2024 TTRPG Retrospective
Looking back
A tumultuous year is coming to an end and I wanted to recap a little how it went in terms of roleplaying and how this blog is developing. I played a total of nine different systems this year, most of them briefly. Here is my recap in increasing order of time played:
Tales from the Loop
I played in a homebrew convention game of this and it was my first time playing the year zero engine. It was a very fun and fluent experience and I really enjoyed playing a kid - very much not a heroic character in the vain of 5e power fantasies, but a vulnerable wide eyed explorer of a weird world. Throwing handful of d6s was also great fun. I will be playing more year zero games next year. Especially looking into Vaesen as a more modern take on investigative mysteries.
Dungeon Crawl Classics
I’ve written about Sailors here. I GMed two sessions of insane fun. I have very much taken this module in as a gold standard for getting to the good stuff fast. No more rats in the cellar!
Call of Cthulhu
I played a fun modern reimagining of None more Black at a convention, where I learned a lot about handling modern technology in a investigation game. A great GM and very fun game. I also ran the Necropolis on a discord server with not so great 5e players that devolved into a pvp mess and did not feel like Call of Cthulhu at all. This game was perhaps the lowpoint of the year in TTRPG terms.
Cairn
I ran three one shots of Cairn (Barrow of the Elf King & Feast for Flies) this year, which is very little for how much I like this system. What I love most about the game though is the community around it and the connections I have made with other creators from the discord server and how this has informed the publication of my first adventure.
Electric Bastionland
Very much tied to the experience of Cairn, I ran a play-by-post game for a few months for some members of the Cairn discord. This was one of the most fun TTRPG experiences I have had and was maybe the highpoint of the year for me in terms of roleplaying. Very creative and kind players and very fun process of generating the content with the books tables only. My first experience running full ‘homebrew’ only. I learned to trust my own creative instincts and discovered play-by-post as a fantastic way to play a little bit everyday. I still have to turn the dungeon I created into a publication!
Push System
This was a cyberpunk homebrew play-by-post game that I played in that followed up on the campaign above. I realized that I don’t love cyberpunk much as a roleplaying setting and that systems can be too minimal for my tastes.
D&D 5e
The year began with me wrapping up a long 5e campaign, you can read the full post-mortem here. Lessons learned are manifold, but mainly it is this: I want to get to the good stuff faster and not spend so much of my precious free time slogging through combats anymore. More recently I joined an ongoing Wild Beyond the Witchlight game as a player. While more fun as a player than as a GM, the combats are still a drag.
Swords & Wizardry
This one was fun. With this game two things happened: first it really finally clicked for me how to play solo and it resulted in an ongoing campaign that I played for a few weeks. Secondly, the way the book was written, the DIY spirit of the early rules really came through and I finally began putting together my own fantasy heartbreaker based on Swords and Wizardry light. It felt like finding the right balance of complexity and familiarity in a system for me. My TTRPG comfort zone! After this solo experience and toying with my own ruleset, I ran a fun one shot of The Sinister Secret of Peacock Point on discord with some great players. A system I will definitely come back to!
Shadowdark
This game got the most playtime this year between an ongoing in person campaign, some online play and some solo play. We played Cursed Scroll #1, Winter’s Daughter and the Waking of Willowby Hall. It is really a great complete package that is VERY usable and accessible. The torch mechanic has lost a bit of its lustre for me as well as the a little too vanilla vibe. Also at medium level characters are becoming VERY strong already. I reserve judgement for now until I have gotten some more playtime in. I love the monster statblocks and the ‘one cool thing’ philosophy most.
Looking towards 2025
I am torn between Shadowdark, Cairn/Electric Bastionland and S&W as my main focus for next year. Shadowdark got a lot of my attention this year, so I am inclined to let it rest for a bit, if my in person group plays along (I have a feeling they might not, they love it!). I would love to run Stonehell next year either with Cairn or S&W. But I might also need to reserve some space to playtest my own material.