In this post, I want to share some notes about running Ring 1 of a Trophy incursion. These notes are not presented in any particular order, nor are they meant to be “authoritative.” They are simply my observations from running the game. 

A staged encounter
The first thing that jumps out at you about Ring 1 is that its Terrors and Temptations are highly staged. Unlike later rings, Ring 1 is practically scripted. In Witchwood, for example, you’re always going to encounter the dying soldier first, and then you’ll find his companion crushed under the boulder, and then you’ll find the witch pinned to a tree. In The Throne of the Forest Queen, you’re always going to encounter the shepherd, who will always ask you to help him find his 3 lost sheep. 

There are, of course, practical reasons for this staging. Unlike in later rings, there haven’t yet been any Devil’s Bargains or failed rolls to help shape the story, and so this staging helps avoid the “getting started” problem many rules-light story games (most famously, Fiasco) have. But in my experience, there’s more to it than that...

Don’t mess with Ring 1
In later rings, particularly Ring 2 and Ring 3, you have a lot of room to expand the number and type of encounters the treasure-hunters have—you can scale things as needed, and you can adjust the Rings to account for failed rolls and Devil’s Bargains (and I’ll be talking about those things in future posts). But Ring 1, I find, is almost sacrosanct. You just don’t want to fuck with it.

In the core rules text, we’re told the point of Ring 1 is to present easy challenges and easy rewards, the idea being we are giving a fictional justification for why the treasure-hunters keep going. Straight away, you can see that trying to “expand” Ring 1 is kind of pointless. If the challenges are meant to be easy to overcome, adding more of them will simply be boring or redundant.

More interesting, I think, is that Ring 1 presents the players’ first opportunity to interact with the theme and aesthetic of the incursion. It’s essentially setting the table for what’s to come, and if you try to get cute with it—changing things up or adding new challenges—you run the risk of missing this point entirely. In The Flocculent Cathedral, for example, the bandit encounter shows us a lot about the forest to come: they are filthy, but well-fed; degenerate, but enjoying each other’s company. The bandits have learned to live in the Fen, but that life has come at a price. And the way the player characters interact with the bandits mostly tells us something about the player characters: do they mistrust these filthy brigands, despite the fact they pose no real harm? Do they join their celebration, despite the fact they are utterly destitute? 

And this, I think, leads to the critical thing to understand about Ring 1: the point is to see how the characters react. In several runs of Witchwood, I have seen characters 1) try to save the man from death, 2) try to ease the pain of his death, 3) try to convince the man to whisper the secrets of the forest to them, and 4) walk up and slit his throat to end his suffering. In each case, the moment was highly dramatic, told me something about those characters, and flavored the remainder of the incursion.

Ask questions to develop character backstory
As the GM, you should always be asking questions in Trophy. Ring 1 presents an opportunity ask some preliminary questions about the characters, to learn a little bit more about their backstory. In some of the incursions, this function is explicit. In The Throne of the Forest Queen, for example, we are to ask a character how the people they are helping reminds them of someone from home. In The Flocculent Cathedral, the characters will hear the bandits’ shanty and be asked to explain how one of the verses is connected to their background. But even where questions are not explicitly pointed out (or heavily implied) you can take the opportunity to ask your own. In Shifting Sands, Ring 1 doesn’t present, on its face, any opportunities to query the players about their character, but you could easily ask something like “How does this faded, frail warrior remind you of something you have hopelessly pursued for most of your life” or, more simply, “What about this warrior reminds you of yourself?” The point, after all, is just to get the players talking.  A good GM knows even a simple, straightforward encounter is a springboard for asking probative questions. 

Be mindful of whether rolls are needed 
The encounters in Ring 1 are supposed to be easy. This means they may not even require a roll from the players. I try to be mindful of the stakes involved. In Witchwood, for example, if they try to ease the dying man’s pain, I usually make them roll for that, because the failure (and particularly the Devil’s Bargains) could be interesting. But when it comes to destroying the witch, I’m not as inclined to make them roll, because you can’t have the witch spring up and attack them in Ring 1—her purpose is to die—and the real dramatic crux of the scene is answering (and enacting) the question “How do you kill a witch?”, not whether they are actually able to. The only time I definitely make them roll in Ring 1 is if they intend to use a Ritual, which feels inherently problematic, and therefore pregnant with stakes. 

An easy challenge doesn’t necessarily mean there is no danger
And that danger comes in the form of Ruin rolls. There is nothing difficult about the trio of encounters in Ring 1 of Witchwood, for example, but all 3 of them should provoke Ruin rolls. And here you can also rely on what the players give you. In The Tomb of 10,000 Dreams, if a player tells you something about the doppelgänger treasure-hunter that is downright eery or unsettling, make them do a Ruin roll! ​

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is high on my rpg wishlist. My Sunday f2f group chose this to follow our Urban Shadows campaign. Though I’m not 100% certain, I’m pretty sure I’m going to adapt Mutant: Year Zero for our story of a colony struggling to establish itself on a new planet.
 
As I’m picturing it, the PCs arrive at the planet in the third of three ships. The whole thing has been a desperate gamble from a decaying Earth. The first ship arrived decades ago, the Terraforming team ship The Shiva. Later, just a few years before the campaign starts, the scientific and exploratory team of the Brahma Visitor craft arrived. Finally the PC’s came in the Vishnu Settlement craft.
 
However things broke down aboard the PCs’ generation ship, with political, cultural, and social splits leading to a mutiny as the vessel approached the planet. That triggered a set of cascading failures, leading to random groups boarding colony modules aimed at uncertain locales. Our game takes up a couple of months after that. The colony has just gotten its feet under itself and begun to explore. Characters will face challenges from the environment, other colonies, and internal disputes.
 
Like MYZ, our SMAC will involve exploring areas to locate resources, wreckage, and ancient secrets. One of my favorite bits is the random “mood elements” MYZ offers for when characters head out into these wilds. Using that format, I’ve created a new table of 36 elements for our world.

36 MOOD ELEMENTS FOR AN ALIEN PLANET 
PEOPLE

• You find a makeshift structure. Inside you discover evidence that someone from your colony has been outside without permission. They’ve set up a micro-growing or processing center. What are they creating?
• You locate a module from the Brahma Visitor craft. While it seems to have crashed, it looks like much of it remained intact. Its destruction seems to have come post-crash, with scavengers of some kind ripping out materials. What did they leave behind and how long ago were they here?
• Someone began work on this area—you can see evidence of plasma cutters and mechanized excavators. But the work seems sloppy and unplanned. They’ve simply torn into the land. Then they either got what they came for or gave up. Either way they left the wounded land uncleared.
• You come upon a swathe of corpses scattered across the landscape. Their minimalist uniform offers no clue as to which ship they came from. They’ve been dead for perhaps months, showing the strange signs of decay which accompany this biosphere. While they all clearly died of violence, those deaths seem to have taken place over weeks, perhaps months.
• You find the bones of a DiY Satellite launch pad. It’s makeshift but complete, with solid fuel marks indicating perhaps half a dozen launches. Whoever made this left some time ago—they or perhaps later scavengers stripped out the telemetry and control equipment, leaving a hollow satellite casing with a smiley face sitting on the pad.
• You discover the remains of a micro-colony, a terraformer portable station scaled to support a team of perhaps two dozen. Only the exterior walls remain intact; the inside has been stripped bare for metal, wire, and tech. In the central area you find the bodies, seventeen of them. They’ve been bound and shot through the back of the head. A loose digital timer puts the execution at almost three years before you made planetfall.

NATURE

• Fungus of many different hues covers the rocks and formations you move through. Strangely, the material swallows all sound. The noise dampening effect makes your passage eerily silent.
• A mound of metallic insects shifts across the landscape. It moves in a straight-line, stops, and then the hive turns slightly and continues its forward motion. In its wake you see a trail of crystals perhaps created by a chemical reaction or some other mechanism.
• A pack of wolf-sized native animals shadow your group for hours. They mostly keep their distance, but from time to time what seems to be a runner or a scout swings closer. When they do, your electronics begins to go haywire, as if their bioelectric field creates interference. Eventually the group moves off without any signal.
• You come upon a mass of leafless tree-things, enough to form a forest. Stretched between them you see a fibrous, web-like complex of strands. It’s unclear if the netting is fungal, vegetation, or something else. Are they part of the trees themselves or a secondary organism? They don’t seem sticky and many are far enough off the ground that your group can pass through, bending down from time to time.
• You find an area filled with a twisted combination of native and Terran plants. You see evidence that one of the Shiva Advance craft teams let loose a mutagenic terraforming module here. Intended for last ditch efforts, these attempt to reprogram alien life. The process seems to begun to transform the area, but then ran out. Plants and animals have only half-changed. Many are dead, but tracks indicate some survived.
• As you move through the vegetation of the area, you leave a trail of floating pollen behind you. Each bump and disturbed branch shakes more loose. The particles float but sink in the atmosphere down to perhaps 50cm off the ground. There they form a bluish fog which swirls around you, seemingly held by the air pressure.

by Jason Cordova

Another year goes by and The Gauntlet, once again, was not shortlisted for the Diana Jones Award. The fact I care about this stupid award so much is honestly kind of ridiculous. It’s governed by an anonymous cabal, has a terrible history when it comes to matters of race and representation in gaming, isn’t exclusively about TTRPGs, and most gamers I interact with on a daily basis have no idea what it even is. And yet, here I am, pissed off we did not get shortlisted. We didn’t get any ENnie nominations this year, either, making 2019 a big goddamned wipeout on the external validation front.

Days like this are when I have to take stock. I have to remind myself that, despite the fact I crave validation from my peers for the work I have done, I’m never going to get it because I don’t tick any of the “in-crowd” boxes. I’m always going to be an outsider in this industry and I need to just come to terms with it. I need to learn to be content with The Gauntlet’s successes—with the community’s amazing spirit of creativity and play, and all the awesome things that flow from that—and to take satisfaction in the fact that, a few malcontents aside, I have a tremendous amount of support and love from the folks within our spaces. 

But it’s hard. It’s frustrating to work and work and work at something—work that is equivalent to a full time job and that I functionally do for free—and it’s not acknowledged by the wider community, especially when so many people from the wider community benefit from that work. 

I don’t know what the point of this blog post is, other than for me to give a sad sigh of resignation. At least it was short. 

One of my favorite games is Before the Storm by Joanna Piancastelli, a one-shot rpg from the Seven Wonders collection. In it the group plays out the story of the last night of a fantasy company, as they rest before the final battle. It’s a game about relationships, disagreements, secrets, coming to terms with the past and more. It works both as a tabletop game and a LARP.
 
As of this writing, Avengers: Endgame is back in the theaters. Last night I found myself thinking about the bits I liked most from it and Infinity War. I liked the action sequences, but I also dug the moments of character interaction, especially as they came to terms with the scope of the fight (and eventually their loss). It reminded me of the best part of the X-Men's "Dark Phoenix" saga from the comics. In the final issue, before they go to fight the Shi’ar Imperial Guard we see our heroes coming to terms with the stakes of the battle.

THE ENDGAME
Mark 1 box per face card drawn.
3 players: mark two boxes for the first face card.
5 players: ignore the first face card.
6 players: ignore the first two face cards

• The Enemy masses outside in numbers that dwarf our own, and our allies begin to panic
• The Enemy breaks through our outer defenses and flood through
• The Enemy targets the Object and we lose something precious in the fight to defend it
• The Enemy triumphs and destroys the first defenders, cutting us down and forcing us to pull back to regroup
• The Enemy traps us and friends fall in the chaos of battle
• The Enemy drives us back into heart of the base, butchering civilians sheltering there
• The Enemy overruns us and seizes control of the last of our defense measures
• The Enemy smashes through and throw us into a chaotic scramble for survival
• The Enemy carves through our scattered troops in a devastating slaughter
• The Enemy seizes the object and unleashes it against us

​For the full backlog of Age of Ravens posts on Blogger see here. ​​

by Jason Cordova

The indie TTRPG design scene can be really tough when it comes to getting your name out there or promoting your latest game. With the deaths of G+ and the Story Games forums, the indie scene is particularly fragmented right now, and it’s not entirely clear where a game designer should even go to get eyeballs on their work. 

When it comes to choosing where to promote your stuff, you can definitely do a lot worse than The Gauntlet. Ours is a tiny community, but what we lack in numbers we make up for with intense passion. The tricky thing is figuring out how to get your game in front of Gauntleteers. 

In this and a series of successive blog pots, I’m going to use my experience and position in The Gauntlet community to demystify the process a little bit for you. I’ll be looking at the different areas of our community, and giving advice on how best to approach each one when it comes to promoting your work.

The first entry in this series is about The Gauntlet family of podcasts. You can find that entry right here. 

In this installment, I'm going to talk about Codex, and two things in particular: 1) the advantages to getting published in Codex and 2) the process for submitting your work. 

The benefits of getting published in Codex

Straight away, you need to know you’re not going to make a lot of money. We pay 6 cents USD per word, which, while not horrible by the standards of the industry, is not enough to get your rent paid for the month, especially since we publish features in the 2000-5000 word range. Now, you retain ownership of your text, meaning you can market it other places, and so that 6 cents per word does not tell the whole story, but still: you can’t rely on Codex work to pay your bills. 

It’s also not great for “exposure,” at least in the way that term is defined by bigger (more predatory) publishers, since our circulation is so small. 

And so the question is: why do it? 

Well, I happen to think there are far better reasons than immediate financial compensation and “exposure.” 

If you’re a new game designer, the confidence boost can be critical
I think this is the single most important benefit of getting published in Codex, especially if you are a young or new game designer. Back in the day, many novelists used to get their start by publishing short stories in periodicals (and in TTRPGs, we used to have things like Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine for new designers to get started on). My favorite part of Stephen King’s autobiographical classic, On Writing, is when he describes finally getting a short story published. When you read that part of the book, you can tell that that moment—that validation—was critical to his early writing career. 

Obviously, the way we market our work has changed drastically in the internet age, and you certainly don’t need to be published by someone else to feel like your work has value, but I still think there is a huge psychological boost that comes with seeing your words edited, laid out nicely, and accompanied by beautiful artwork. I have had many of our first-time authors (and even some of the older hands) tell me that being published in Codex helped them overcome their imposter syndrome, that it helped them realize their work is good and worthy. I don’t think you can put a price on that.

You get to add an element of professionalism to your process
If we book you to write something for Codex, you’re going to have deadlines, and you’re going to have to learn how to shape your vision to conform to our needs. And you’re going to be making an obligation to us. Codex is not a space for you to explore; it’s not a space for you to be flighty or whimsical in how you work. Codex is a publication that releases on a certain day, every month, without fail. And we maintain a very, very high standard—a standard we do not compromise on. Now, this sounds tough, but it’s pretty basic professionalism. And, in fact, we’re a pretty light hand throughout most of the process and very easy to work with. But we certainly have expectations, and working within those expectations can only help you professionalize your own habits. 

You convey seriousness to others
This is related to the above point, but basically what I mean here is that, when people are looking for other people to work with, they often want to know if you’re dependable and do good work. Getting published in Codex tells others a lot about you, and I have many data points to back this up: lots of Codex authors (and editors and artists) go on to do other work in the TTRPG industry. And you can always include your Codex work in your portfolio or as part of your CV. 

You get access to me and my resources
This is a big one. Whether people like it or not, I control all of the levers in The Gauntlet, and I have a significant influence on the wider indie community. If you want to move on to bigger things in the community, you can do a hell of a lot worse than being in my trusted circle. If you’re content with being an enthusiast, that’s totally cool—I celebrate that and support that. But if you want to be more involved on the industry side of things, Codex is a great excuse for keeping in touch with me and getting access to my resources. 

You can short circuit the process of becoming a member of the Gauntlet “fam.” 
This is another big one, but it’s really on you to make it work for you. If you’re not a member of The Gauntlet when we publish you, particularly our Slack group, the smartest thing you can do is immediately join when your issue comes out. Here’s why: there is a critical window immediately after publication when The Gauntlet community is very hype. They want to talk about the various features in the issue, and they want to chat with the authors and ask questions. This investment in you and your work from The Gauntlet community usually takes weeks and months of diligently being present in the community, running games for us, and so forth. Being published in Codex short circuits that process in a major way, but you have to be ready to capitalize on it. If you just get your piece published but then never interact with us, it looks mercenary. Our membership may still get invested in your game, but they won’t get invested in you. 

You might get asked to do follow-on work, or even create a whole series for the zine
If you create less work for me and the Codex team because you write well, we will be very interested in publishing you again. And if you write something with lots of potential for expansions, we might get behind that in a big way. Trophy is the big, bright line example of what I’m talking about. But there are smaller examples, too. Dark Designs in Verdigris, Storm Riders!, the LAOG manifesto works, and Pack of Strays are all examples of things that started as a single publication in Codex but were later expanded to be multiple features. In some cases, like Trophy, this can lead to being a separate, standalone project. 


So let’s talk about how you go about getting published in Codex. 

The first thing is to check the Codex page on our website. There you’ll find all the upcoming issues and their themes. If you have a great idea that would fit one of the upcoming themes, you send me a short pitch (one paragraph is fine) to gauntletpublish@gmail.com. Now, be mindful of the following: it will take me a long time to answer—days, and sometimes weeks—because of the way I organize my Codex work, but I will get to it eventually. If I like your pitch, I’ll ask some follow-up questions. In particular, be prepared to discuss projected word count. After I’ve asked my questions, I’ll make a decision and send you an agreement (we formalize terms with an email for Codex). Even if I don't accept your pitch, I'll usually give you advice on how to change the pitch for the future or otherwise develop the idea for publication somewhere else.  

And now for the secret Starbucks menu stuff...

If your pitch doesn’t match an issue’s theme, or if we are already full on that issue, send us your pitch anyway. I will often make room for a really great pitch, or, if I really love the idea, set up a whole upcoming theme to accommodate it. 

Another secret thing: I almost exclusively ping our Slack when I have a particular need for Codex. Being in our Slack and having the notifications for the community discussion channel turned on is a great way to stumble onto a Codex publishing opportunity. 

by Jason Cordova

​In the last month, there have been three successful Kickstarter projects that each saw a major part of their development take place within The Gauntlet: Hearts of Wulin, Quietus, and Red Carnations on a Black Grave. Hearts of Wulin is an official Gauntlet publication, and it has been play-tested extensively on Gauntlet Hangouts and, of course, the authors, Agatha and Lowell, are active members of our community. Quietus is by Oli Jeffery, who got his start in the TTRPG industry with Codex, and who also play-tested the game on Gauntlet Hangouts. Red Carnations on a Black Grave is by Cat Ramen, whose first game, Midnight at the Oasis, was published in Codex and was one of our Favorite Games of 2018. It was also extensively play-tested on Gauntlet Hangouts, and is still in the middle of its Kickstarter campaign (go back it!). 

Inspired by the success of those games, I want to highlight some other games that are “Forged in the Gauntlet” (do you see what I did there?), both past and upcoming. A couple of notes: 1) The descriptions of the games included here are the authors’ words and 2) this post does not cover the many original games that were developed for Codex, which I will be talking about in a future blog post. 

Girl Underground
by Lauren McManamon and Jesse Ross
From Jesse: “Basically everything I've worked on has been nurtured by this community, but the two big ones are Girl Underground and Trophy. Girl Underground is inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and similar tales. Girl Underground is a Powered by the Apocalypse game about a curious girl and her strange companions as they travel through a wondrous world, complete a quest, and find the way back home.”

Trophy
by Jesse Ross
“Trophy is a psychological horror fantasy game about a group of treasure-hunters on a doomed expedition into a haunted forest that doesn’t want them there.”

Hit the Streets: Defend the Block
by Rich Rogers and Lost Highway Games
“Hit the Streets: Defend the Block is a street-level superhero RPG powered by the same game engine as 1%er, the Outlaw Biker Game from Creepy Doll Studios.  We've reimagined and reshaped the game for gritty street-level supers action inspired by comics like Marvel Knights, the web novel Worm, the CW Black Lightning show, and the ill-fated Marvel Netflix series.
Hit the Streets is now on Kickstarter!

​Hit the Streets: Defend the Block was originally developed as "yet another 1%er hack" for the Gauntlet Comics living campaign. It has been played with numerous groups in the Gauntlet and wouldn't exist without this generous and helpful community. Their feedback and critiques have shaped this into a solid and routinely fun RPG that I cannot wait to share with the world!?”

Hack the Planet
by Fraser Simons
“A cyberpunk Forged in the Dark game that leans into climate fiction.” 

Cartel
by Mark Diaz Truman and Magpie Games
“Cartel is a tabletop RPG in which players portray bold narcos, naive spouses, and dirty cops caught up in Mexico's eternal drug war.

​I totally feel like Cartel has both been made better by critiques and feedback I've gotten here, but also through the play-tests I've run in this space!”

Atitlan Riders 
by Gerrit Reininghaus
“A tuk fast, tuk furious Central American drama game, Powered by the Apocalypse. Atitlan Riders was born here and only brought to Metatopia thanks to the encouragement of Gauntleteers. Then, most play-test and in-depth consultation with Jason Cordova brought the game to the next level.”

LAOG Manifest0
by Gerrit Reininghaus
“A design framework for live action online gaming. The vision I had of LAOG came from playing with the Gauntlet and again the encouragement and excitement of the community.”

Mayor Cat
by Stentor Danielson and Glittercats Fine Amusements
“There is only one candidate who can beat the corrupt, incompetent incumbent mayor of this city: a cat. You play human staffers trying to get a cat elected mayor, by placing attack ads, scoring endorsements, and meowing your way through the big debate. Part of the recently Kickstarted ‘More Kittens’ collection; follow @PlayGlittercats on Twitter or Facebook for the announcement of its release to the public.”

Autumn Triduum
by Alexi Sargeant and Cloven Pine Games
“A in-development PbtA game of darkness, sisterhood, and faith. Something sinister is threatening your convent this hallowmass season. How will you and your sisters rally to renounce Satan and all his works? How will your faith be tested from All Hallows' Eve to All Saints' Day to All Souls' Day? Choose from playbooks based on archetypes of religious sisters. Will you be the naive Novice, the crotchety Elder, the alarming Mystic? tl;dr: Nuns vs. Evil, Powered by the Apocalypse.”

The Fictional Memoirs of Harriette Wilson and Her Sisters 
by Hayley G and Storybrewers Roleplaying
“I first play-tested The Fictional Memoirs of Harriette Wilson and Her Three Sisters with Gauntlet folks Tyler, Lauren, and Vee, and that playtest is still very special to me and really helped guide the final version of the game. It's the fictional story of four real sisters and their lives of love, lust, and a little bit of ladylike blackmail. You can get it for free at the link!” 

HILT//BLADE (say it “hilt and blade”)
by Darren Brockes
A love letter to mecha anime. Play a teen just trying to figure it all out and fight civilization-ending monsters at the worst possible moments! Dev longs can be found here. PWYW preview is here.

Steel Weeds
by Mike Martens
“Put briefly: A Weird West PbtA game. Put a little less briefly: Steel Weeds casts American folklore and fantasy in a reimagined West, letting players explore the Western genre’s themes in a frontier of—and from a perspective of–their devising. The game introduces a combat system where every violent act can be deadly, a bond mechanic that tilts scales in surprising ways, and three-pronged character creation that provides intriguing hooks with extensive customization. Follow @lastmikeever on Twitter.” 

Lost Roads
by Ary Ramsey
“Lost Roads is a fantasy game about facing the hardship of climate migration in a bygone age. Follow @taketodark on Twitter for upcoming announcements and when it begins public play-testing. Many Gauntleteers have been instrumental in shaping the game’s development, including Agatha, Alex, Gerrit, Jim, Lauren, Mathias, Matt, Mikael, Vee, Kyle, and Jason.” 

Nahual
by Miguel Angel Espinoza
“Nahual  is a tabletop roleplaying game of Mexican urban fantasy. In Nahual you  play as shapeshifting nahuales that hunt angels to make a living. You  run a changarro—a business—together and sell the angels you hunt as different types of products. Caught in the middle of an ancient feud, you struggle to find your place in a world of fantastical and overwhelming forces.”

Xenophon
by Ludovico Alves
“A postcard-exploration story game of prejudice, loss and hubris. You play as the members of a expedition to the lands of the King of Kings trying to make their way back to the sea. Central core engine and modular nature has been designed and perfected with support from the Gauntlet; in development.”

Hidden Curriculum
by Ludovico Alves
“A game about students and those that try to impair lessons into them. A vaguely inspired by World of Dungeons game that uses planned and unplanned events and encounters as a way to deliver and test lessons. What person will your student become? This game has been born, raised and got a home in the Gauntlet.”

Vestalia 
by Ludovico Alves
“A game about religious picturesque and civil responsibility. Every year the priestesses of Vesta assign stipend for civic projects; negotiate with the other priestesses through a dominoes-based engine. This game was written five years before I knew of the Gauntlet, but the only way it is playable by non-dominoes players is this community.”

Changeling the Lost PbtA
by Lowell Francis
"Changeling the Lost PbtA—this has gone through multiple iterations and changes with input from Sherri, Tyler, and Patrick. As it has it has moved further away from being a general adaptation to focusing in on the elements of the game and genre we like, including stuff not present in the original source. Eventually we'll be taking a hard look at how to rebuild the setting to fit with our play style to make it it's own thing and not just CtL. People can find the character keeper here.”

Veil’d Fantasy
by Lowell Francis
“Veil'd Fantasy: Our adaptation of cyberpunk rpg The Veil to a fantasy setting. That allows us to tell everyday fantasy stories in an urban environment and explore different themes. We've run with a basic version and we're looking at how to make tweaks to focus on the elements that support the setting and make the playbooks define the world more. You can check out the character keeper here.

Anyone interested in running it can send me a message and I'll get you the playbooks. Running definitely requires a copy of The Veil.

I also covered this on The Gauntlet Podcast.”

Neo Shinobi Vendetta
by Sherri Stewart
“A Forged in the Dark hack for an anime cyber-ninja setting. This is based on the NSV setting created by Lowell. We've run a set of sessions for this and I am working on another iteration. I hope to eventually put together a small team to develop the idea and put it into a publishable state. It was written about here on The Gauntlet Blog. We also covered it on the Gauntlet Podcast.”

BONUS: Just Played podcast
by Jim Crocker
“So it’s not a game, but my podcast Just Played definitely springs from my Gauntlet experiences, the culture of recording and reflecting on and sharing our play with each other. And of course the signal-rich format of our podcasts gave me the confidence to not worry about just talking about games without improv bits or personal boundary-crossing.”

​Last week I reposted a list I’d made four years ago snapshotting the rpgs I most wanted to run/play in 2015. In the week since, I’ve ranked, revised, reranked, and wrung my hands over an updated list. I’ve settled on this one below. Only six of the Top 25 games from my earlier list return for this one. Five slid into my #26-50, meaning fourteen of my top picks at that time dropped off my radar.
 
Some, like Mutants & Masterminds, I ran and burned out on. Others, like Rippers, sounded cool then but don’t grab me now. A few dropped because I ran them and felt happy with the results (Middle Earth). I’m annoyed to see how many of my earlier picks I never got around to, despite running 4-5 different campaigns each week.
 
Here’s my present list—which will likely change in the next hour. These aren’t the best or my favorite games, but they’re the ones I’m most excited to get to the table right now. Items marked with * indicate settings I want to run, but not with the default system.

25. Tales from the Loop/Things from the Flood
In isolation these two games work, the former better than the latter IMHO. But combined together they rock. Elements from their lives as kids go on to inform their personalities as struggling teens. The nature and dynamic of the group emerges over time. I’ve just finished running a 12 session block of this and I’m glad I did—and I loved it enough I’d go back to run it again.

24. Amber Diceless/Lords of Gossamer & Shadow
I’ve run “Throne War” versions of Amber Diceless, but 20+ years ago. I’d like to give the full game a try now that I’m more comfortable with looser structures and freeform play. LoG&S offers some innovations on Amber’s mechanics, but I also find it a hard slog rules-wise. I need to see which would be the best fit.
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23. Forged in the Dark
I like the base Forged in the Dark system and a couple of specific versions show up on this list (Band of Blades, Neo Shinobi). It’s a likely go-to for some games I want to play for setting but not system. We’ve seen several cool published FitD games (Scum & Villainy, Mutants in the Night) and a bunch of striking hacks, one of the most appealing being the idea of doing a version of Ars Magica with it.

22. Reign of Crows
A “Game of Thrones” style game with the PCs all drawn from the same family. I ran it as a Fate hack in 2017. It allowed for interesting collaborative world-building and high scale play. Rather than the PvP of SCUP or Legacy, Reign of Crows had the players work together to carry out plots. Fate might not be the best choice for this concept; FitD might suit it. That would allow for the split between seasonal actions and downtime play.

21. Rotted Capes*
Supers in a zombie post-apocalypse. I’m not a big fan of zombie stuff, despite having done demos for Eden Studios and AFMBE. But I love the exHeroes series for the contradiction between personal power and the challenges of community protection. When I ran my Masks hack for this premise, I’d only played it a couple of times. I think I have a better idea of how I would handle this now—doing more heavy modification of the moves and providing more concrete mechanics and choices for representing community (ala Mutant Year Zero).

13. The Veil
The Veil’s completely different every time I run it. Players build a unique and striking cyberpunk world for each campaign. It’s constantly surprising. And that’s without even introducing elements from Cascade or Inheritance. It’s the best game about future lives I know.

12. Night’s Black Agents*
Years later I keep circling this setting of spies vs. vampires. I’ve become more comfortable with Gumshoe, having run Trail of Cthulhu for many months now. But you can slim down ToC quite a bit. OOH NBA’s iteration of Gumshoe has so many bells & whistles. If I finally get around to this I suspect it will be as a Forged in the Dark hack. I’ve sat down to write that out a couple of times, but I keep getting distracted.

11. Legend of the Five Rings*
L5R's Rokugan has lots of problems; in places it’s an Orientalist mish-mash. But there’s some moments of brilliance and truly interesting world design in there. I love the structure of distinct clans which have unique takes on the central values of society. I like that they’re not monolithic, instead made up of families with competing agendas. And I appreciate that there’s a shared code which everyone has to engage with and maneuver around. I’ve talked a lot about L5R before and I want to carve out my own version…but not with any of the published rules.

10. Kuro
I keep coming back to this weird game of near-future cyberpunk J-Horror. The base premise and atmosphere works. The rules I’m less keen on and the actual meta-story presented is kind of dumb. But if you just bring Japanese horror sensibilities to a cyberpunk setting, you enrich both.

9. Fading Suns*/Coriolis*
I’ve always loved the look of Fading Suns: European medieval aesthetic married to space stuff. It has issues like a Slaver PC class and a weird sense about authority and colonialism. It also has a base system I’ve never dug. I have the same feels about Coriolis, though here my objections come more from system wonkiness and a mismatch between mechanics and described setting. I’ve thought about fixes, from a FS retooling to tinkering with Coriolis’ core. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if I’m just attracted to anachronistic science-fantasy trappings (like Dune and Lord of Light). Maybe I need to scrub that idea down to the basics.

8. 7th Sea*
I wrote about this last year and I still haven’t figured out what to drop in for a core system. The problem lies in the question of what 7th Sea is. My go-to hacking systems, FitD and PbtA, emulate specific genres well. If I could say “This is a pirate game” or “This is a Musketeer game” it would work. But part of what attracts me to 7th Sea is the wild, adventuring company feel of the setting: groups can do anything and come from all over. That’s even truer if you include The Crescent Empire and Lands of Fire & Gold supplements.

7. Castle Rock
This would be a game where we first play out the characters as teens interacting with a supernatural horror mystery. Then we jump forward to the PCs as adults, still suffering from past trauma. Circumstances draw them back home to deal with mysteries new and old. I’d originally thought about moving back and forth between periods, but I think that’s more complicated than it needs to be. I have a basic PbtA hack I’ve been working on and I plan to do this as my contribution to Degoya County.

6. Changeling the Lost PbtA
I’ve been running this off-Gauntlet and it just makes me want to play it more here. I love Changeling the Lost’s setting and our games have focused on my favorite elements without feeling like I’m losing anything. This hack has gone through multiple iterations and changes with input from Sherri, Tyler, and Patrick. It has moved further away from being a general adaptation to focusing in on the specific elements, including stuff not present in the original source.