2017

The highlight of the year was definitely the 200 Word competition. This year was bigger and better than the last. I’m still trying to write up my thoughts about it. I was surprised at how many interesting ideas even the flawed and broken entries had compared to the huge hardback games with their hundreds of pages.

What I ended up playing

I finally played Love in the time of Seid which I’d held out on for a long time as being too trendy. Now that I’ve also played Witch I think I’m on top of all the hot games. Although Richard is now on at me to play Ribbon Drive.

To my surprise the game I ended up playing most this year was a campaign of Masks. It’s not something I would have chosen but there is definitely something to be said about using a basic genre as a launchpad for a more complicated experience.

Thoughts on the year

Rules systems

I was intrigued by the different ways that rules systems helped or hindered games this year. It felt like the games that enabled the most creativity were Blackhack and Into the Odd. The rules system that held it back most was sadly was Powered by the Apocalpyse (or as the Magus quipped “Depowered by the Apocalypse).

One of the games that really stood out for me was Death is the new Pink which was a post-apocalyptic riff on Fury Road that captured the zany craziness and wanton disregard of life of the film. It makes for an interesting comparison with Apocalypse World 2nd Edition which was similarly inspired.

Mainstream storygaming

Tales of the Loop and Shadowrun: Anarchy both incorporated large quantities of story gaming principles but also both ultimately shied away to a more hybrid form.

Fundamentally the biggest difference between classical roleplaying and storygaming is about having players put the collective story before the representation of their characters. I don’t think this idea is going to crossover soon but the idea that a roleplaying game should allow for creative contributions to the narrative from all the participants rather than just the referee or the GM is now much more generally accepted.

Solo gaming

Solo gaming feels like it rumbling on without a breakout game. Last year there was Beast which was very much a niche game. This year there was Jason Morningstar’s excellent First Ride/Last Ride (stronlgly influenced by films like Fast and Furious).

Tales of the Loop had a fan-made set of solo rules based on Story Cubes. The person who wrote it made thee interesting observation that any rules system that has the players making all the dice rolls