate - LotFP
Broodmother SkyFortress - LotFP
Carcosa - LotFP
The Cursed Chateau - OSR/LotFP
Dark Frontier - Rogue Trader
Death Love Doom - LotFP
Death's Dark Shadow - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Deep Carbon Observatory - OSR
The Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children - LotFP
Doors to Darkness - Call of Cthulhu
Dungeon of the Unknown - LotFP
Dwimmermount - Adventurer Conqueror King/OSR
- I have played one session of a pre-release version of the dungeon online with the author, James Maliszewski, so maybe I shouldn't count it.
England Upturn'd - LotFP
Eyes of the Stone Thief - 13th Age
Fantastic Four: Fantastic Voyages - Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game
Fever-Dreaming Marlinko - OSR
The God that Crawls - LotFP
Going Through Forbidden Otherworlds - LotFP
The Grinding Gear - LotFP
Hammers of the God - LotFP
The Idea from Space - LotFP
Kafer Dawn - 2300AD
King for the Day - OSR
Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess - LotFP
Lure of the Expanse - Rogue Trader
Masks of Nyarlathotep - Call of Cthulhu
Maze of the Blue Medusa - OSR
Misty Isles of the Eld - OSR
The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time - LotFP
Nameless Horrors - Call of Cthulhu
No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides - LotFP
No Salvation for Witches - LotFP
Oddpool - Into the Odd
Palace of the Silver Princess (DIY Remix) - OSR
The Pale Lady - LotFP
People of Pembrooktonshire - LotFP
The Punchline - LotFP
Qelong - Lamentations of the Flame Princess
A Red & Pleasant Land - LotFP
Sacraments of Evil - Call of Cthulhu
Scenic Dunnsmouth - LotFP
Silent Titans - Into the Odd (I think)
A Single, Small Cut - LotFP
Slumbering Ursine Dunes - OSR
Sounds of the Mushroom Kingdom - LotFP
The Squid, the Cabal, and the Old Man - LotFP
Tales of the Scarecrow - LotFP
Thulian Echoes - LotFP
Tomb of the Iron God - OSR
Tower of the Stargazer - LotFP
Towers Two - LotFP
The Weird that Befell Drigbolton - OSR
World War Cthulhu: Europe Ablaze - Call of Cthulhu
X-Men: Who Goes There? - Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game

There's a lot of OSR -- LotFP in particular -- stuff there because I do a fair bit of work in that area, but my own group doesn't play old-school games unless I'm playtesting something. It's a feeble excuse but it's all I've got.

Missed Opportunities

Following on from the probably-incomplete list of games I have played, here are the games I have owned but have not played, and in some cases haven't even read:

• 2300AD
• 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars 
• 13th Age Glorantha (I have uncovered a completed character sheet for this, which suggests I've played it -- likely run by Stuart -- but I can't find any evidence of having done so!)
• Apocalypse World (I gave my copy to Stuart years ago, so who knows if I'll ever play this!)
• Barbarians of the Ruined Earth
• The Black Hack
• Break!! (Acquired 2024)
• The Cthulhu Hack (Played on 26th October 2025!)
• Cyberpunk 2020 (I have to play this next year, before it's too late! Update: I played this just before the end of 2020 but forgot to blog about it!)
• Death Is the New Pink
• Demon City
• Forgotten Futures
• Goblin Slayer (Acquired 2026 just to see what Sword World is like. It was cheap, but I must be insane.)
• Godbound
• GOZR
• Into the Odd (Played Silent Titans, which uses the same rules, in 2022.)
• Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD (plus the Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog spinoffs/campaigns!)
• Lacuna Part I. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City (Played in 2021.)
• Lady Blackbird (Played in 2024.)
• Lords of Creation
• Mage: The Ascension (My copy of the rulebook is long lost, so I doubt I'll be playing this!)
• Make You Kingdom
• Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (I may never play this as I don't have the cards!)
• Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales (This is technically a campaign setting but it changes AD&D2 to such an extent that I'm going to include it; thanks to Martin for the inspiration!)
• Mekton II
• Mutant Future
• Nemesis
• Night's Black Agents (Played in 2021.)
• Psi World
• Puppetland
• Ruination Pilgrimage
• Silent Legions
• Silent Titans (Played in 2022.)
• SINless
• Small But Vicious Dog
• Strike!
• Tenra Bansho Zero
• Traveller, the original flavour.
• Troika!
• True20
• Villains and Vigilantes
• Wandering Blades

These are the games I've bought or -- in the case of freebies -- made an effort to acquire. Most are hardcopies, with a handful of pdfs; I am not including all the free pdfs you get given every so often at Drive Thru RPG because then the list would go into the hundreds and that way lies madness.

It's not as bad as I thought, although it is a little bad; there are things here that I will never play and I know it. The bigger issue perhaps is the number of adventures and campaigns I've bought with no clear idea of when they will be played; perhaps that's a list for another post, if I can stand the crushing shame of it all.

Playa Got Game

This popped up on Twitter the other day:



I replied with a list. Then remembered a few more. Then another few more. Then some more, then I gave up and decided to post the list here instead. I knew I'd played more than four. I didn't realise it had been more than ten times that.

This list doesn't include the games I've owned and never played -- which is a smaller list, but only just! -- nor the games for which I've generated characters and then the game never happened.

13th Age
Adventures in Middle Earth
Alien (2025; both for Space: 1999 and Alien itself.)
Barbarians of Lemuria
Call of Cthulhu
Cold City
Conspiracy X
Cthulhu Hack (2025)
Cyberpunk 2020 (the last days of 2020, just in time!)
Cybergeneration
Cypher System
Dark Conspiracy
Deadlands
Deadlands Noir
Delta Green (v2 in 2019)
Dragon Age
Dragonlance: The Fifth Age
Dungeons and Dragons (Basic, 2, 4, and 5)
Elric!
Feng Shui
Fiasco
Fighting Fantasy
Golden Heroes
Hot War
Labyrinth Lord
Lacuna Part I. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City (2021)
Lady Blackbird (2024)
Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Legend of the Five Rings
Marvel Super Heroes (2012; FASERIP)
Middle Earth Roleplaying
Monster of the Week (2021)
Mutant (Year Zero, Genlab Alpha, Mechatron)
Mutant Chronicles
Nephilim
Night's Black Agents (2021)
The One Ring
Pandemonium!
Paranoia
Pathfinder
Pendragon
Phoenix: Dawn Command
The Quiet Year (2025)
Redbox Hack
Rogue Trader
RuneQuest
Savage Worlds
Shadowdark (2025)
Shadow of the Demon Lord (2020)
Shadowrun
Silent Titans/Into the Odd (2022)
SLA Industries
A Song of Ice and Fire (sort of; Ben used the rules to run an Arthurian game)
Star Wars (d6)
Tales of the Arabian Nights (2016; put an asterisk against this one, it's more of a multiplayer Fighting Fantasy gamebook than an rpg proper, but it's close)
Trail of Cthulhu
Traveller: The New Era
Unknown Armies (sort of; Stuart used a homebrew system based on Star Wars d6)
Vaesen (2025)
Vampire: The Masquerade
Vultures (2022)
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (first, second, and -- in 2019 -- fourth edition)

I think that's it, but I expect to remember half a dozen more games about thirty seconds after I click "Publish".

My Top 10 Role-playing Games Ever (in 2014) #1

Huzzah! We have arrived at long last at the end of the list of my top ten role-playing games. As is traditional with this sort of thing, let's run down the list before we get to my favourite rpg.

Unless you're reading this via a feed or Google Plus, in which case the preview image probably gave it away. Oh well.

#10 - Dragonlance: Fifth Age
#9 - Fighting Fantasy
#8 - Shadowrun
#7 - Cold City
#6 - Lamentations of the Flame Princess
#5 - 13th Age
#4 - Savage Worlds
#3 - Pendragon
#2 - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

At number one, of course, is Call of Cthulhu, which is only appropriate given that it's the best role-playing game ever according to both rpggeek and the arcane magazine poll that inspired this series of posts in the first place. I am being facetious, but only a little, because it is my favourite rpg ever and has been since I first played it.

My group at school knew of another group a couple of years above us, in the nigh-mythical Sixth Form. We didn't mix with them -- they had cars and didn't even wear uniforms! -- but somehow we got in touch with Dave, and he had such sights to show us! He introduced us to RuneQuest and Cyberpunk 2020 and Star Wars -- the latter only played once because of a misunderstanding in which Dave thought we hated it for some reason -- and Call of Cthulhu.

My memories of that first session are vivid. Dave lived in what seemed like an ancient cottage -- it wasn't -- in what seemed like the middle of nowhere -- it wasn't -- and it was the perfect setting to introduce a bunch of impressionable teenagers to horror gaming. We played "The Haunting" because everyone starts with that -- unless they start with the upcoming seventh edition, but that's an exasperated sigh for another day -- and it was wonderful. Characters were thrown out of windows while my character tried to deflect attention by claiming that it was a comedy film in production, someone got possessed and shot someone else in the back, and in the end the haunted house was burned to the ground, as I suspect happens in the majority of attempts at the adventure.

It was great fun but it was also scary, in part because we were playing it in the dark in the middle of the countryside and in part because it was the first time we'd played a horror game. There were no monsters to hit and no special powers to use to our advantage so we felt more vulnerable than we had in any other game up until then, and we had no idea what we were facing, and to use an appropriate quote, the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

That first game had quite the effect. We pestered Dave to run more adventures and the discarded sheets of dead or insane characters piled up. I bought three thick Lovecraft collections, and grappled with his baroque prose, a trial which didn't do much for me but impressed my English teacher. We all rushed out and bought copies of the rulebook and Tim ran some games, then Paul ran a couple -- including another creepy adventure played out in the boondocks -- and Stephen ran a few, and then I ran Horror on the Orient Express for a year for two different groups. We played the heck R'lyeh out of this game and some of my happiest gaming memories -- and all of the scary ones -- happened while playing. My current group likes D&D a lot so we've played a great deal of that in the years I've been part of it but that aside, I've played Call of Cthulhu more than any other rpg and I will never get bored of it.

Do I need to describe the system? It's been around since Raiders of the Lost Ark came out -- how appropriate -- and hasn't changed much so I'm sure everyone knows about it by now, but if not, guess what? It's quite simple! It's more or less RuneQuest with most of the fiddly bits taken out and is based on percentile skills, so is intuitive enough to be easy for even newcomers to grasp; I've introduced a few people to role-playing using the game, as everyone understands what Persuade 65% means, and the resistance table aside everything is on the character sheet and there are no hidden player mechanics.

Player-characters are normal folk rather than the specialists or heroes of most other rpgs, and are as such somewhat fragile, becoming incapacitated through injury and -- more often -- insanity; the latter mechanic is often derided as "mental hit points" and while it may not present a nuanced and realistic view of mental health it does the job for a game about librarians and archaeologists fighting ancient evil gods, is consistent with the source material, and once again it's presented in a simple and transparent manner that anyone can understand.

Of course, since the game has been around since Raiders of the Lost Ark came out and hasn't changed much it is a bit clunky in places, but just like a vintage car -- another motoring metaphor? -- a bit of affectionate tinkering gets it up and running and it's so light a system that there isn't much work required. I'm sure that my years of play mean that even I have managed to memorise at least some of the rules but I find I can run the game with a character sheet as a reference and that's a good sign, as it means the system gets out of the way and I can concentrate on the mystery and the horror, like that time that I got the players screaming in disbelief as an axe-wielding maniac started swinging at their characters.

I love this game to bits. It works for long campaigns -- I don't think it's as much of a character killer as some suggest, although I have heard stories of some proper meat grinders -- and it's an amazing fit for a one-shot scenario for a dark winter's night. It's a game in which the players feel actual relief when they finish an adventure, and the only game in which I've experienced actual fear. I have played it almost every year for almost two decades and I hope that I continue to play it for years to come until the stars are right.

Next: nothing! We're finished! I'm sorry it took so long but I hope it was a worthwhile and interesting series.

My Top 10 Role-playing Games Ever (in 2014) #2

If you've been reading this series since the start you may have been wondering when this game would be coming up; after all I've already expressed my love for Fighting Fantasy and mentioned my dalliances with Games Workshop, so there was a certain inevitability about the appearance in the top ten of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

WFRP is a bit of an orphan. Games Workshop had a great deal of early success selling role-playing games but almost all were reprints -- albeit handsome ones -- of existing products. I'm sure someone will pop up in the comments and tell me about something I've forgotten -- I know both Inquisitor and Warhammer Quest have rpg elements, and more on the latter in the new year -- but as I recall the only home grown rpgs GW produced were Judge Dredd and WFRP; both got a couple of years in the sun but the latter was released just as the company was moving over to miniature-based war games and not even the Warhammer name was enough to save it from cancellation. WFRP retained a healthy and enthusiastic fanbase and popped up again at the now-defunct Hogshead, then a second edition was again published by Games Workshop before again being axed. Fantasy Flight Games released a third edition with a different ruleset but also produced a big pile of Warhammer 40,000 rpgs that used the same system as the second edition. At the time of writing the game is once again in limbo. It's all a confusing mess and it's a wonder that I managed to play the thing at all.

I had been reading White Dwarf since 1991 so I knew about WFRP from the occasional article -- even then they were becoming more sporadic -- but I didn't get to play it for the first time until around 1997. I remember being intimidate by the size of the rulebook -- larger than anything else I'd seen at the time -- and the dense and teeny tiny text. My friend Chris took the challenge of running the game and we made it through some of The Enemy Within before we stopped, I think through a combination of the group splitting -- university beckoned -- and the rest of the campaign being out of print at the time. Still, it was good fun and it set the tone for how I see the game to this day.

WFRP is often characterised as either horror-fantasy or -- more often -- as grim and dark and po-faced but I don't think either is true. Yes characters can be fragile, and yes it is possible to die of an infected stab wound, and yes it seems as if everything in the world is out to kill the player-characters, but a bit of murder and demon daemon summoning in the first chapter of the game's iconic campaign -- er, SPOILER -- has given the wrong impression of what is to my eye a comedy game.

Almost every name in the game is a pun or joke based on poor German translation; the dwarves have mohawks; the orcs are the Hulk as played by Ray Winstone; almost all of the player-characters are going to be working class oiks and if any of them are nobles they are probably idiots or drunks or both; any scheme, for good or ill, is bound to fail due to someone's incompetence; and in a fight no one can hit anything but if they do the damage will probably multiply so when they try to knock out the watchman in Bogenhafen they instead end up splattering him across the sewer wall. Oops.

What it is, you see, is Blackadder does D&D. How anyone can think it's supposed to be a serious game I don't know.

My favourite version of the game in terms of mechanics is the second edition; in polishing some of the rough edges of the first edition some of the game's unique personality is also lost but I do think it is the better game and as I tend to run it based on my own jumbled conception of the setting circa 1988 it all balances out. As should not be a huge shock to anyone at this point I like the simplicity of the system; it's based on percentile rolls against the characters' attributes, with skills and abilities modifying the rolls rather than having values of their own. There is a bit of wonky design in that one has to remember what Strike Mighty Blow -- for example -- does in terms of actual numbers but whenever I run the game I cheat and use simplified non-player-character statistics with all that stuff built in so it's not an issue from my end, and the idea at least is an elegant one.

The magic system is great fun; wizards have to roll dice to generate the energy they need to cast spells but as it is WFRP there is always a chance of something going wrong, from all milk in the locality curdling to a daemon crawling out of the caster's ears and laying waste to everything in sight. Spellcasters feel as dangerous to play as the superstitious folk of the setting believe them to be and with that danger comes a thrill, although it is perhaps best suited to the more reckless player. I was lucky enough to have just such a player when I ran the updated-but-not-really-related Enemy Within and his character ended up with a flaming skull head, umpteen fingers on each hand, and a long, skeletal trunk. As you do.

In stark contrast to most of the games on the top ten so far I do play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay quite often; it's one of those games that everyone -- both in my group and the larger world -- seems to like so it's a surprise and shame that no one seems to be able to keep it in print. I hope to be playing it again in 2015, following the player-characters of The Enemy Within II as they enter the world of Imperial politics, because what could go wrong for a noble with a burning skull face?

Next: loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. Or something.

My Top 10 Role-playing Games Ever (in 2014) #3

I my last post I wrote about the folly of the generic role-playing game; in contrast the next entry in my top ten has a laser-like focus that brings with it a heap of restrictions and despite that Pendragon remains a superb game. Expansions and later editions would change some details but in the core game everyone plays a knight, everyone plays a man, and everyone plays a goodie; this should feel restrictive but it doesn't, in part because different backgrounds allow for even four English knights of about the same age to feel varied, and in part because that's the game, that's the genre, and if you've sat down to play at all then you've probably already made that first leap. Unless your gamemaster is a duplicitous sort. If so, sorry.

The game uses the familiar Chaosium system -- albeit using a d20 instead of a d100 for some reason I've never understood. -- and as a result the rules are simple and intuitive. Aside from the use of the wrong dice there are a couple of other major differences between Pendragon and its parent system, the first of which is its heavy use of personality mechanics.

Everyone is assumed to uphold the laws of chivalry to some extent so D&D style alignment is more or less irrelevant; you can be Sir Evil of Sodshire but you'll still act with honour, at least most of the time. Instead the game uses a system of virtues and passions, the former a set of twinned characteristics like Pious and Worldly and the latter stronger motivators like Loyalty, Love, or Hate. The virtues give an idea of what a knight's personality is like and a knight can claim bonuses if certain virtues have a high value; the downside is that with more extreme values comes a more extreme personality, which could cause trouble for the knight. Passions are the knight's core beliefs and they can be used to bolster a roll -- a character could use his Loyalty to Arthur give him a bonus on his Sword skill, for example --but in doing so he runs the risk of going mad if the roll goes wrong. It's a simple system and allows for a fair bit of player choice while also emulating the bonkers romanticism of the source material; if you want a game about blokes in plate armour falling in love with the wrong women and chopping up Saxons while in the grip of a mindless fury, then this is for you!

The other big difference between Pendragon and not only its Chaosiumish cousins but the wider world of rpgs is that down time between adventures is given as much importance as the adventures themselves. I had played plenty of games in which characters did stuff between adventures, whether it was researching old and musty spellbooks or investing in shady nightclubs, but Pendragon was the first rpg I ever played that used distinct phases of the sort common in board or war games. Such ideas are much more common now with games like Mouse Guard and The One Ring out there but when I first encountered the idea that role-playing games about adventuring knights could be about more than the adventures it seemed revolutionary.

Yes Pendragon's knights go on adventures but they only do so in the summer; the rest of the year they're attending feasts and tournaments, or running their estates, or wooing ladies, or raising children, or -- as always seemed to happen to us -- cross-breeding horses with their fey counterparts to create super hybrid steeds that could gallop at absurd speeds but only at night. We were teenagers.

Player-knights retire and die -- while adventuring, while hunting, or even in their sleep -- and Pendragon allows for play to continue through the characters' family trees; if a knight hasn't fathered a son -- or daughter in disguise -- then they're bound to have at least a brother or cousin to carry on the family name. In Pendragon a player doesn't run a single character but a whole family and the challenges the dynasty faces can be just as exciting as riding off to fight some Saxon raiders or investigate a magical tower. Again, the idea of playing an entire family line was something that I'd never encountered before -- unless one counts Paranoia -- and it was an exciting innovation.

I first encountered Pendragon in the mid 1990's and I have played it only a few times over the years decades but it was so much fun and so different to anything else I've played before or since that I have nothing but fondness for it. I would probably play it more often if the blasted thing stayed in print for more than five minutes every five years but even so my personal character sheet has a "Love (Pendragon)" score of at least 16 on it.

(The pictured first edition box was donated by friend of the blog Zain -- thanks Zain! -- but is alas incomplete so I am still looking questing for a playable copy.)

Next: grim and perilous adventure!