It was a quiet year on my blog, but I have been busy playing and running tabletop role-playing games (as well as doing other things). It’s time for a small retrospective, as I did last year, and as my friend Florian from rollenspielgblog.net recently did (written in German).
Stats and numbers
Most of the games this year took place in person, either with my small three-person player group or within the Berlin VS RPG community. (If you’re based in Berlin and looking for opportunities, feel free to reach out—I’ll send you an invite link to our Discord.)
In total, I played in 89 sessions, broken down as follows:
- 14 online vs 75 in person,
- 21 times in the GM (or similar) role vs 68 times as a player,
- 10 times as GM for people in VS RPG community.
The games I played
Here are the games I played this year (roughly in chronological order):
- Trophy Dark
- Bump In The Dark
- Those Dark Places
- Cyborg
- Deathmatch Island
- Lasers & Feelings
- Death in Space
- Mothership
- Cairn
- Savage Worlds
- Trophy Gold
- Orc Borg
- Blood on the Clocktower (not TTRPG, but a social deduction game)
- Index Card RPG
- Alien RPG
- Brindlewood Bay
- Eat the Reich
- Wildsea
- Warlock
- Monolith
- Ironsworn: Starforged
- Delta Green
- Vast Grimm
- Of your free will (not TTRPG, but a nordic LARP, however I am not sure If I noted the name down correctly since I can’t really google it now)
- Escape from Dino Island
- Pirate Borg
- Hell Night
- Wetwired
- Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
- Mork Borg
- Liminal Horror
- In media res (Call of cthulu short-shot)
- Last train to Bremen
- Frontier Scm
- Spire
Here’s a revised and polished version of the text:
That’s 35 games in total. Most of them were one-shots (sometimes multiple instances of one-shots). I played a short campaign of Wildsea, a mini-campaign of Delta Green, and a short hop-on/hop-off campaign of Monolith.
Notable one-shots include:
- The Waking of Willowby Hall: Played using Cairn, though I don’t think the system mattered much. The module is very good.
- Escape from Dino Island: The first GMing experience for the person who ran it, and it was amazing.
- House of the Hollow: for Mörk Borg.
- One session of Deathmatch Island: My character got a haircut during a chase scene and, in the final round, fought the hairdresser—and won!
The games I ran
Let me go a bit more into detail about the games.
Mothership
I must admit, I’m a bigger fan of the Mothership content and its creative design than of the system itself. I’m still figuring out the intended experience of the game—how it’s meant to be run—and reconciling that with how I want to run it, which might differ. Running the game a few times and listening to others discuss it has been incredibly helpful.
The modules I ran this year included: Decagone, VR Dead, and Year of the Rat. Let me highlight Decagone: its art feels cartoonish and even cute, which doesn’t evoke horror vibes at all. The module itself is a simple escape room but introduces intriguing, module-specific mechanics (I won’t spoil it—check it out, and you’ll see what I mean). These mechanics create excellent tension and pacing. I ran it twice, and players always had a blast. While it’s not a typical Mothership scenario, it works as a fantastic one-shot and could easily be adapted to other systems.
Alien RPG
The tone and themes of Alien RPG align closely with Mothership, but it uses a variant of Free League’s Year Zero Engine. I ran the cinematic scenario Chariot of the Gods in two sessions.
The system features an interesting stress and panic mechanic—arguably a touch more engaging than Mothership’s. Beyond that, however, it feels quite mediocre. While I generally enjoy d6 pool systems, Alien often involves overly large dice pools and too many rolls, which quickly becomes tedious. The action economy in combat, armor rolls, and other minor mechanics feel at odds with the cinematic thriller or horror experience the game aims for.
That said, the secret character agendas were a highlight, earning praise from players. However, some agendas are undeniably more compelling than others. The scenario itself suffers from a bit too much railroading for my taste.
Brindlewood Bay
This year, I’ve been running a full campaign of Brindlewood Bay for my two-player mini-group. We’re almost done—just one mystery remains, though I still need to write it.
Both players love the game, especially its dark conspiracy themes. As a Keeper, I feel I struggle to make situations truly dangerous for the characters—I’m too lenient. My complications and conditions lack impact, and I feel the game could be deeper if I addressed this better. The players haven’t complained, but I hope to improve this aspect, especially when trying other games from the Carved from Brindlewood family.
Ironsworn: Starfroged
I attempted to run a short campaign, guiding the group with the intention of playing in a GM-less style. My mistake was organizing the game for too many players, expecting some to drop out. Instead, all five participated, making consensus-building during worldbuilding and character creation difficult. Too many compromises felt like making the world and story all over the place.
I stopped after two sessions where we did the worldbuilding, characters and played a short intro scene. I planned to organize another session but ended up procrastinating and not doing it for couple of months. I would still love to play the game cooperatively with other people, but I wouldn’t try with more like three players (including me).
Blades in the Dark
I wrapped up a play-by-post campaign at the start of the year. Aside from that, I ran one one-shot session. The game is challenging to play effectively in a single session, especially with new players unfamiliar with the mechanics.
CBR+PNK
CBR+PNK is a streamlined twist on Forged in the Dark, designed specifically for one-shots. The entire ruleset—similar in complexity to the “score” portion of Blades in the Dark—fits on two 4-fold pamphlets: one for players (including the character sheet) and another for the GM.
he disadvantage is that I can’t imagine running this without knowledge of Blades in the Dark. The systems works quite well for a one shot, however it would be much better if players know at least one of the other Forged in the dark games. There’s a bit too much moving pieces to fully grasp in one session.
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
Is perhaps the most unique game I own. I played several sessions with two different groups and overall got quite positive feedback. There’s a bit of getting-used-to since the way how the game works is unusual and every chapter has it’s own variant of the rules. The characters are very well written and the chapters tend to create interesting context for their exploration. I look forward to exploring the book more in the future.
The games I bought
I can’t list all of them here. Plenty of games arrived from crowd funding I ordered before 2024, I supported too many crowdfunding campaigns in 2024. Apart from the I spent too much money in some of the local Berlin shops and bought too many digitally. I will never be able to play or run all of them. It’s an addiction!
My first TTRPG Convention
Yes, as highly socially anxious person, I have never been to any TTRPG (or gaming ) convention. Last year I visited Bircon and truly enjoyed the event despite its flaws. For me it was a unique celebration of community and my person achievement on my way in overcoming my social anxiety (I mentioned that topic last year). I certainly plan to join next year and hopefully run a game there.
Plans for 2025
Last year, I mentioned I planned to run more games. I think I managed to do that. Regarding my anxiety, the biggest achievements this year were two sessions where I ran a game for a table of people I had met for the first time.
Another goal I had was to indulge more in my creative side and potentially write and publish something. Unfortunately, I only wrote a short adventure as a submission to the zine produced by the VR RPG community, “Every Wednesday We Roll”. I was certainly hoping for more.
The end of 2024 brought one big change: I moved (together with my partner) back to Prague after more than seven years in Germany. This means I lost access to the wonderful community of TTRPG enthusiasts in Berlin after almost two years of participation, and I also left behind some dear friendships that developed or started developing there. That brought a lot of sadness and gave a weird aftertaste to the move, even though I love Prague and look forward to restarting my life here.
I still plan to visit Berlin whenever I see the opportunity (e.g., for the aforementioned BirCon), and I hope I’ll manage to maintain at least loose connections with some of the people I got to know.
This move also brings a new challenge: finding a new community of people here in Prague, either English-speaking or Czech-speaking. Since the fallout from moving between countries and the chaos caused by the holidays are finally settling down, I am starting to slowly look around.