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2023 Day 14: Tails of Equestria
I bought this on a whim from the second hand section of my FLGS, after watching a John Wick review. For those who aren’t aware, Lauren Faust produced a version of My Little Pony in 2010 which redesigned the ponies to make them more expressive, deep and accessible to adults. Not quite as multi-layered as Toy Story and its successors, but less twee ( Read more... ) -
2023 Highcaster
Highcaster is a high fantasy game of powerful heroes and epic stories. You are powerful from the start, recover quickly and rarely die. The stars have fallen, monsters are loose and the kingdoms are shaky. Your tasks are to overcome these problems. There isn’t a lot of shade in the heroes of Highcaster.
The book is 317 pages long, of which 10 is ( Read more... ) -
2023 Day 12: Inspirisles
Inspirisles has successfully found a hole in the market: a roleplaying game for teaching sign language. It’s also an all ages rpg and promotes acceptance of gender and disability. Whilst it is sometimes billed as Arthurian, it’s closer to classic British children’s series such as Narnia, The Dark is Rising and even Harry Potter: the PCs are ( Read more... ) -
2023 Day 11: Masks
I am slightly cheating this year by making characters for three different PbtA games but they are so different from each other that I think it’s valid. (The others are Fellowship and Brindlewood Bay.)
Masks is a superhero game that focuses on the relationships between your young heroes and between them and other people (but mostly villains and ( Read more... ) -
2023 Day 10: World of Wyldrvir
Wyldrvir is a very short, “lighthearted” high fantasy game, and I think it earns those titles.
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2023 Day 9: The Wick Hack
The use of roleplaying as a learning tool and as a therapy tool is a growing trend, and a positive one in my eyes. This was written by John Wick for the latter. Is it D&D? Just about. It’s high fantasy but I would suggest it's mostly only D&D in as much as it’s a useful peg for John to lay his coat.
It is 22 pages long. It’s tiny. And, as John is ( Read more... ) -
2023 Day 8: Duelling Fops of Vindamere
Greg Stolze is a legendary game designer so I had no qualms kickstarting this. And, despite my noted dislike of preconstructed scenes, I still think it’s a great one-shot game. Although it might take longer than 3 hours if players talk as much as I find they do.
First of all, Greg Stoltze is part of the grand tradition of games designers who ( Read more... ) -
2023 Day 7: Fellowship (2nd ed)
I have been hunting for a decent narrative high fantasy game. Ironsworn is great, but is closer to low fantasy (middle fantasy?). Blue Rose is really good but is nestled directly in its own world (and a few niggles that annoy me - surprise!). Fellowship on the other hand definitely covers a range of high fantasy and is expandable to many sorts of ( Read more... ) -
2023 Day 6: Make our own Heaven
MOOH bills itself as a biopunk game, but it does have most of the trappings of classic cyberpunk: domination and exploitation by a powerful corporation, futuristic technology, struggles for freedom and freedom of expression. The main differences are that you are in space, and that you are weird alien-human hybrids called angels, now escaped from ( Read more... ) -
2023 Day 5: Agon
Agon is a tale of heroes in the manner of legendary Greek heroes. Like in Nine Worlds, there is a duality of god-inspired and personally-driven power. But it more closely follows the pattern of ERA: Epic Roleplaying where there is a more static structure. It’s not either of those games though.
( Read more... )