Have you heard the one about how people turn 30 and suddenly everyone’s running marathons?
At the end of this month I turn 30. I’m not running a marathon. Instead, I want to run something else that’ll push the limits of what’s sensible. I’ve scheduled five different rpgs that I’ve never had the chance to run for five different groups.
Why?
At this point I’ll have spent about half of my life pretty consistently running rpgs. Not really surprising since I also spend a lot of my spare time writing them.
Even with all the time I’ve spent with RPGs, anyone who’s really into games will tell you, it’s easy to build up a list of games you’re going to play. It’s easier to never get around to them. The easiest thing in the world is to lurk on itch.io, DrivethruRPG, at conventions, friendly local gaming stores, or any crowdfunding website and build a big collection of rpgs. I think sometimes you need an ‘event’ as a reason to do something, even if it’s something you want to do.
That’s my first reason for this: I want to play these games. The second reason is pretty similar. I want to do it to see if I can.
Everyone I told about this plan has been at least a little surprised that I’m planning five nights back to back. It’s pretty common to find that running rpgs is tiring and I’m absolutely not an exception to that. Especially games I’m not familiar with. One of the more first-world problems out there, but I’m probably going to be exhausted by the end of this.
What Games?
I’ve prioritised games which I can remember promising to run for people “at some point” and games which I’ve got physical books for and still haven’t run. How close this comes to being a week of horror games probably says a lot about me.
Monday: ‘The Dark Crystal’ from River Horse Games
The licensed game for the Jim Henson film of the same name, the book is gorgeous and comes with its own rules-lite system for the group of Gelflings who’re adventuring across Thra. I must have seen The Dark Crystal a thousand times, so that ought to help me put something fun together.
I’ll be running this one for my housemates, who have played in a group together once when one night I ran Sasha Sienna’s ‘Park Life’ (incidentally a great 1 page RPG you can grab from MacGuffin and Co’s Patreon if you want a game where you need to scare meddling kids who are set on ruining your haunted theme park scheme).
Tuesday: ‘The Silt Verses’ from The Gauntlet
The licensed game of the Silt Verses podcast. One of my favourite fiction podcasts full of exceptional body horror; thousands of gods who want to eat you; and thousands of companies, governments, and cults who want to feed you to their favourite god. Players are Custodians (employees of the Bureau for the Investigation and Assimilation of Stray Deities). These BIASD employees need to find and ‘deal with’ stray gods who are causing a problem for the people of the Ignathian Peninsula.
This is one of those games I’ve promised to people and never quite got around to. Being such a fan of the podcast since it started I’m incredibly excited to get this one to the table and have an excuse to really indulge myself in disgusting imagery. Happy birthday to me.
Wednesday: ‘Apocalypse Keys’ from Evil Hat Productions
A Powered By The Apocalypse game where every player character is an Omen-Class monster – A Hellboy-esque agent of a secret organisation which combats occult threats. All the Omens have terrible powers which make them less ‘human’ the more they draw on them, risking becoming like (or worse than), the monsters they’re fighting. It’s a game of holding on to your humanity with the help of your friends. There’s also more body horror.
My regular weekly group is pausing our game of Iron Edda: Reforged to play this one shot and indulge me in the five nights of gaming. There’s also another player joining who I know can bring some absolute fire to the table and I’m very excited for this one.
Thursday: ‘The Hammer and The Stake’ from Weaponised Ink
The Hammer and The Stake is an alternate history game which sees socialist revolutionaries fight Dracula’s autocratic state of Greater-Hungary in 1923. A really interesting system based on craps with players and GM staking out their goals.
This one wasn’t a game I promised to people, but I picked out a group made up of people who are similarly involved in Union organising and left-wing politics to me and invited them. Mostly I thought it was funny to put a group together that way.
You should join a Union. You want to join a Union so bad.
Friday: ‘Mörk Borg‘ from Ockult Örtmästare Games & Stockholm Kartell
Does anyone not know Mörk Borg? The hit OSR, doom metal, apocalyptic fantasy game? That Mörk Borg?
Well I’ve never run it before. I’m going to run a slice of ‘The White Horse of Lowvale‘ since I picked it up this year during Zinequest. It’s a beautiful setting written and illustrated by the exceptional Tania Herrero which comes with its own soundtrack. Exactly how the game will run on the night is going to be down to the group – either with more focus on the included hex crawl, or more time in the village of Lowvale.
This is the only online game of the week! I’m running this through a Discord server I’m in so the group is made up of people who’re free on that evening.
What Next?
During this month I’ll be posting some blogs as I prep for the games, get my one-shots sorted, and have thoughts on GMing games generally.
After I’ve run the games I’ll post up my thoughts on how each night and the week overall went. I’d also like to put up some reviews of the games themselves once I’m done but those will be a bit longer term.
Thanks for reading! Looking forward to sharing more with you later. In the meantime you can find me most active on my Bluesky account
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