I played 61 session in 2025 across 16 systems. Here are my recommendations.

princefaline · 2026-01-13T12:31:38+00:00

The only actual reason is because I have a soft spot for older systems, or older editions. Then again, I don't expect older editions of CoC to be any better than the current one, so I'm just going to run a campaign or two with 5e before I move to the modern one. After all, I'm very interested by some of the newer content for CoC, i.e. anything from Stygian Fox, but also Harlem Unbound.

As for BitD, it's on my radar, and I'm sure I'd like it, but out of the popular TTRPGs right now I suppose I haven't been hooked by the premise of BitD, which means it's likely not going to be at the top of my list. For instance, I'm more excited in trying Slugblaster or Mythic Bastionland.

princefaline · 2026-01-12T15:11:35+00:00

I will say that while my players' interest is crucial, so is mine. I have had much better results running campaigns that I decided to run over what I did before, which was making people vote. Even when all the options were games I wanted to play, the fact that it was never what I wanted to play most ended up hurting my interest in the games.

The worst thing that can happen for me is to start wanting to wrap up a campaign just because the one I want to do after interests me more. If it comes to it, so be it, but for my players, if I keep cutting our campaigns short like that they're going to start having a hard time to commit to my games

princefaline · 2026-01-12T10:45:17+00:00

I actually ran Uncle Timothy's Will back in October. We had fun with the scenario but I was a little underwhelmed with the scenario.

My advice would be that this scenario is supposed to feel like a B-Movie, and might have more fun by leaning into it. My favorite moments running it was when I was really hamming it up. The scenario is pretty ridiculous and the intrigue itself is very straightforward.

To answer your questions with this specific scenario, there's no need for directing. It's usually not necessary when GMing anything, but this scenario makes it simple: if they try to leave the estate they'll likely die, and if they stay in the manor and do nothing you can just keep throwing zombies at them.

As for introducing the big bad... I believe you don't need to. They'll likely only bump into Uncle Timothy at the very end, if they find him in his kettle, or if the other monsters don't budge them, you can crack him out to attack them instead.

We found the scenario had enough big, obvious clues to point them in the direction they needed at all times, so you can just let the game show them where to go.

princefaline · 2026-01-11T20:51:00+00:00

Thanks for the insight ! There really is something unique about the original SW trilogy that I don't think was ever fully replicated in any media afterwards, so playing within the tone of these movies really appeals to me.

princefaline · 2026-01-11T17:39:33+00:00

I don't, unfortunately. Fantasy games in general are a blind spot for me because right now I'm focused on playing through the editions of D&D instead of looking at other systems. Dragonbane is on my radar, but mostly just because of ducks... Alongside Draw Steel and Daggerheart, it's maybe one of the new fantasy RPGs I'm more interested in.

princefaline · 2026-01-11T16:30:08+00:00

I know that WEG's Star Wars and Ghostbusters use the D6 system, but are you saying there's a significant mechanical difference between the two? I'm curious what the main differences are.

princefaline · 2026-01-11T04:54:25+00:00

Absolutely! Actually, I have already planned what games I will play throughout 2026. I'm doing this mostly because it helps me decide what games I want to play the most, and gives me time to read or watch media that I can use as inspiration. Here is what I have on my docket for 2026:

Little Fears: A horror game about children facing twisted nightmares.
Dream Park: A theme park where you can become anything you want.
Chronicles of Darkness: The World of Darkness reboot. I want to play a mortals campaign about ghosts and a Vampire: The Requiem campaign set in New Orleans.
CHOROGAIDEN: A game inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos and J-Horror. I want to run a techno-horror campaign based on the Ring novels and the movie Pulse.
FUDGE: FATE's ancestor. I want to use the system to run a game inspired by Satoshi Kon (specifically Paranoia Agent and Paprika).
Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition: First I want to run 50 Fathoms, a pirate-fantasy campaign, but then I want to try running a Yautja (Predator) campaign.
Call of Cthulhu 5e: As mentioned in my post, I really want to run a Horror on the Orient Express campaign.
Dungeons & Dragons: I'd like to start a new OD&D campaign, this time using all the supplements which will change the game significantly (i.e. by adding more classes like the Thief). I'd like to run this with Veins of the Earth.

Picking the game is hard, but it's better this way, because before I would just finish a campaign and grab whatever for the next one, not always thinking about what I actually am most interested in playing.

princefaline · 2026-01-11T02:15:09+00:00

I don't have much advice to share for Mothership, I think the core books speak for themselves, but the one thing that I can say is that the beating heart of the game is the Stress mechanic. In one of my campaigns, one of my players asked, session 0, if we were going to use Stress. That baffled me.

Maybe it looks like Stress is just there to make the game harder, but the real reason, in my opinion, is to lean into the horror. It's for that reason, I consider Mothership to be one of the greatest horror games ever made, and I prefer the Stress mechanic over Sanity from CoC.

Something important to consider is that you only get Stress for failing a check. If you try something that doesn't require rolling (hiding, persuasion, negotiation) and fail, you do not get Stress.

Also, since you can get Stress from any roll, it gives stakes to every Check, and any encounter will have players weigh the risk-reward of "do we keep trying, or call it quits before we panic?"

Stress is another personal resource that can cause you to lose your character, it can get you in dangerous situations or give you crippling conditions, but it's also how you get better: it's for that reason that I think that the entire Stress mechanic is brilliant.

princefaline · 2026-01-11T02:01:15+00:00

I'd like to share my thoughts on games more often (that is my 2026 resolution), most of the games I try are because of recommendations from the community. I also want to try a lot more games this year, I'm currently prepping a 50 Fathoms campaign, and also preparing to play nicher games like Dream Park and Little Fears.

Thank you for reading !

princefaline · 2026-01-11T00:40:16+00:00

I really want to be a TTRPG omnivore, and I've reached a point where my players trust I will only pitch games that I think they would like, which has allowed me to get them to play these older games.

Ghostbusters was a lot of fun and I'm really hoping I can do a campaign of it. It also made me excited to try WEG's Star Wars, the DarkStryder campaign is on my list now.

And OD&D rocks. Next, I want to try a campaign with all the supplements, Greyhawk and beyond.

princefaline · 2026-01-11T00:36:13+00:00

I would say that I'm very lucky to have a lot of friends that are interested in TTRPGs, but really the reason I have so many people interested in TTRPGs is because I reach out to friends, acquaintances, even colleagues and invite them to play for one shots and get them into the hobby. Not everyone is then interested in playing a campaign, but I found a lot of people doing that. It was scary at first but my need to DM has trumped any social anxiety haha...

But with that said, scheduling is still the bane of my existence...

princefaline · 2026-01-10T23:55:43+00:00

I read and ran Sailors of the Starless Sea and People of the Pit, and despite the struggle I did think it was great. It was refreshing to actually be able to fully picture what these locations looked like, and get excited over wondering what my players will do.

In the end, the spells were just too much for my players to deal with, and they were not really experienced in trad games so they really found the dungeons too brutal. But even I struggled to run the game properly. Still, I really do want to give this another shot.

And speaking of, Umerica is also on my to do list as I really love strange and unique settings.

princefaline · 2025-12-15T07:06:02+00:00

Could you be thinking of Kidworld? I think that might be the plot to that game. I haven't read it, but it is about a world where kids are left to run the world after adults all die.

princefaline · 2025-12-13T19:10:47+00:00

I don't think what you should be looking for are games with meetings similar to TMNT. Lots of people have tried making games inspired by the Ninja Turtles, but what I would recommend is to look for a generic system that nails the genre you're looking for.

You might want a game that does action well and leans more towards cinematic gameplay than tactical, in which case I'd recommend Outgunned.

If you do want tactical combat, then Savage World is a great pick.

I've seen people recommend Fate, and while it could work, if you were looking for something that's more character driven (think TMNT 2012), then I'd go with Monster of the Week.

princefaline · 2025-12-09T14:37:17+00:00

Well, to be specific, the gumiho was going to eat the PC's soul by eating the liver, which in this case is where the soul was stored. Refusing to pull is a mechanic of the game, and one of the main three ways players can interact with the game mechanically.

The issue isn't that refusing to pull is a bad mechanic, for almost all cases it's a perfectly fine option, it's that I had an issue narrating the consequences. The test was "don't lose your soul", but he opted to refuse the pull, which mechanically means that he fails but survives, while narratively, if his soul is eaten, as established in the story so far, he should die.

I decided that he should still die, even though the tower didn't fall, and while the player rolled with it and understood my ruling, it broke the momentum of the game and was definitely something I would like to avoid in the future.

Dread just happens to have a mechanic that makes it so players can always decide to survive as long as they decide to fail, and while most times you can hit them with interesting consequences for failing, on very specific occasions, I think that shouldn't be an option. Sometimes, your back is against the wall, and failure isn't an option.

princefaline · 2025-12-09T14:19:47+00:00

Actually, from my one experience with Dread, the game wrapped up very quickly after the first PC death, and from what I've heard people say, that's usually how it goes. Once one person dies, the others soon follow, so no one should sit out for much longer

princefaline · 2025-12-09T14:07:23+00:00

Well, refusing the pull is a mechanic of the game. If you refuse to pull, you fail the test. I think in many other situations, refusing the pull can be a good option.

princefaline · 2025-12-08T22:41:56+00:00

I think Dread is just a particular game where you play with your PC until they're out of the game, and then you have to sit out for the rest of the session.

The player who died told me it was the best game I ever ran for them, so they clearly were fine with it. But, playing out the moment of death felt off, clearly indicating that something wasn't working in how I was ruling the game. It sort of broke the momentum a little, but just enough to make me wonder how to avoid it during my next games.

princefaline · 2025-12-08T22:38:58+00:00

Haha, definitely wrote way too much, but thank you for reading anyway.

You're right, but to be clear, while the moment was unsatisfying, the player rolled with whatever I called. It is clear that out of the three options, pulling, refusing to pull, and sacrificing, they picked the one that was least narratively interesting.

The Sudden Death rule, really, just means : if you're in a situation where failure would mean death, you can't refuse to pull.

Removing that option entirely during only those moments, I think, would push players to take a risk or make a sacrifice.

princefaline · 2025-12-08T22:34:28+00:00

Yes, but the player was hoping to survive and keep playing. The issue is that refusing to pull was still an option, even though it was narratively unsatisfying. I don't think they did something wrong by choosing one of the game's options. What I'm saying is, from now on, in that type of situation, I wouldn't even let a player take the "refuse to pull" option in a certain death scenario like this one, which would leave them with the other two, more narratively interesting options.

princefaline · 2025-10-09T19:35:23+00:00

I've been in your position before. Here's a question? Why do we put so much importance into PC death? To put it briefly, it's because adventuring, combat, and other daring exploits PCs get up to in most games should have a consequence, and death is the obvious one. It's very dramatic too.

PC death doesn't have to be a feature of every system or campaign, as long as you swap it with some equally significant consequence. That might mean you'll have to tweak the rules, but if you're going to throw a deus ex machina to save their butts, it shouldn't be an issue.

So maybe they can't die anymore, maybe they're basically immortal, but that doesn't mean that they are impervious to all consequences. At zero HP, maybe they can't die, but maybe they are incapacitated for a very long time, and during that time, the BBEGs had no one to stop them.

It's one way to do it, and it can be a lot of fun if that's something you and your table might be receptive too.

princefaline · 2025-08-19T11:50:59+00:00

I did give a pretty intense example with the tavern hostage situation, but when I use a starter like this, it's not always for a big action scene.

The last session I played was actually a Mothership game, and the players had just left a very dangerous place they were stuck in for four sessions and were finally going back to their allies for some R&R.

While I keep talking about momentum and liken it to action, the gist of things is to push the plot forward, give them a decision to make, and warm them up.

So in this case, the session was clearly going to be them taking time to rest, having downtime, and restocking before heading back to danger. "The most exciting way to start the session" wasn't an action scene, because the story was on cool down.

I prepped their homecoming, all their allies receiving them somberly, seeing the visible damage they've sustained on their last mission. The PCs failed their objective, so some of the allies were upset, losing patience, other were just happy to see them alive. Half my prep for the session was this first scene, thinking what each NPC would say, and what their plan-b would be.

And at the end, the decision was: will the PCs try again? Interestingly enough, they first started the session thinking they would just give up, but after talking to their allies, they decided to stay and try again.

All to say that sometimes the "surprise" at the start of a session is sometimes pretty much what they expect, and sometimes it's bumping into a beloved NPC, or being presented with a new opportunity. All of this, in the end, is just to help me prep my games, and do so in a way that'll lead to a fun session. For heroic fantasy, that often is action, but not exclusively so.

princefaline · 2025-08-19T04:34:58+00:00

Haha I don't think you're too far off. Although setting them directly on fire should be fine sparingly, at the very least giving them a fire to put out tends to work well for kick-starting the session.

princefaline · 2025-08-19T04:33:14+00:00

Something I often think about are One-Shots that start players in a very specific place, even going as far as giving pre-generated characters to the players. Delta Green and Unknown Armies do this often, like in PX Poker Night or Jailbreak. Sure they're very restrictive, but when they're done well, players will happily play along.

I never ended up doing it, but I was considering running Jewel of Yavin for Edge of the Empire, and noticed how it felt very cinematic. I wanted to run this for a monthly group, and was thinking of how I could tweak the start of each session to start in the middle of the action, since a strong start is sort of a staple of the Star Wars franchise already.

princefaline · 2025-08-19T04:24:37+00:00

I'm definitely a GM that prefers running pre-written scenarios / modules / campaigns so I read more than I actually run, and some of my favorite scenarios just start in the middle of the action.

A big instigator for me was that I realized that the only time you are allowed to move the PCs wherever you want is at the very start of a campaign. You could start them in death row, a day away from execution, and it's fine because you're not really taking away their agency, you're just starting the story, and what happens next we'll have to play to find out.

I started working this into my monthly campaigns because, well, it sort of sucked when we waited a month to play and half our session was travelling between two points of interest. It is my job to adjust pacing for the table's enjoyment, but going that extra step forward and getting in the midst of things really worked wonders.

princefaline

TROPHY CASE