It’s 1994 in the region of the fictional Ontonagon Peninsula known as “Iron Country,” a belt of mining towns barely clinging to life. These towns are surrounded on all sides by the Sylvan Wilds, a forest known for old-growth pines and strange happenings. All of Iron Country seems to be teeming with the supernatural, a fact those in power would like to conceal.
You are a hunter, and you’ve promised to keep regular people safe from the horrors in the darkness. You will investigate the strange happenings going on throughout Iron Country, attempting to put the pieces together and stop the monsters before people get hurt. Will you be able to stop the malevolent forces before their power grows too strong to contain? Will you stand strong with your found family and community or will you sacrifice yourself to spare the ones you love? Will you be lost trying to find solace wherever you can?
Wanderhome is a pastoral fantasy role-playing game about traveling animal-folk, the world they inhabit, and the way the seasons change. It is a game filled with grassy fields, mossy shrines, herds of chubby bumblebees, opossums in sundresses, salamanders with suspenders, starry night skies, and the most beautiful sunsets you can imagine.
Y’all know this one.
External Containment Bureau is a game of paranormal investigation and bureaucracy using a lightweight, hackable version of the Forged in the Dark design framework. You play as trained agents of the External Containment Bureau, an organization tasked with the study, identification, and containment of paranormal phenomena. The Bureau authorizes agents to make use of these phenomena to give yourself incredible powers (so long as the proper forms are in order). But take care: using paranormal energies inches you ever closer to joining the ranks of the paranormal yourself. Will you transcend humanity in the line of duty? Play to find out.
“All the worlds ended together: heavens and hells, kingdoms and wastelands, and everything in between. As they broke apart, the Heartless Princess saved the bits she could, shoving them together and crowning the resultant Patchwork World with her Icy City to hold it all together.”
Patchwork World is:
- a no-playbook, no-stat fantasy game; choose a couple moves and you’re ready to start
- powered by the apocalypse, meaning you’ll need two 6-sided dice and not much else
- 70 moves that you can easily port to almost any other game (such as Magnificent Weapon, Stoned Investigator, Crystalline Garden, Become Cats, and more)
- would pair well with smoke, fuel, and fire for faction creation
Retrocausality is a tabletop RPG about time travel adventures, in the vein of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure or Back to the Future.
It uses a rules-light, card-based system that lets you decide how time travel works. Whether you have a specific movie you want to emulate, you have Opinions on the Novikov self-consistency principle, or you prefer not to ask too many questions, Retrocausality can make it happen. Even better, the rules are so light you can use Retrocausality to run a time travel adventure in a different game. That’s twice as much game.
Unincorporated is a collaborative, mostly-GMless story game for 3-5 players who take on the roles of ordinary people caught up in petty rivalries, long-held grudges, intense frenemyships, and hopeless love affairs, all while trying to shake off the weight of expectations.
It’s designed to be played in 1-5 sessions, with no prep and a quick, easy setup. Create character history and setting details by answering a few questions, pick a starting Plot, and try to solve it. This also makes it easy to re-skin with alternate setting playbooks.
Gameplay uses PbtA-style 2d6 +stat dice rolls. Your stats are Jock, Nerd, Prep, and Goth. You can change your dice results or your reputation – or even add a new stat – by spending tokens, which you earn by choosing to fail or add complications.
Players have described individual game sessions as “The best Northern Exposure episode they never made,” “The Hangover, written by Nora Ephron,” “A kinder, gentler Fiasco” and “Awkward Conversations: the game.”
with the Weird Little Town setting playbook
Weird Little Town is an alternate setting playbook for Unincorporated, inspired by Welcome to Night Vale, Hot Fuzz, The Wicker Man, American Gothic, and other stories of towns with dark secrets and bizarre conspiracies barely concealed from the hapless outsiders who stumble into them.
You are not an outsider. You know strange things are happening just below your town’s quaint surface. You take the danger and weirdness for granted. But how much do you really know? How much horror are you willing to accept just to keep the peace? And, in a place like this, can you ever trust anyone, even yourself?
Out of Work Precogs is an urban fantasy investigation game, with a twist. Instead of playing mighty monster slayers or brilliant wizards, you play as college graduates and college dropouts who’s student debt is held by The Bureau of The Unknown, a mystical organization who compels them to handle magical goings on for them. The game works in elements of horror and comedy as well - imagine Yu-Yu Hakusho, the Persona series, and the Dresden Files, but the PCs are as competent as your average indie RPG Fan.