So I've been filling in various tabletop roleplaying game 2024 lists...

Number one is planning for a Gumshoe Season of Tabletop Roleplaying Games, we did this in 2023, and it's a lot of fun to line up the GMs and see their ideas fruit and then get all the feedback from players as they take part. My main rule is one GM per season per system. I think this works well, as it gives a variety of games and equal opportunity to established GMs, newbies and designers playtesting ideas.

This year we have Steve Dempsey playtesting the Dark Swords and Sorcery of Da'Zoon, Paul Mitchener the author of Liminal and Out of the Ashes, is taking us on a behind-enemy-lines mission, an assault on the cathedral of St. Cassilda. Carl Clare takes on Ken Hite's 1960s X-Files setting for Moon Dust Men, already very popular. And so many more ( I have my eye on a game of 13th Age based on Heart of Darkness), exciting times, the games go live on Friday 5th January, and more information to follow from this place.

So a second play-through of Fiasco, with tuba-playing Salvation Army members, gym bunnies, army buddies and a whole lot of gangs; Russian, Jewish and Turkish. Also features Dr. Fluffenstein. A great playset from Graham Walmsley.

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The Cast

The time was upon us, Magda Klein of The Fulgurators had to be stopped. Only one person could convince Magda of her wrongs, Shiny Nick and so it was that Shiny Nick found himself in Magda’s plush offices. “Just give me five minutes, Magda.”, implored Nick. Magda tilted her head to the side, smiled and surreptitiously pressed a button under her table.

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Nick noticed this but carried on regardless, “It’s in both our interests to have a conversation, people are homeless, people are dying, is this really what you wanted Magda?!” Nick was about to continue when the doors burst open and two uniformed guards marched towards Nick. Nick continued to plead his case, “I’ve known you since I was a kid, I sat on your knee. You can’t want this, surely? Just a couple of minutes, that’s all!”

The troubleshooters head into SBR Sector to discover why citizens are unhappy. Happiness is mandatory citizen.

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Bottel-O-BEA-2: Roland & Linda(?) are conspiring against Swizz-R-OLL-1

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It’s Grogmeet two days of RPGs with friends followed by MORPCon. AND it’s sunny in Manchester! This Grogmeet I’d offered four games, which is three more than I usually do, and whilst not panicking, as I’d run all but one of them before, I had a certain amount of nerves building up.

Here we go. We've just finished our world building and we're about to go silent for the next 90 minutes. I'm playing Dakota, best friend of Alice. I'm a teenager at a small but of the way town in America. I'm awkward, I'm not any kind of academic genius, I don't have many friends, apart from Alice and her friends, but I don't think they like me.

Okay, so far so good, standard outsider railing against small town America. We've used a few prompt cards to define our characters and also recorded a voicemail, our last to Alice before she disappeared. We have a secret that no one but Alice knows and we've roughly defined our relationship between the other player characters, it seems like most people don't like me, that's fine, Dakota is ambivalent.

A lot of our downtime had centred on investigations into Magda Klein, a member of The Fulgarators (A guild that powers and runs the failing train network in The City). We knew Magda was clearing the streets of the homeless and we also knew she had secured deeper areas of The Archive, much of this was from Bogdan Kaminski, an Archive administrator.

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Alt is pondering his encounter with Sam, an ex-partner in crime, friend, and now, seemingly, one of the Shifted (folk-ghouls conjured up by a superstitious populace). A razorblade-fingered monstrosity that spoke in garbled nonsense and did its best to try and decapitate him.

The group, Alt, Keys, Shiny Nick and Lex decide that their priority is to stop the evictions and stop Magda. As Magda is so focused on the Archive, it seems sensible to get leverage, to find out what she is after in the Archive. Nick approaches Bogdan, armed with a turnip marzipan gift and intent on plying him with a couple of pints of ‘shroom ale.

So a long-term ambition has been to play Sue Savage’s Matrons of Mystery. It’s a genteel take on Brindlewood Bay, a new wave of PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) games, where the players define the ending based on the build-up of clues & secrets versus suspects and other factors. Other examples of this style of PbtA are The Between and Public Access.

I’d played Public Access run by ace GM Guy Milner, check out his blog and Patreon, and it was a bit of a revelation of how a group of players can define an adventure, building the story to a satisfactory conclusion with minimal prompts from the GM. But more than this, Matrons of Mystery is the first RPG that my partner has expressed an interest in playing, a fan of Columbo, Murder She Wrote and various other cheesy eighties comfort-crime shows, it really appealed. But I felt I needed to play it first, before being confident enough to run with a bunch of non-RPGers.

We are play testing Windheim, a new setting for Dragonbane. This will become our going forward Sunday game and we were all keen to create PCs from scratch.

I won't go into the detail of this setting but it's currently in Kickstarter, so check it out and back it if its your thing.

I'd signed up with the intention of running Trail of Cthulhu, The Wreck and The Yellow King RPG, The Night of Masks. When it comes to Gen Con, for me it's all about the Pelgrane. Not the evil flying gargoyle like creatures from the Dying Earth but the titular games company that continue to churn out wonderful RPGs from the pen of Robin D. laws, Kenneth Hite, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and more.

I've been a fan since the release of Trail of Cthulhu and I now regularly see it as my “duty” to run a few of their games at Gen Con Online, in return for the years of wonderful gaming material they've produced.

Thro’ Centuries Fixed is a recently released second-edition version of a scenario for The Cthulhu Hack. Cthulhu Hack is based on The Black Hack by David Black and has been a mainstay of my gaming since I came back to the hobby, the second edition went to Kickstarter and many are just receiving their books, so exciting times.

Buy Cthulhu Hack 2e here

Buy Thro’ Centuries Fixed Redux here

After the last session nailbiter, Lex had been facing off to a large group of Risers, on the top of Tower 9. Meanwhile, Shiny Nick, Keys and Alt hunkered down in the darkness, with a Risers’ prisoner, bag over head, that they’d managed to rescue in the previous melee.

Lex is quickly overpowered and unceremoniously dragged along behind the Risers gang. He is talking ten-to-the-dozen, “Excuse me? Hello? Who’s in charge here? Can I speak to someone in charge? Nice place you have here. What’s your name? I’m... Ooooof!” As Lex is dragged backwards, his feet carefully scuff the dust, providing a very handy path for his friends.

First of all, work wise it's been insane, some major projects coming out of the blue plus a complete reorganization and some intense industry initiatives that focus on the solitary skills I have in the group. Alongside that family commitments, both nice and nasty, and the running of The Raspy Raven Discord, my second job.

So I was looking forward to two weeks of relaxation. A hidden away villa within walking distance of a beach/lagoon and a restaurant rated 4.x+

Keys went on a date at the local club, a singer of some talent, Nick almost became a third wheel but decided to leave them to it and join Lex down the pub. Meanwhile Alt was doing penance at his brother's church of Mortal God. He'd been cornered by Tomas Becker, a devout and evangelical member of the church, “Mr Merrin. Alt. Your brother recommended you to us. We just need a little favour and in return, God will provide.”

Alt pushed through the door of the pub, went straight to the bar and ordered a pint of “brown”, he watched as the bubbles slowly settled, something dark floated in its depths, he took a deep swig and kept it down.

Turning around he saw a vingeray looking old harridan lurch from the table where Lex and Nick sat, they seemed relieved, breathing out heavily and clinking their glasses. Alt sat down next to them, “Oh Nick, lucky Nick, fortuitous Nick, blessed Nick. Today God has offered you a deal you will find hard to turn down.” Nick’s grin disappeared and his face got darker. Alt talked enthusiastically about the Church's offer. Put simply they would push the food bank collection that Nick had set-up, a generous 3.5% “tithe” would be winding its way to Nick IF, if someone was to clear out Tower 7, Floor 7, Room 7. Which would be fine if it hadn't just been taken over by the Rose gang.

We'd left Nick and Lex to negotiating with gang members on behalf of Maeve the Pawn shop owner. Meanwhile Keys and Alt had pilfered some money to also help out Maeve, money from the Doomed Children, an apocalyptic cult that Keys used to be a part of. Unfortunately, the theft was spotted, more of that later.

As things escalated and it looked like either bric-a-brac or bones were going to get broken, Keys and Alt entered the scene. After a tense negotiation, the Tulips backed off, accepting partial payment and promising to return in a few days.

The next day Keys and Alt went to celebrate Emil's coming of age, Emil, a cousin of Keys, was a fully paid up member of the Doomed Children. Keys rolled out some soft, sweet potato like treats for the kids whilst Alt tended a barbecue; fish and chips cooked over dried dog turds, the smell permeated the gathering, and Alt pulled the makeshift mask tighter across his mouth.

Dragonbane has some cool Heroic Abilities. My mallard, Moggie, has a few of them - Ill-tempered, when angry he gets advantage on attacks, he has to take the Angry condition though, which means Intelligence saves are at disadvantage. He's also Fleet footed so can evade attacks as a free action. Lastly, he's a Musician who can inspire his fellows, giving them an advantage, or strike fear into his enemies giving opponents a disadvantage.

All of these require a spend of willpower points to activate, I have seventeen and they cost three points per ability activation, so I can invoke these five times in a battle.

We now have a good understanding of our “corner” in the city. The corner sits within Dreamingspires, specifically between two high, fog shrouded blocks, 7/Tulip and 9/Rose. Local gangs dominate each block and our corner often has trouble thrust upon it as the gangs flex their muscles.

At the base of our corner is The Archive and fronting this is a Pawn shop, we often meet up at the shop, hiring out the back room. The Archive contains nuggets of information but it is hard to decipher amongst the detritus and meaningless nonsense that makes up 90% of it's shelves.

I went all in on the a|state campaign, coins, books, play mats, compass the list goes on. So I was somewhat ecstatic to join a campaign, an excuse to read the book and to try again with the fairly tricksey Forged in the Dark system.

I'd envisaged my City as something akin to Kowloon Walled City, an impossible number of people squeezed into the smallest of makeshift one room apartments, stacked side-by-side, on top and beneath. People alone, but within touching distance of each other. Knowing so much more about their neighbours through the paper thin walls Behind every door a story, a thriving ecosystem of humanity at its rawest. Both fascinating and horrific.

We discussed what our City would be like, in particular our Corner of the Location, the Location we proposed was Dreamingspires, a series of thirty seven Tower Blocks, fifty floors each. An abandoned planning project, whose residents had taken over the role of managing each of these pillars of decay.

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My birthday. A last-minute trip to the cinema. Son moaning that John Wick 4 is also on, “Why do we have to go and see something so sad?”

Off the back of lots of forum banter, especially post-WotC OGL 1.blah, “I want it to fail!”, I had little to no expectations, but a round of Wicksian violence on a happy day meant D&D won out.

But would John Wick have a final say in all of this?!

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I've been thinking about Blade Runner the RPG a lot, I've run the starter set scenario around four times I believe now and worked on various homebrew ideas, but nothing yet at the table. So I was interested to see Never Mind the Dice Rolls Issue 18 had reviewed the system, it’s a great zine produced by a small team of talented and knowledgeable folks, so please check it out. I agree with a lot of what is said in the review, it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is and players and GM will have a lot of fun at the table.

From my experience, each time I ran the starter scenario, it got better, as the plot, scenes, and NPCs sank into my brain. There are also enough variations in NPCs and locations to visit, that groups take a different path through the mystery, meaning I don't get bored!

Most importantly, for me, it's a game that is improved and feels more intense the fewer players, two being optimum that take part - I want to be immersed in the setting, the lore, and the tropes of these IP-based RPGs. It perfectly replicates the 1982 movie experience and players who’ve never played it before, often leave the game satisfied from that aspect.