Organizing all my RPG PDFs and deciding what was worth putting into Dropbox for easy tablet access has had a few surprise benefits.[1] One of them was seeing just how many games I’d be interested in running or playing at the moment — ballpark, around 60-70 (with varying degrees of interest, of course).
Among the things on that list, a handful stand out as games — or settings — I’ve yearned to run or play for years. I’m feeling introspective, so here are a few of them.
Birthright
Birthright is probably at the top of that list. I got into it around 2005 and slowly acquired the whole game line, and I think it’s one of the most under-appreciated TSR settings. It’s easy to dismiss as being vanilla fantasy, but it tends to twist its vanilla roots in surprising ways — and taken as a whole, it hangs together like a living, breathing world full of vividly realized powers with their own conflicting interests.
It also features one of the all-time best approaches to player-facing game material: Each player plays the ruler of a different kingdom, and each kingdom has its own slim, delightful book, written from the perspective of a trusted adviser to the new ruler.
Broken Rooms
Broken Rooms has been on the list since 2012 or so; I’ve never met anyone who’s heard of it. Picture this: It’s Earth, modern-day, but there are also 12 parallel Earths accessible via “broken rooms,” places where they butt against one another — and the PCs can access those pathways. So far, not so new.
But those Earths are weird, and the further out from our version they are, the more fucked-up they get. And people being people, they’ve discovered that those other Earths have shit we need/want, and that only a select few folks even have access to it. What emerges is a parallel world-hopping sandbox of cutthroat factions and zero assumptions about what the PCs will do now that they’re neck-deep in it. I love that.
Bloodstone Lands
I’ve spent years gaming in the Forgotten Realms, but never run a Bloodstone Lands campaign. The first edition BSL sourcebook is one of my favorite gaming books period, combining a wintry setting, a neighboring evil empire, and factional politics sitting on a knife edge — just waiting for the PCs to tip the balance as they see fit. It’s short, tight, and beautifully executed; I think I’ve been hankering for this one since 1989, when it first came out.
Pendragon and Song of Ice and Fire
Pendragon has been on this list since around 2000, and A Song of Ice and Fire since around 2013 when our campaign back in Utah wrapped up. They’re different in many ways, but they both occupy a similar headspace for me: seasonal play, a wide lens (generational play in Pendragon, where getting married so that you can play your kids is crucial, and the concerns of your house in SIFRP), strong social elements (including actual social combat in SIFRP, which I love), and deadly combat.
I like having a list like this, informal as it is. It centers me, and reminds me how much gaming I hopefully have to look forward to down the line.
[1] I’ve been sifting through my Google+ posts and adding some of them to Yore, and the ones tied to a specific moment in time — like this one, originally posted in December 2017 — I generally just publish on the original date. No one will see them pop up as “new” posts, but that’s okay. This one felt different, though, because my want-to-play list still features these standouts. So I posted it today, despite it being a year old.