To begin with a personal note, over the course of 2023 I collaborated on 3 zines (The Bloom, One Night, and Liminal Horror: Investigator Edition), released a couple additional personal projects, contributed to 2 bundles (Fear Bundle, Outer Rim Uprising), and made a handful of appearances on The Weekly Scroll, Deiku, and PlusOneExp. This has been one of those years that feels like I endlessly worked on projects without much actually coming out, but it’s nice to look back in retrospect and see it all listed out. With what’s already in the pipeline, 2024 is going to be a hell of a year, so keep an eye out!
Now, for the meat of this post, I also ran a ton of games! Throughout 2023, I ran or played in 51 sessions across 17 different systems, including my home group, actual plays, and virtual conventions. Out of all the games I got to the table, I wanted to share my favorite experiences, highlighting the top five systems and adventures that stuck with me the most. These didn’t necessarily come out in 2023, just ones that I played during the year. All of them come with a mini review, so keep on reading if ya want to know why they made the list.
Author: Jason Cordova
Publisher: Gauntlet Publishing
Sessions: 18
Back in early 2020, COVID was responsible for wrecking my in-person group, where I was running long-form campaigns. After things fell apart, I took advantage of the surge to online play and established an open table group. The whole idea is to contend with the realities of adult scheduling. Sessions are weekly at a set time, but drop in/out play is standard, so sessions are designed around delivering a “complete” feeling experience if you’re unable to make it to multiple in a row. Public Access was my first proper verge back into an extended campaign and the longest continuous narrative thread I’ve run in a few years. And holy shit what a fucking ride.
I could go on for ages in a proper system review with the highs and lows, but to be blunt for brevity, Public Access probably shouldn’t be the first Carved from Brindlewood game you run. It’s missing some pretty crucial explanatory text, though those already familiar with the style of game wouldn’t necessarily need it. However, I was playing with a couple of Brindlewood vets, so they were on hand for any questions I had.
As a basis, you play as a group of 20-somethings investigating the disappearance of a public access television station in a small town in New Mexico. However, that just serves as a basic framework to start investigating a wide array of spooky mysteries, slowly learning that all of them are connected to that public access station. Now, the CfB games work on a loose framework. You’re given some background details, but you discover the “truth” of the matter collectively through play. For my group, what started with a standard “find the monster in the lake” mystery spiraled out into an alien conspiracy where facehugger-like creatures were pulling people into another dimension so that they could be replaced, including one of the player characters! Wild stuff. Legitimately one of the best experiences I’ve had since getting into TTRPGs.
Author: Matthew Chiamis
Publisher: Monomyth Games
Sessions: 1
Early in the year, I was running what I half-jokingly referred to as the Mörk Borg Multiverse. Each week we played a different game connected to MB in some manner, theoretically tied together by playing multiverse versions of the same characters. Realistically, this was just an excuse to play the asinine amount of these systems I’ve accrued, and 9 of the distinct games I played this past year came from this effort.
Castaway was a bit of a surprise. Now, this is not to be confused with Cast Away, a separate system I have a distant connection to. It’s also worth noting that I was using the beta version of the rules at the time. However, the system is a fairly faithful MB hack, keeping most of the basics and adding on a few additional mechanics that focus on the “survival” aspects. Going in, I wasn’t expecting anything mind blowing, especially since we were using the beta rules. I more or less had no distinct plan for the session I ran either. I had one encounter pulled from Hot Springs Island that I wanted to end on, but the rest was just winging it, using the game's procedure of play to drive what happened. And by God, it was great. The exploration and survival mechanics worked really well while not bogging play down with mechanical bloat and the players immediately told me they wanted more when the session concluded.
My physical copy of the final version arrived a couple weeks prior to writing this post, so there’s a pretty decent chance we’ll be making another visit to the deserted island in 2024.
Author: Karl Druid, with setting details by Brian Yaksha.
Publisher: Games Omnivorous
Sessions: 1
This was another one of the games I ran for MBM. Frontier Scum is an acid western RPG where you play as kinda shitty people making ends meet in a fictional analogue to the US West. Now, right off the bat, it’s my favorite type of Mörk Borg influenced game, as it takes inspiration from the mechanics but diverges into its own unique aspects and it does not incongruously stick “Borg” in the name. Taken out of context, most folks probably wouldn’t even realize it was inspired by Mörk Borg to begin with, which is great. I’m all down for hacks, but I’m much more interested in seeing new and creative things done with a base chassis than thematic reskins.
I’ll keep this one short and sweet. Frontier Scum has one mechanic that instantly won my heart: “Don’t Forget Your Hat. Before rolling damage, you may lose your hat to block all damage from a single attack. When picking it back up, check Luck to see if it survived”. Fucking brilliant.
Author: Sean McCoy
Publisher: Tuesday Night Games
Sessions: 9
Mothership is such an important game to me. It was the game that brought me into the OSR and set me down the path towards writing horror adventures of my own. However, my feeling towards 0e was primarily “the system mechanics are fine, but everything else is some of the best the RPG scene has to offer”. 0e had some clunk, especially around how combat was run. This year, the final PDFs for 1e released and I got to play a fair bit of it (go here and here to watch the APs I ran). The changes to 1e are subtle, but man do they streamline the experience. It was good before, but it absolutely sings now. I’m really looking forward to the box set finally landing on my doorstep.
Author: Jesse Ross
Publisher: Gauntlet Publishing and Hedgemaze Press
Sessions: 3
A return from my 2022 list! To be honest, my feelings haven’t changed much since then, so take a peek there if you’re curious. But in short, Trophy is the game that got me to rethink how to write and run adventures and I absolutely adore it.
Author: Watt
Publisher: Worlds by Watt
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly skeptical about Cloud Empress in the lead up to its release. It’s a mashup of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and the mechanics of Mothership, a game designed for punchy horror experiences, so there was a chance of dissonance between the two. However, the tweaks Watt made to the underlying system are incredibly clever, even if it’s still recognizably the Panic Engine. Beyond just the mechanics, the writing is absolutely superb, playing right into the type of “lore light, setting heavy” stuff that I love.
To me, the mark of a great system is one where I get immediately excited to run or write my own adventures for. Needless to say, spot on here. As I write this I’m gearing up for a short campaign with the game, but I’ve also taken a dive into writing a module that I can’t stop thinking about. I look forward to a CE filled 2024!
Author: Megan Caldwell
System Used: Public Access
Sessions: 3+ (PA mysteries bleed into each other, so this one was intermittently spread across about a third of the campaign)
This is just a superb example of nailing classic horror tropes in a TTRPG adventure. There’s a terrifying monster in Deep Lake, the home of a public park and summer camp. Folks from the camp have started going missing, so it’s down to you to investigate and find a way to kill or pacify the beast. The setup is great, the characters you interact with are all legitimately interesting, and the consequences of ignoring the threat are abundantly clear.
Beyond that, the Brindlewood games have a tightly focused procedure of play. Some of the base adventures included with Public Access don’t quite mesh with that procedure, but this is where DLL really shines. I mentioned above that Public Access was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had, but this was the standout scenario from that campaign.
Author: Mike Martens
System: Sunken, a nautical hack of Trophy Dark.
Sessions: 1
That Silent Howl is one of the incursions included in the Trophy: Dark hardcover, but it’s also deeply linked to Martens’ own Trophy hack Sunken, which is a nautical themed reskin with a few clever additions to lean into those themes. I was going to run some of the Sunken incursions anyway, so this was a good one to start with. I honestly don’t even want to describe the adventure too much, as that’ll rob you of the joy of discovering just what Martens did with this one and its obvious point of influence. I’ll just say that one of my players got goosebumps during the session, which is a hell of an endorsement.
Author: Tom Mecredy
System: Orbital Blues
Sessions: 4 (technically 5, as I set the AP I ran in this setting as well, though the meat of that adventure came from elsewhere)
All that Glitters is a product that begs to ask “what is the dividing line between a setting guide and an adventure module?” I suppose that’s just a matter of semantics, but I’d classify this one more under the category of the former. The framework is all there, but it’s going to take a little bit of work to coax adventure out of it, which I generally have no problem with as long as the writing is compelling, and this one is absolutely worth making that investment.
ATG brings you to Wollaston’s Hold, a backwater binary star system out at the edge of space. You get two corporations in a contentious standoff, raiding pirates, and a handful of other major factions, all bound together within the three planets of the system. It is a tinderbox waiting for your crew to come in and make it explode. I typically run “episodic campaigns” with Orbital Blues, based around the format of Cowboy Bebop episodes, where each session is a contained adventure and ATG was a great basis for making that work.
This is so damn close to be the perfect space adventure. The Starting Situations are all great for getting you into the action, but I would have loved to see something that binds everything together to keep it moving. Even a “timeline if the crew doesn’t intervene” section or something of the sort would have gone a long way for me. Regardless, it still kicks so much ass and I recommend picking it up even if you don’t like the system aspect of Orbital Blues, as it’s essentially system agnostic.
Author: D. Kenny
System: Mothership
Sessions: 1
This one is cheating a little bit. Hunger in Achernar isn’t technically out yet, it’s part of the Outer Rim Uprising bundle that will be formally released later this year. However, I’m on the project team and got to take an early peek to run an AP using the adventure (which you can find here). I’ve been vocal in the past about how one of Kenny’s previous adventures, Dying Hard on Hardlight Station, is the session where running horror finally clicked into place for me, so I’ve been a fan of their writing for a few years now. Now, ORU is focused around rebelling against the corporations that plague the Rim, but HIA is just a classic horror adventure. It’s got a great sense of pacing and is packed with enough weird shit to throw at your players. I’m very excited for folks to finally get their hands on this one.
Author: Michael Van Vleet & Mike Martens (a repeat on this list!)
System: This is technically a self-contained Rooted in Trophy game, but makes a few really interesting additions.
Sessions: 1, though this absolutely begs to expand into 3 if you run it yourself.
In Wassailing, you play as the mortal servants of the immortal Claus family during the surge of the early industrial revolution. Each member of the Claus family has their own arc set up like Trophy Dark incursions that you weave together into a complex narrative, spiraling towards chaos. It puts a little more of a load on the back of the GM than your standard Trophy affair, but does so in a clever manner. The team here are some of the best currently working in the RPG scene, so it’s no surprise that the setup here is fantastic. I’ve seen a fair few “horror Santa” adventures and have actually played in one prior, but this really sings in ways I have yet to see any other pull off.
Author: Amanda Lee Franck
The third entry to Amanda’s “spooky boat trilogy” I already knew I’d love this one before I even got it in my hands. You play as the crew in the early 1900’s on the maiden voyage of an experimental submarine that gets all sorts of weird deep beneath the waves. A hell of a unique premise and great execution.
My goal for 2024 is to get a several session actual play of this one out into the world, probably using a Liminal Horror conversion.
Did you like this post? Tell us
Leave a comment
Log in with your itch.io account to leave a comment.