50 Years, 50(ish) Games
January's Pugsteady Update
A week ago I turned fifty. I spent the day home where my family cooked me several wonderful meals, along with a lovely strawberry cake. I got a game and a couple of books. And honestly, it was fantastic. I got to spend time with people I loved, and they shared things with me, and it was so amazing.
So now, I want to share something with you.
Through no fault of my own, I was born in the same year as the tabletop RPG industry. That means because I’m fifty years old, it’s also fifty years old. So I thought, for each year that I’ve lived, I’ll choose an RPG that was first released in that year. Each of these games were either an influence on me, or something I have a strong emotional attachment to. I won’t explain what that connection is — I’ll leave it to you to speculate — but I’ll try to give links so you can legally get the game (or its nearest equivalent, for games that are out of print).
And yes, some years I couldn’t decide on just one, so it’s a bit more than fifty games. Happy 2025!
1974: Dungeons & Dragons
1975: Tunnels & Trolls
1976: Bunnies & Burrows
1977: Superhero: 2044
1978: Gamma World
1979: Villains and Vigilantes
1980: Top Secret
1981: Call of Cthulhu
1982: Star Trek: The Role Playing Game
1983: James Bond 007
1984: Marvel Super Heroes
1985: (tie) The Doctor Who Role Playing Game and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness
1986: Ghostbusters
1988: Cyberpunk 2013
1989: Shadowrun
1991: (tie) Tales from the Floating Vagabond and Vampire: The Masquerade
1992: Over the Edge
1993: Risus
1994: Castle Falkenstein
1995: Cybergeneration
1996: Conspiracy X
1997: Men in Black
1998: Unknown Armies
1999: Aberrant
2000: Star Wars Roleplaying Game by Wizards of the Coast
2001: Adventure!
2002: (tie) Cartoon Action Hour and InSpectres
2003: Savage Worlds
2004: Vampire: The Requiem
2005: Mage: The Awakening
2006: Cold City
2007: Scion
2008: Starblazer Adventures
2009: (tie) Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space and Geist: The Sin-Eaters
2010: Leverage: The Roleplaying Game
2011: Mouse Guard
2012: Dungeon World
2013: 13th Age
2014: Firefly Role-Playing Game
2015: (tie) Ten Candles and World Wide Wrestling
2016: Pugmire
2017: Blades in the Dark
2018: Ironsworn
2019: Lancer
2020: Alice is Missing
2021: Inspirisles
2024: Curseborne
News
Realms of Pugmire has taken the next big step! It’s off to the printers, but you can get it in PDF and print-on-demand right now at DriveThruRPG!
We also got a shout-out on Forbes.com as part of their gift guide for family-friendly tabletop fantasy games!
When fellow nerdy parents ask me what games like D&D are out there for kids, Pugmire is one of my first recommendations.
Finally, I’ve started first drafts on a new Realms of Pugmire book, so stay tuned for more information on that!
My Media
I had a vacation, so I did a chance to play some video games, read some comics, and watch some TV. There are a lot of things I could talk about, and maybe I will in future. (Although, no, I still haven’t seen the Doctor Who Christmas special.)
However, there’s one thing I’ve been obsessed with all through December and continuing into this month, and that’s been Boss Fight Books.
Boss Fight is an independent publisher of short non-fiction books about video games. Each author chooses one game and talks about it from a critical perspective. But they’re not simply academic texts or oral histories (although they can be those things, too). Each book is also (generally) an intensely personal perspective, or at least not pretending to be an unbiased one.
The book on ZZT, for example, talks about the shareware scene of the 90s through the lens of a trans girl growing up and figuring her identity out. The book on the notoriously bad Bible Adventures parallels the author’s loss of personal faith. Red Dead Redemption isn’t as personal, but it does break down Westerns as a genre, in order to better analyze the game as a Western. Even Breakout is written from the perspective of someone who had no interest in video games but end up becoming unhealthily obsessed with the Atari 2600.
I got a bundle of over thirty of them, and honestly even books I thought I wouldn’t have any interest in (like NBA Jam and Soft & Cuddly) ended up finding some slant or perspective that made it hard for me to put them down. And each book is generally around 100-200 pages, so it’s easy to rip through one in a few days.
If you’re at all interested in not only how video games are made, but how they impact people, I highly recommend skimming the site and finding one written about a game that you love or want to learn more about.
That list took longer to compile than I thought, so I’ll leave it there for this month. See you in February!