The last two weeks, I’ve been trying out a new game called Public Access—it’s an ongoing game, but I expect it to only run 10–12 sessions. I tried it out after watching this truly excellent review from Quinn’s Quest (who, if you haven’t watched, makes what I think is pretty much the best reviews of TTRPGs on the internet) https://youtu.be/DI8fUgSdgZg?si=ieolVb190wGzz_ag The game is an absolute blast. "No on remembers this children's show you watched growing up, except all of you. Something was...not quite right with it...what happened to it?" The explicit goal of every character is to find out what happened to this unsettling children's program that no one seems to remember called TV Odyssey. It’s inspired by analog horror and creepypastas, using the Brindlewood Bay system to facilitate a very cool storytelling system (rather than a puzzle heavy system like some mystery games). Brindlewood Bay and its offspring have a clue system where there’s no set answer to a mystery—instead, players collect clues, then make a role to create their own answer to the question with as many clues as possible. If their roll is a success, their answer is right. This concept bothered me a lot at first, but when it works, it works GREAT. It’s really nice for a game like this where the story, tone, atmosphere, and characters is the focus, and not actually the main mystery like in a Sherlock Holmes game or something like that. The mysteries build tension but never slow down the game from theorizing, which is nice. Other interesting mechanics include Keys, these boxes you can check to improve a roll. They effectively make characters unkillable, which is important for encouraging them to split up and get into danger. They're also all connected to either narrating a flashback to childhood, or mechanically entwining yourself deeper with the forces of horror, which is cool. All of this to set up the games I’ve run! We’ve had two virtual sessions, and I’m running with three players (friends from high school!). In the first session, we spent about an hour making characters, and two hours on our first mystery, the House on Escondido Street. The campaign has a cool narrative structure I won't spoil in case someone plays it, but it comes with a bunch of premade mysteries that are really well laid out. The group spent the day digging around the house, butting heads with the HOA, and otherwise engaging in investigative antics. They spent the night (which is its own phase where all rolls are more dangerous) watching a tape of the mysterious kids show that they found. Very good time.

Update B: As I make my way through the latest book, I’ll post here how we used it. Daggerheart’s main “Given” is there must be magic, or magic-adjacent lore, like tech so advanced it works like magic. For world-building we used A Spark In Fate Core, as per Tristan’s recommendation a while back, so it’s pretty similar. Posting my in-person Daggerheart games in three different threads here… Please post accordingly so I know which game you’re commenting on. 🙏 One thing I’ve noticed is that emergent/proactive play is pretty streamlined in the Daggerheart system during world-building and character creation. I’m also taking some of my lessons learned from previous campaigns since reading the PARP guide and gauging ahead of time how proactive and goal-oriented the players want the campaign to be. That means these three different campaigns may have varying levels of proactive versus reactive play. Stay tuned!

I ran a one shot of Blades in the Dark, and it's shaping up into a longer game! I'm very excited about it, since it's definitely one of my favorites. The group made some characters, went into the tunnels, and performed some pretty vicious gang fights, and ran away from a big trapped demon and its amped up dog corpse zombie horror things. They had a great time, so we ran another game! Same characters (but I let them revise some choices they made in character creation now that they had a handle on the system) and we fleshed out the factions and setting a little. This group REALLY was not interested at all in a Session -1; I'll probably make a full post about it another time, but I think in part it's because during the one shot, we'd already set up cool stuff they were anxious to pursue, and because they liked the setting and didn't really wanna touch it. So I ended up skipping most of Session -1, just setting up the main factions and conflicts, and then we played again! In the moment to moment play, especially setting up a heist, they feel much more empowered to collaboratively worldbuild. "What's this piece of turf in the Deathlands?" It's a caged demon, for energy. "Who caged it, and why?" It's uhhh a circus, an old abandoned circus. Stuff like that was fantastic! We made a little crude map of the area together so it was easy to keep a sense of what was going on, and then we played. Great time, super funny group, and lots of people's first time playing, ever. Next session, we'll set up goals (Blades has a "Claims" system that substitutes for goals in some ways, but I still like to have players make their own) but right now, most of them seem really fixated on fixing their boat. I'll update in the comments as we play---we may skip this week while we celebrate a friend's birthday.

I pulled together a group of story focused players to try an emergent campaign (collaborative+proactive). I am going to use this thread to share periodic updates on how it is going and what is working. Meetings will be sparse this fall and then weekly after the new year. It is five players from my in-person games who had to move out of town.

The session 0 that didn’t happen Session 0 was supposed to happen last night. I put the group together through a local D&D Facebook group. None of us knew each other going in, but we’ve been chatting on Discord for about a month. I shared a few player primers about the campaign, and everyone seemed genuinely excited to get started. Then the weather got involved. The big winter storm threw a wrench into things. Even though the worst of it wasn’t expected until Saturday, one player was feeling anxious about the possibility of getting stuck in bad conditions. They let the group know they couldn’t make it and didn’t want to hold everyone else up, even offering to bow out. Since this was Session 0, I felt it was too important for anyone to miss. I decided to push the start back two weeks. We meet every other week, and I’d rather have everyone present and comfortable than rush it. The good news is everyone was understanding, and a couple of others admitted they were also feeling anxious about the weather. Honestly, that response made me feel even better about the group. I’ve got a strong feeling this is going to be a really good table. I think the moral of the story for GM’s would be: take care of your players before the schedule. I think when players feel safe, heard, and included, the group becomes stronger and more connected.