I like a good end of year wrap up, so I was happy to see the idea for a personal awards post "The Endies" by Lady Tabletop. First things first, I have used one notebook to keep my notes for (almost) all my games this year, so gathering this info has been relatively easy and fun. I'm pretty good at noting the date and game (the remainder of my notes are often more opaque). 📘 For folks who are interested in such things, my RPG notebook is a LEUCHTTURM1917 medium A5 hardcover.
Here's everything I played, in alphabetical order. For each I have completed the sentence "play this game if you..."
- Age of Vikings - like the combination of a grounded historical world with a touch of the supernatural
- Blades in the Dark - want to run a heist and like getting straight into the action
- Cthulhu Dark - like atmosphere, investigation, and super-light but effective rules
- Dialect - want a complete story in a one-shot, with thought-provoking ideas about community and language
- Dolmenwood - want a huge area to explore, completely packed with adventure hooks
- Fully Automatic - want to jump into fast-paced modern tactical action
- Ironsworn - dabble with solo or GM-less play
- Ironsworn: Starforged - like sci-fi world-building and narrative tools
- Kala Mandala - are inspired by great, flavourful art
- Mausritter - like the idea of exploring the day-to-day world but where everything bigger than a mouse could be a danger
- Midnight of the Century - want a dark and character-driven story about a manhunt for a killer
- Mörk Borg - clicked on the link to the Mörk Borg website and thought "YES!"
- Mythic Bastionland - have listened to me talking about or playing this game on The Smiling Fox or Luck Roll for hours and hours and wondered "Why is this guy talking about this so much?"
- The Unofficial Highlander II: The Quickening Roleplaying Game - are either interested in Highlander or have absolutely no interest in Highlander (in other words, a game for everyone!)
- World of Dungeons - want to play D&D without reading a book
Here are some stats:
- Live sessions ran as a GM: 22
- Live sessions as a player in a group: 12
- Play-by-post games ran as a GM: 1
- Play-by-post games as a player: 2
- Solo sessions: 23
And now, on to the awards 🏆
- Most played / least surprising inclusion: Mythic Bastionland
- Funniest game: The Unofficial Highlander II: The Quickening Roleplaying Game
- Best achievement in delivering on a (not straightforward) goal: Dialect
- Most memorable ending: Cthulhu Dark
- Most satisfying crunch: Age of Vikings
Tabletop intentions for 2026:
- More frequent Luck Roll episodes. I've done 6 episodes this year, and expect to get a 7th released in December. The pace is pretty slow and I'd like to speed it up (without making it too onerous for myself, as it is very much a hobby). But I've kind of worked out my process for it, and I think it will come together a little more smoothly next year.
- Stay focused on ongoing stuff! The TTRPG space has a lot of distraction fuel. It's very easy to have my attention pulled in many different ways, so I want to find a better balance of concentrating on projects I have started while also having some time to explore new things.
- Get better at connecting threads together. I have plenty of experience now with using RPG tools to generate new story threads and characters and locations, but I think I would benefit from using a little more GM fiat (or something more random) to start pulling those disparate parts together.
