Gamer Goals 2023 – Play RPGs that aren’t D&D

I wanted to get a little more nuanced than “Play something other than D&D” and not just because of the whole WotC debacle(s) (let’s be honest, there have been a few this year and it doesn’t look like it’s letting up). I’ve got a shelf full of games that I purchased / kick startered / inherited because they looked interesting / I’m a sucker for the genre / I got it free and I want to get them to table sometime before sooner than later. It’s also an excuse to grab interesting mechanics and port them over to other systems that could use some alternative mechanics to improve play experience. Finally, some of the folks I’m gaming with these days have played D&D + maybe one other system. This is an opportunity to introduce them to some other possibilities out there.

• Play 2+ RPGs that aren’t D&D (any edition) (at least one of them that I haven’t played before)
• Play 2+ RPGs that are new to me

So far this year I’ve played

• Honey Heist (new RPG for me – and it’s free!)

It’s a game where the rules fit on a double sided letter sized page and should be finished on a few hours, from character creation to end game. It’s mayhem, improv, and hats (actual hats optional, but they are a feature of character creation). The players are bears engaged in the criminal activity of getting honey no matter what. Whenever they succeed at a bear action, their bear stat goes up and their criminal goes down, and vice versa for successfully pulling of a criminal action. If either stat goes to 6, you are out of the game as you’ve fully gone over to one side over the other. It’s a free game so go ahead, check it out.

• Mothership (new RPG for me)

The game of space horror and alien encounters with a stripped down Old School feel to it. It’s inspired by sources like the Alien franchise, Call of Cthulhu, Pitch Black, Event Horizon, and so on, but most of the world building is left up to the GM (called the Warden). The original edition is still available for free on places like drivethrurpg and there has since been a kick starter and an eco-fantasy RPG based on similar mechanics. The kick starter edition adds a lot and cleans up several bits from the 0Ed like how armor works and the skill system. The character creation system is right on the player character sheet. There are many videos of live play of the game and a few videos on the system itself. An unbelievable amount of additional material is out there for the 0Ed and a fair bit for the kick starter 1Ed, most of it in a pamphlet sized adventure or short zines.

• Blades in the Dark

• I managed to get it to the table for a one shot. It had been so long since the last game that my players had forgotten just about everything so we made new characters and ran a score that went wildly in unexpected directions – so a good game indeed!

• Root (Powered by the Apocalypse)

I brought it out to a table who had primarily played D&D before. It was enjoyed but they also wanted to get back to D&D. We hacked a few things from the playbook moves to something more familiar to their D&D experience (climbing and such) but some of that is me learning to work the PbtA system.

• Avatar – Legends (Powered by the Apocalypse)

My buddy pulled it out again and we dusted off old characters to continue the adventure. Slowly we are getting the hang of the combat system.

Pt. 2 has been posted

Inspired by the excellent podcast, “Into the Meepleverse” and their discussion of gaming resolutions for the year, I decided to make some resolutions of my own including trying to play at least ten boardgames new to me.