RPG Care Package v1.1
Todo
- Mothership write up
- Mörk Borg write up
- Trokia write up
- Mothership Modules
- Mörk Borg Modules
- Troika Modules
- The Vast in the Dark
Are you feeling burnt out? Want a change of pace? Looking for inspiration to run a game? I’ve got you covered. Below are a few games that have caught my eye recently that you might want to look at.
This list is a resource I’ve made for my game groups. All of it is highly opinionated and I don’t take any criticism, so there.
Games & Systems
Mothership
An OSR flavoured Scifi horror with an intuitive d% system, emphasis on quick prep time and using random tables. It really excels in dreadful circumstances, like you have 2 hours of oxygen left and the rescue ship won’t be here for 6. Like you know there’s something behind you but you refuse to turn around. I really like the way it handles stress and just how nicely things fit together. It fits very comfortably in the chunky 80s scifi vibe with a cast of Teamsters, Scientists, Marines & Androids as playable characters.
It also has some additional rules complexity for building ships and ship to ship combat which is nice but not super nessecary unless you’re aiming to run that kind of game.
Mörk Borg
Beautiful grimpunk feudal wailing simulator. Mork borg is a rules light OSR style game that couches itself in old school dungeon exploration and random tables. There’s loads of great community content for this too (some of it even by yours truly). It particularly excels in just getting people playing really really fast. Roll for your attributes, roll for your class, roll for your starting items, cool now you have a finished character. It’s high lethality, people can die in two rolls so watch out and make sure you’re clear about it up front.
The big draws are the aesthetic and setting, but also it has a really neat system called the miseries, which are basically a chance at the start of the session for there to be an omen of the apocalypse, and after hit 6 of them, the apocalyse begins. Oh. And you’re supposed to set your book on fire.
Mörk Borg is dripping in rich black thick horrid sludge and its very fucking cool.
Troika
Troika is based in the pre-dnd world of old school games leaning particularly in the science fantasy vibe, you board golden barges where astrogators map your way through the burning spheres, it doesn’t care if it seems campy or kitsch it just wants you to have a fun time exploring strange worlds and solving strange problems. Every single bit of troika I read is wonderful and makes me long to snuggle into this strange world and poke and prod at it.
Stylistically it’s all over the map from strange ancient mages who have perfect origami skin covering the desiccated and worn flesh, to just a guy who’s really good at fighting in tunnels and his buddy who’s really good at carrying stuff.
It’s also just a gorgeous print book.
Not doing troika module suggestions yet because I haven’t ready any more than the one in the book, which is great btw would recommend.
Things that are not games: Supplements, Zines, etc.
The Stygian Library
If knowledge is power then libraries are great batteries of significance, the combined weight of which means that in the interdimensional space between every library in the multiverse is a meta-library, or a hyper library… or a meta-hyper-library.
The stygian library is a wonderfully designed dungeon crawl that says “if you need to know something, and it could have been conceivably written in a book ever, then you can find it somewhere in the stygian library”. Its filled with wonderful strange things, map galleries, tea rooms, planetariums, calculation engines, not to mention the lantern bearerers, oragami golems, ink elementals and most dreaded of all archivist liches.
Honestly this is kind of my ideal setting if I can ever convice my group to play a magical school game. I know the idea of a megadungeon is very old school rpg but honestly I think you can fit this into narrative style games too, its just a wonderful engine that makes exploring fun without being a chore.
It uses a really nice set of random tables and incremental rolls to describe your journey into the library, you can keep a map together with your players, but the best thing is just like them you don’t know what they’ll find next.
N.B. There’s also a nother game by the same author called The Gardens of Ynn which operates similarly for exploring an endless garden.
Mothership Supplements
As above, but this time a speed round of the pregen campaigns and settings. These are really good btw strong reccomends all round.
- The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 (see original mothership link)
- 2 pages with 3 audio files to use as props.
- Spooky murder mystery on a mining asteroid
- Gradient Descent
- Big setting book for 12 story 200+ room dungeon
- can be run both as a crawl or one shots etc.
- The big hook is “The Bends” , the slow creeping feeling that you might actually be an android copy and not a human.
- Great source of random tables for encounters and strange artifacts.
- Pound of Flesh
- Another big setting book but this time for a vibrant space station in the outer rim run by criminals
- Can be used either as a setting for short run or one shot or a base of operations for a longer running game.
- Big draw is the three main stories with vibes like:
- Metalophagy body horror
- Union strikes
- Debtor’s prison rebellion
- Dead Planet
- Another big setting book, but also with a one page adventure on a derelict ship
- This one moves more towards the spooky side of scifi horror with some supernatural elements
- Definitely grimmer in tone.
- Big Draws
- Ritual cannibal wreckers trapped on a moon who catch ships getting caught in the planet’s gravity well.
- A strange dead planet full of nightmares both living and otherwise.
- Oh also it has an “eerie sculpture generator” so that’s great
Lightning Round, Or Things I Haven’t Read
- Dialect: A game about language and how it dies
- It looks solid for a one shot. Players tell a story and construct a language together.
- Alien RPG
- Matt is kind of excited to run this and I’ve binge watched two actual play podcasts of it from LRR, it looks super cool.
- AGON
- This is literally at the top of my to read list for games.
- You play epic heroes in ancient times partaking in contests of arts and oration, blood and valour craft and reason, resolve and spirit.
- Seems really solid for minimal prep.
- Has a built in campaign that felt reminiscent of night witches duty stations.
- Also some additional content for using the same rules for a cool 80s cold war paranormal agency thing called Chamber
- And rules for playing scifi fighter pilots in a setting a bit reminiscent of battlestar galactica called storm furies
- It’s also by john harper of blades in the dark + lasers & feelings which is great.
- Glitch
- A game by jenna katerin moran who likes to make interesting games that try to angle you towards playing out recreational philosophy and metaphysics.
- It seems quaint and kind and about people who have seen or been part of terrible wrongs who want to fix things or at least ruminate on them.
- Sleep away
- an interesting diceless game where you play camp councilours at a sleep away camp stalked by a strange monster.
- a very interesting peice of design, im really interested to see how it works.
- Wanderhome
- God its fucking adorable
- Okay so its a “pastoral fantasy rpg about traveling animal-folk, the world they inhabit and the way the seasons change.
- It has big studio ghibli energy and i think it would just be a fuckign swell time
- Mausritter
- Look please don’t call me a furry I was going to include mouseguard too but i didn’t want you to think.. look lets just talk about the game.
- Very much in the vein of mice and mystics, mouse guard and redwall
- A fun rules lite osr game for going on little fantasy mouse adventures!
Lightning Round 2, Or Honorable Mentions, Or Games That I Love but Cannot Justify
- Eclipse Phase 2e
- Eclipse phase is the one that got away, I love this setting with all my heart but I can’t every justify how rules heavy it is in 90% of circumstances.
- Its so absolutely wonderful and has such fantastic narratives and is perfect for murderbot vibes or weird tactical corporate espionage bullshit
- I have like 7 eclipse phase characters sometimes i just make them for fun.
- One day I will actually get to be a player in an eclipse phase day and I will immediately on the spot die happy.
- If you want to run eclipse phase its probably better to just play a much more rules light game and hack it.
- Lancer
- Similar to eclipse phase but its my current obsession, not anywhere near as rules heavy but choosing your mech’s load out every mission is a lot of overhead for most people.
- About as rules heavy as dnd but with easier character creation imo
- It actually has an outstanding web app that makes running the game wayyy easier
- Has absolutely amazing art from the creator of kill six billion demons
- Has a really cool setting called the long rim that I’m absolutely in love with too
- And there’s a longer narrative campaign called “no room for a wallflower” that the first part of came out recently.