Year in review: 2021

Another year in the global pandemic and I suspect another to go. This year I played a satisfactory amount of games online but not much that was new or novel. I read more new ideas than I played.

My main games I played were The Clay That Woke and Electric Bastionland supplemented by an eclectic mix of Mork Borg, Dragon Warriors, Cthulhu Dark and many indie oneshot games.

Skirmish Wargames

One of the notes about last year was the mini-trend for people stripping roleplaying back to some of it’s wargaming roots. Focusing on combat above all. This year that idea went into totally different directions with a rash of “indie wargames”. Creatively people seemed to be reaching back into their earlier love of things like Mordheim and Necromunda.

One of the nice things about the indie rule sets is that there is less emphasis on the integrated figure ranges and more on playing games with the figure you’ve got.

3D printing also seems to have had a big effect on miniature gaming (although both minis and 3D printing are not my thing) with Kickstarters for templates for making your own minis and parts. Companies can now be based around the same idea or mixing up traditional retail offerings without the same outlay for moulds and the normal restrictions of the casting or injection process.

Kitbashing also seemed popular with people wanting verisimilitude between the model and its stats and equipment but also to put their own mark on mass production figure lines (punk!). Loads of plastic model manufacturers seemed happy to produce sprunes of “bits” to support the effort.

This desire for customisation and mashups of figures has a kind of apotheosis in the Turnip28 universe that brings together renaissance knight helmets, Napoleonic miniatures, Warhammer’s gothic ambience and of course the eponymous root vegetables.

Other notable entries in this space during the year included:

Solo gaming

Solo games were massive again and in-particular I felt that this was the year of the journal game. There were some great actual play reports from Thousand Year Old Vampire and tidal wave of Wretched and Alone titles.

One of the more interesting phenomena for me in lockdown and after was that I found it surprisingly hard to make time to play solo games. I can’t explain it but I could never really justify why this was the moment to find space to myself and do something that emphasises being alone.

What I’ve enjoyed about the solo gaming boom is the accompanying game design. Unlike group games it’s impossible to pass all the responsibility for making the game good to the facilitator so creators have had to engage with mechanics in a meaningful way.

Less satisfyingly this has often meant simply adopting the Oracle or prompts system and writing a new series of prompts that leaves you feeling more like this is a creative writing assignment rather than a meaningful game. I tried to play the Artefact and ended up feeling uninspired and unsupported by the “game” structure.

At the same time seeing some of the game design that has gone into collaborative and solo gaming in the skirmish wargames makes me wish there was something that mixed up the structure of the two so that there was something with a definite set of mechanics that you are working with but is structured so that you are guaranteed to get a particular play experience.

Mork Borg

Ever since it was released Mork Borg has had a huge impact and seems to have distilled a certain OSR ethos and aesthetic to an essence that has made other takes on doomed murderhobos seem irrelevant. Mork Borg dungeons featured in a huge range of publications from self-produced zines for Zinequest 3, the Dissident Rumours anthology, Knock magazine; nothing could escape it’s reach.

I struggle a bit with the Mork Borg aesthetic and its celebration of the apocalypse felt too on the nose for the general climate change news in 2021. I didn’t enjoy a lot of what was created for the game but I did enjoy the games I played of it.

The Kickstarter for the new Cyberpunk version of the game, CyBorg seems exciting. It feels like personally it triangulates perfectly between the metal fantasy of Mork Borg and the horror of Mothership where the setting and the aesthetic are closer to something I understand.

Mini-theme: Duck Tales

One of the weirder takes on Mork Borg was Dukk Borg, which merges Duck Tales with Scandinavian black metal doom. Apparently the author’s weren’t aware of Glorantha’s ducks but this was an independent take on the idea. Dukk Borg’s clans idea feels better to me than the core game’s murderous loners.

There was also Beakwood Bay a Duck Tales themed take on the Brindlewood Bay game.

Clearly there is a generation of game writers who have Duck Tales as part of the formative culture.

Minimalism

This wasn’t a massive trend but is more of a personal observation as I greatly enjoyed the rash or “rules-light”, one-page and “minimalist” rules. I want to highlight Oz Browning who promoted Pink Square as a movement to celebrate minimal rulesets and also made lots of these games available via Rook’s Press.

As time has gone on I have had less and less time for crunchy games or one with loads of sub-systems. These lighter rules can offer a solid mechanic or principle for resolution that can be built on as you need but at their best offer something rich enough to work with nothing more than the creativity of all the players involved.

Mini-trend: Soulsbourne as inspiration

There were a number of games that took inspiration for the Dark Souls games but the most explicit were Vast in the Dark, Runecairn and From The Mud. The practical immortality means that high mortality game styles are not a problem from a character continuity point of view but can still have practical game consequences.

The dark ruined atmosphere is of a piece with the apocalypse of Mork Borg but with a more mystical and mysterious background to explore.

Game Jams

There were so many Jams that it felt overwhelming, it felt there was no way to track or even read all the entries and Itch’s interface didn’t really feel up to the task of trying to highlight what was interesting or even giving feedback to submissions you thought were interesting.

Mini-trend: Planescape as inspiration

I’m not that familiar with Planescape, I’ve picked up some of the print on demand reissues of the original material from DriveThru now to try and understand the source material a bit better and also see what people pick and what they change.

One of the key things that seems to resonate about the Sigil the city at the centre of the Planescape multiverse is the idea of its cosmopolitan plurality; the concept that all manner of beings can share an urban space and celebrate a diverse, permissive culture. You can probably see the appeal and the relevance to current debates already.

Games exploring these ideas this year included Sig: City of Blades (a Forged in the Dark game) expanding on a previous book reimplementing the Planescape setting, Enoch’s Wake which I’m still reading through (while it namechecks Spelljammer it still features a central cosmopolitan city) and for the minimal fans What’s so cool about Magic Portals?.

Discord

Discord is the new Google Plus, virtually everyone has a Discord now and by the end of the year I found myself in so many that it was hard to keep up with what’s going on and managing notifications became a critical activity to try and keep track of what you joined the community for in the first place. I never had time to keep track of the banter or even participate so I have become increasingly transactional in my usage of it, which is a shame.

Discord’s growth means that I think it will inevitably disappoint people as it tries to grow up as a company and deal with its growing demand. However for the moment it is providing probably the best mix of voice and text for gaming.

Mini-theme: Crypto as business model

Both Discord and Kickstarter launched poorly defined bids into the world of web3 and cryptocurrencies or blockchains. Both felt like faddish attempts to attract venture capital while being alienating the people who are actually using their services. Both companies probably need better ways of having their users pay for their services rather than wasting effort chasing after the latest technology fads. Discord in particular could probably just charge relatively small amounts for private Discords with a lite tier of additional services.

Dungeon Synth

This year I started to get into Dungeon Synth and in particular the more ambient less 8-bit side of the music. I enjoyed the Bell, Book and Candle radio show hosted by CAMP and music by the group GNOLL, in particular their Mork Borg soundtrack.

Public domain art

Mork Borg definitely helped popularise the trend of using and repurposing public domain art but at this point I feel most of the interesting assemblages and juxtapositions are done and whenever I see a new print product with an ironic use of woodcut I would prefer to just read a text file instead. Next year, please commission artwork or just work on nice typography instead.

Honourable mentions

I toyed with the name “The Robbies” but lets just stick to my recommendations from the year.

Best PbtA: Last Fleet, a really well constructed rulebook and set of playsets that were atmospheric and captured the ideals of the source material. I also think it bridged the gap between Belonging Outside Belonging and PbtA through the Pressure mechanism. Great stuff.

Best Fantasy Game: Dungeon Soul

Best Percentile Game: Kanabo

Best Pocket Game: Sledgehammer. Runner up was From the Mud which didn’t quick manage to pack in everything you need.