Here’s my list of games (here meaning roleplaying games) played in 2021, along with some thoughts on each one. Most of the variety came from my games at Kapcon 2021, which we were lucky enough to have go ahead in person (the 2022 event has sadly been cancelled). Total roleplaying session count was 33, compared to 54 in 2020.

Heavy Metal Aeons I ran a few games as I finalised the game for early access release. Good fun, and a lot of good feedback from them.

Unknown Armies A few games using the “Raiders of the Lost Mall” starter. This is a lovely mix of humdrum workplace comedy and terrifying weird horror elements. Highly recommended. I was also very happy with the changes in the third edition, which I hadn’t played before. It feels a lot more streamlined and organic than I recall–I played a bunch of the first edition many years ago. This has a lot more of a “customise to your group’s preferences” feel rather than “play in this world we made.” It also feels a bit messier, in a good way.

Agon This is a reliable game to bring to the table for one-off games. Great fun, lots of cool flavour. And everyone gets to feel heroic, doomed, or both.

I also tried the Storm Furies playset, which is a sort of Battlestar Galactica) inspired one: also really fun. And very much looking forward to playing the Odyssey Aquatica playset when I get a chance, which puts you into the world of Steve Zissou type explorers (or maybe Jacques Costeau if you keep things a bit more grounded).

Electric Bastionland This should be everyone’s go-to for weird old school urban dungeon crawling. Wonderful.

Fall of Magic Another great go-to game for one off play.

The One Ring As we close on the end of the epic Darkening of Mirkwood story, this comprised exactly over 50% of my games played this year. Still just a few episodes left before we conclude it (we started back in about 2015 as I recall). The final chapters have been exciting and really feel like we’re tying up all the loose ends that came from earlier adventures.

The link up there is to the new second edition with a new publisher, but we’ve stuck with the first edition rules rather than covert everything (well, we’ve transferred a few small tweaks over). Overall I’m very impressed with the new edition: it has it’s own character, and includes a lot of streamlined rules and systems. A couple of the changes seem worse but overall looks very good indeed.

Monster of the Week Playtests of a few pieces of new material for Monster of the Week happened this year. I don’t want to say much at this stage, but some new things are coming. It probably won’t be fast but it will be worth the wait.

Alien Played through the cinematic scenario Chariot of the Gods, and we had a great time. The scenario captured the feel of the films really well, and the stress system is absolute genius. The way stress helps you with rolls at low levels but can spiral out of control when things go bad is just wonderful to see play out. Also, the game looks absolutely stunning all the way through.

Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades Flavourful wuxia, with a nice and simple system. Biggest selling point is the huge range of over the top martial powers, which make character creation great fun. The system supports what it needs to do (mainly give you excuses for fun fight scenes). I also like that each round of combat starts with a “talking and analysis phase,” where you can try and convince people to surrender, or try to gain an advantage, or try to psych out your foes. Only after that do you get to actually throw punches, kicks, and so forth.

Cortex Prime: Hammerheads This was a fun one-shot trial of the Cortex system. Character generation was a lot of fun and gave us an interesting team. Coming up with crises was quick and easy. I did find it a tough teach, and still have a lot of rules to get my head around. I’d say this is partly because it’s a toolkit system, so you have to understand the basics and also this settings set of basics are used and tweaked within the specific game. Needing to be constantly thinking about (and double-checking) how the rules applied also meant that as GM it was tough to bring enough detail and flavour to the situations in the story. I suspect that a few more games to bed in that rules understanding would be enough. I also get the feeling that although the mechanisms are tough for me to keep straight now, they’ll become quite intuitive as you get familiar with them (it reminds me a bit of how I felt learning Blades in the Dark, and that’s how that learn ended up). Recommended, with a caution about learning the system.

The Wizard’s Grimoire Played two short episodes of this one and really enjoyed it. The way that the player roles are changed around is interesting and provides a great experience. My wizard had some successes and some tricky moments but so far remains in a fair place, tripping lightly over various messes he has left behind (and with a fair amount more wizardly knowledge than he started with). The game also primes you with a good amount of stylistic promting so that it generates a baroque sword & sorcery style with ease. Highly recommended (and I’m looking forward to more of my wizard Veshar the Exile’s adventures, and a follow up game of The Barbarian’s Bloody Quest afterwards).

Also here’s the top things I got this year but haven’t played yet:

  • Wanderhome by Jay Dragon (cute, pastoral travel stories).
  • Sig: City of Blades (smashes Sig: Manual of the Primes and Blades and the Dark together, creating something very nifty).

And one small shout-out to:

Soth (you are small town cultists summoning a dark god, of particular interest to me as I saw the game’s inception and took part in the first playtests, great to see Steve get it finished and into print).