We’re in a golden age for TTRPG releases – there’s so much out there, and something for everyone’s developing tastes. With kickstarter and other crowdfunders making it easier to get games out, it’s inevitable that someone like me who chases after the new shiny things will end up letting some games drop unjustly. Here are four of my games that were formative to me (most predate this blog) – and what I like about them. Should I get them back to the convention table, maybe in 2024? Let’s see…

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Monsterhearts

Monsterhearts was for a while the ultimate PBTA game at conventions – I’ve played Neil Gow’s classic “American Die” scenario at least three times, and another friend even managed to get through every playbook in convention one-shots in the months after its release. When I read it, and the guidance around it from the designer Avery, I was blown away – as if a new field of gaming was actually opening up before me. I was a dedicated lurker on the Forge and Story Games when this came out, but this actually showed the way.

I ran it only twice, I think, and found it exhilarating – and terrifying. There’s a real limit to the setup and a requirement to improvise in response to the players, and a need to understand PvP dynamics, that I think were underdeveloped skills when I ran it. I’d hope that now, with what I’ve learned since, I could do better – or at least, more comfortably!

Mouse Guard

The first game I ever ran at a convention was Mouse Guard. It’s the first time I met several of my close gaming buddies, and for a few years I was “the Mouse Guard guy” at Garrison conventions – always Slot 5, always the same pregens, a loosely-linked campaign awkwardly titled The Weasel Wars that channelled war films through the medium of brave mice and HONKing war geese. It was reliably great fun, and the sometimes involved rules got to a point of automaticity where I could run a multi-approach conflict with confidence and, I’d say, panache.

Is that system mastery still there? Mouse Guard’s fire has faded a bit, but it’s still the high water mark for me of the system that powers Burning Wheel and Torchbearer, and given it also launched my reputation for running games with anthropomorphic animals in them, maybe I should return to the Territories. I’ve got those pregens on the Google Drive somewhere, I’m sure…

Eclipse Phase

Believe it or not, Eclipse Phase was the second game I ran at a con – the same convention, as well. Not advisable to pick two complex game systems that are so different, but I do love Eclipse Phase. It’s a workable but not exactly elegant D100 system, but in the setting it really shines. Post-apocalyptic transhuman solar-system based science fiction with loads for the PCs to do. I have the entire 1st edition line, and many sketched out one-shots, including one where the PCs play Sol-surfing solar whales for the first two scenes.

Second edition’s launch passed me by somehow, and I ordered the core book in print right at the start of lockdown in the usual postal splurge, where it’s been sadly neglected. Smoother rules and in particular character generation would make it even easier to get to the table now, and there’s a new Character Options book crowdfunding now that I’m trying hard to resist. So maybe it’s time to launch the Fireteam again and get back out there.

Tenra Bansho Zero

Still one of my best-loved games, and one that I have shamefully only run once (you can find that adventure here, though). It’s a one-shot format that really needs 6-7 hours to shine, making it trickier to get to a convention table, and I’ve been slack at trying to organise a specific meetup to play it again. “Hyper-asian fantasy” doesn’t do it justice – you play anime superheroes battling with melodrama in a well-realised, although gonzo, world. In an excellent section in the book on Japanese gaming culture, it talks about the traditional way to play – book a karaoke booth for the afternoon – and I really should do that and get some players together.

It’s also officially the best science fiction wounds/damage system (as voted for by gaming experts on the Frankenstein’s RPG podcast), so there’s that, too – I may have foolishly offered to run it again on cast, so I may already have committed myself!

So, four games from my formative convention trips – which should I get to the table again? And what neglected gems do you have on your gaming shelves waiting for you to return to former glories?