From dark fantasy to existential sci-fi to open-world roaming

Two years or so ago, I made a promise to myself to really, truly prioritize social time and play. Especially over the last year or so, it’s become increasingly easy to hide away in my own little cave and just stay there. Looking back though, this promise is one I really do feel that I kept. I got to play A LOT of great tabletop roleplaying game stuff in addition to working on my own creative endeavors in the space.

A new year is a new beginning, even if it is a totally arbitrary one. So with the new beginning, I figure its worth looking back on the last stage of my TTRPG life and go over the most wonderful standout experiences I had in 2021.

TREASURES OF THE TROLL KING by Chris Bissette

I have had the pleasure of running Mork Borg once or twice in the past. It was my first real experience with an OSR-style game and everything about it from the simplicity of the system to the over-the-top death metal vibes of the art and layout to the way its adventures tend to be written to be as prep-less and sight-readable as possible for the GM, I just loved. Despite that, I’d never gotten a chance to play a proper, longer adventure - only a one-shot here or there. That changed when my backer copy of TREASURES OF THE TROLL KING showed up.

TROLL KING not only matches the first-party Mork Borg book in terms of stunning art and layout (I mean just look at that cover) but it creates a wonderfully dark and delightfully weird trip through the overflowing sewers of a foul fantasy city at the end of the world that is as easy and fun to run as the GM as I imagine it is to play.

I ran this adventure in 3 online sessions using video chat along with an occasional image shared from the PDF to give a shared visual (or to allow for better spatial awareness). It went flawlessly: all but one character immediately took greedily of cursed coins - weighing themselves down with the burdensome wishes of others, the Fanged One critical hit with Death’s Horseshoe sending the titular Troll King itself skittering off to its lair - leading to a grand and frantic chase through the sewers and into more than one trap and danger, and a dozen or so more absolutely stand out moments. In the end, 2 of the 5 adventurers were dead but the fallen royalty’s sentient sword had overwhelmed the will of the Pale One’s last remaining monkey servant and become a proper adventurer itself.

A great adventure chock-full of enough strange and dangerous nooks and crannies that your players can miss half of them and still feel like they survived more things than they had any right to.

You can pick up your own copy HERE.

WHAT WE GIVE TO ALIEN GODS by Lone Archivist

Most of my readers will know that I have a fond spot in my heart for Mothership, but WHAT WE GIVE TO ALIEN GODS is another title that goes on the “the moment I got my backer copy, I knew I had to schedule a session ASAP” list.

ALIEN GODS is a very different kind of Mothership module. It’s a slower, stranger, at times intentionally difficult, and profoundly existential horror story. It reminded me more of a dark, ethereal adventure game (in the tradition of 90s PC adventure games) than your straightforward scary-aliens-in-a-creepy-place module. My players saw almost no combat at all until the end.

Over 5 sessions (played virtually with video chat and a discord channel for elements of the modules many puzzles), my players saw their two crews of characters (and A-team and B-team from the same ship) explore all three pillars of an ancient alien temple, learn much of a language that seemed to physically warp their mind, learned of a species ensnared by a being so powerful it may well be a god itself, and by the end, had to make awesome in-character designs that led to dire consequences for some and dramatic ends for others. Oh and the layout is just really captivating too (but that shouldn’t be surprising for anyone who has checked out any of Lone Archivist’s other work).

This module was the first adventure in our now ongoing Mothership campaign and the surviving characters now have a rich and dreadful web of complications and really intriguing choices to make from what they found, what they took away, and what they gave up (to alien gods).

Additionally, we played using what I called my “0.9e” of Mothership which was me pulling every sheet, chart and table I could from the Player’s Survival Guide preview video and Kickstarter page so we could test the new mechanics even before they released the work-in-progress files. Overall, we all loved the changes and the new Panic and Wounds systems in particular led to several wonderfully dramatic moments.

If you and your players enjoy deciphering strange runes, uncovering ancient lore, and losing yourself to grand cosmic influences, then I’d recommend picking up your own copy of What We Give to Alien Gods right HERE.

FORBIDDEN LANDS by Free League

I first learned about FORBIDDEN LANDS when I saw that Simon Stalenhag (who makes amazing art and wonderful stories to accompany it) did the art for the cover of the box set. I dug in a bit more from there and was really captivated by the luxurious and old-school feel of the game and everything in its box. A full-sized poster map to spread out on the table, stickers for adding your own landmarks to the map during play and two leather-bound books (probably the two nicest TTRPG books I own in terms of just pure feel of print and bind) all for a surprisingly good price. I picked it up on a whim while looking for something new to run virtually while our mainline DnD 5e campaign was paused due to the endless ongoing pandemic.

We played our first session in person, during one of those brief windows where it maybe seemed like we’d be able to really start doing that again. Our group became almost immediately captivated with it. Built on the Year Zero engine many of Free League’s game use, FORBIDDEN LANDS reskins and restructures it to focus on overland travel and open-world survival in a traditional fantasy setting. We simply chose a quick backstory for how the group had met prior to the start of the campaign, picked an area on the map where we would pick up and went from there. It is very much a game in the West Marches tradition of play which is to say it is very open world and entirely player driven. I rarely had anything to prep because the players chose where they wanted to travel across the world and the system helped to quickly generate what they found there and what happened when they did.

Before our 2nd session, all of the players had their own copy of the boxed set. This NEVER happens with my group. Typically, I invest in the copy of a game needed to run it for everyone and copy some resources from there, but by the time we got to Session 2 (now happening over video chat), everyone had read the entirety of the Player’s Guide.

In some ways, the traditional fantasy setting is a little too traditional (veering even into potentially problematic areas if you consider a lot of the recent discussions around DnD’s race system, for example), but what captivated all of us wasn’t the setting as much as the player’s ability to drive the story and place their mark upon the world. Full hireling and stronghold rules give players loads of concrete goals from the beginning of my group was just dying to get out into the world and make their dreams of fame, fortune and the security of a mighty stronghold a reality. It was a breathe of fresh air for us, coming off several years of almost-exclusively DnD 5e.

BUCKET OF BOLTS by Jack Harrison

This last one is a short and sweet one. After doing a podcast episode on Jack Harrison’s Artefact and backing his follow-up project BUCKET OF BOLTS on Kickstarter some time later. Jack reached out to me on Twitter with an early playtesting copy of the game.

Like Artefact, BOLTS is a solo journaling-style game focusing on an object rather than a traditional character. In BOLTS, that object is a spaceship and through play, you discover its many owners, all of the various places it has traveled, battles it has seen, and more. I had a wonderful evening creating the winding and epic tale of The Terigon.

A great way to play something rich and rewarding when your group can’t get together or as a lead-up to another campaign and game system where you want to create a ship that is ripe with history (maybe so it is there for players to discover through their own play). It’s a lore building game about the vital background character of every good sci-fi story: the ship.

You can pick it up HERE.

TEASERS FROM THE BLOODFIELDS

I am continuing full steam ahead on development and planning for my upcoming battle royale hexcrawl and black market station setting zine for Mothership! It’s an exciting and nerve-wracking time. I’m getting more and more sector and NPC art in these days from my primary artist (other than myself) for the zine Roque Romero. Here’s a taste of some of what he’s put together!

Bizzi “The Drip” Daniels

Teenage child of “The Drop,” original founder of the Rockdroppers. Experienced pilot, ruthless leader. Heavily tattooed. Pink pompadour. Believes there is no blow too low as long as it works. Doesn’t plan to see 25.

The Bloodfields on Blackstar Station is coming to Kickstarter on February 1, 2022! Click here to get notified of the launch the moment it happens!

OTHER GOOD THINGS

After folks on Twitter saying they’d like to see something like it exist, I did the first part of a read-through stream of the work-in-progress 1e Player’s Survival Guide for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG recently released after the close of their massively successful Kickstarter. The video is me reading through the book for the first time and giving some of my thoughts on the writing, game design, and more. Plus, you get to see a kitty if you stick around to the end.

The most massive third-party Mothership project to date - Hull Breach - just recently started its Kickstarter campaign. While I did not take part in this massive collaboration, it does feature over 30 indie creators, most of which I have come to know over the last several months and all do awesome work extremely worthy of supporting. This thing is going to be a 200+ page HARDBACK book and the art and layout is being done by some of the best folks in the damn game. I am so excited for it (and it is giving me major impostor syndrome “what am I even doing trying to make stuff in this space with folks out here doing this kind of wildly good work?” energy)! Check out the campaign (and considering backing) by clicking HERE.

If you’ve read all this way, thank you so much! If you like the Missives from the MeatCastle, share them with your friends!

If you are the type that likes to [ENGAGE CORPORATE ROBOT VOICE] “engage” with “content” then please answer the following question:

What was your favorite RPG thing of 2021 (and why)?