GLAIVE-GUISARME: 2025 TTRPG Review

What follows is probably interesting only to a very small audience (maybe n=one). 2025 was slightly less intense than 2024 for TTRPGing (175 total sessions vs. 178), but I almost certainly was a player in more sessions (86) than I ever have been during a calendar year. 38 of the sessions were face-to-face, the rest online. I also probably painted the second most miniatures ever for an annual stretch (59), although the records of my past efforts in that realm are sketchy at best. Twelve of these figurines were given away as gifts. An unconscionable 186 minis (at least) were purchased. I ran 23 different published modules (one of them for two groups and one for three) and 2 of my own. I played in more than 16 modules (I'm not quite clear on disaggregating the Pirate Borg stuff from playerside), two of which were homemade. I finished two campaigns I was running (51 and 21 sessions) and started two more (so far 17 and 9); as a player one short campaign was finished (18 sessions) and another begun (so far 29), and I joined an open table megadungeon 19 sessions in (and have attended 14 of the 25 sessions since). Two mini-campaigns I began playing in during 2024 petered out (16 and 17 sessions) due to the GMs' real lives, and I had to leave a megadungeon 8 sessions in because of my own schedule change. I ran games in 13 different systems, played in 3 of those as well, and played 5 systems that I did not GM myself, making 2025 my most diverse year for tabletop. 9 of these systems were brand new to me (well, some were hacks of familiar rulesets). A blog was started and 18 substantial blog posts were published, and 4 remained unfinished by year's end. I revised one module of my own (fantasy) for the third playtest (and it still needs a lot more work and revision), drafted one scenario (Delta Green-ish) but didn't submit to the Appendix N jam, and in three feverish days wrote what I think was my best ever adventure (for Delta Green). I composed more than 140,000 words of prose session recaps (some GM'ed, some played, a bit over 100 in total). The people I play with are very clever and funny, and it's often worth recording what they say and their characters do. I presided over two TPKs and did not have any of my own characters (18 adventured this year) perish, unless you count the duplicate made by a trap (we're not sure if the original lives on or his doppelgänger), or the agent who had his inner organs replaced; I had 13 gentle GMs. Thanks Rocco, James1, J, Nik, Max, Matt, Bread, Darren, Gary, Benny, Joey, Joe, and Jay_Zer0. I kept psychotically detailed records of my experience in the hobby this year. Because of family medical issues, 2026 will almost certainly not have as much playing pretend.

Systems, Modules, Sessions

Systems

In total, Old School Essentials (Advanced) made up a third of the year's sessions, because I chose (a heavily modified version of) it for the megadungeon and small campaign I started in 2024, a short-shot, and a mini-campaign, and four of my GMs chose OSE as well. Its status as a lingua franca online makes it pretty handy to deploy, although I did not use it for games with strangers. Its (or, really, B/X's) annoyances made me leave it behind mid-year, and pick up Black Sword Hack and Glaive for my two new campaigns, both classless systems more by coincidence than design. BSH has infelicities, as well: fights tend to take too long; I'm not sold on roll-under or all player-facing rolls; there are imbalances in build choices. Glaive has the latter issue, also, and it ended up being frustrating for the venue I selected it for: a short-sessioned high-school club, so the PC powers choices are too numerous (even though I removed a few) and it lends to too much "shopping" during table time. Overall, the second most common system for me was 5E, because my oldest extant group (since 2018) mostly wants to keep running that. New-to-me Delta Green ended up being about 1 in 8 sessions, because I loved my player experience so much from my second play that I ended up running that module for three different groups. My third DG adventure as a player was good, but I thought I could do a better version of the story, and ended up serving the resulting module to my main group (five sessions). Four roll-under systems served as the basis for a mega-dungeon, a trad campaign (that petered out), a single horror module, and an online drop-in where I did not care for the module (I think the campaign switched venues after I left, so perhaps it wasn't just me). I continued to use Beyond the Wall with my nieces, daughter, and nephews (ages 12-18) for some continuity, although the gap between intense weeks of daily sessions end up meaning they want to just roll new characters again every half-year. For deliberate one-shots, I ran rules-light try-outs that I had never or rarely played: Knave, VanillaQuest, GRAVE, Cairn, Liminal Horror, Death in Space, Shadowdark.

69 sessions total were B/X retroclones or B/X blends (BtW, Shadowdark, & DCC), or maybe all of them were, if you want to call Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy an AD&D-B/X blend. 15 plays (all DG) were descendants of BRP. 33 were fifth edition D&D. The rest (58) are what I call OSRnova (rhymes with bossa nova), from the Knave, Cairn [Mark of the Odd], Black-Hack descended, and Mörk Borg families. You could argue Dragonbane and Vanilla Game* are outliers here (the former being skill heavy and having pretty complicated builds; the latter possessing a pretty eclectic mash-up of rules), but these mostly tend toward having fewer than six ability scores (and/or scores as modifier), roll-under mechanics, random level advancements, slots for encumbrance (equipment is king), being class-less, and gaining spells by happenstance (plus dangerous magic). Their pidgin may not have displaced the B/Xes, but are still pretty widely known in the corners of the internet where I hang out, and are easy for strangers to negotiate. I greatly appreciate their typical simplicity, though swapping between them does leave me forgetting which is which from time to time: what's the initiative stat in this system again? System matters, for sure, but the adventure matters more for enjoyment, I think.

*The Vanilla Game's ability scores as placebos makes me laugh whenever I think about it.

"Hold on ghosts, we have a process!"

Adventures

Near as I can figure, I purchased or downloaded (sometimes for free, or near-free) at least five dozen adventures plus four mega-dungeons or full campaign adventures. I only ran twenty-three purchased adventures (eight of them either multiple times or as re-runs from years previous), so I'm never going to catch my backlog, even GMing 75+ games per year. (Before 2023, I was running almost exclusively my own stuff, and maybe I could go back to that....) I played in 17 or 18 different adventures. Although problematic systems can get under my skin, a bad adventure frustrates me far more. Sometimes I ran poor adventures because they fit into the hole in the sandbox at the moment, though I tried to re-write them to make them more enjoyable for players. I absolute hate playing in an adventure that gives curious or creative players nothing, which is often the fault of minimalist modules. After visiting the "Chaotic Caves" and "Mike's Dungeon" for one session as a player, I did not return, because my joy is not found in mindlessly battering forward against bland foes and collecting undistinguished loot on generic maps. I did that as a twelve-year-old and liked it, but I am no longer twelve. "Curse of the Maggot God" and "Valley of the Manticore" had similar issues, and I must admit I'm partly disappointed in "Stonehell's" sparse keying; the problem-solving is interesting piece-meal, but the whole doesn't seem knowable from the clues on the ground. Maybe the dissatisfaction might be blamed on my intermittent adventuring there. Delta Green made it clear that I really like figuring a mysterious world out, and prefer to offer that to my tables, too. About sixteen of the adventures I ran had mysteries at their core. Most of the rest were dominated by immediate problem-solving, which was often true of the mysteries, too. "Kidnap the Archpriest" is a delight, "The Isle" has exactly the horrific worldbuilding vibe it should, even if it leans a little close to negadungeon/GM-as-antagonist territory, and "Ave Nox" has a deep history for the PCs to learn, played out in the elements of the crawl. "Shadow of the Dragon Queen" has the problems typical of WotC campaign books: nothing the PCs choose to do seems to matter; the party is constantly routed to the next combat set piece; the factions' strategies and the milieu's societies are nonsensical. "Last Things Last" (the sample scenario in the Delta Green quickstart) was my absolute favorite player experience of the year, with a dreadful decision as the centerpiece of the climactic encounter. I relished each time I presented it to my three sets of players, who all took it very seriously.

From the GMing side, "Bakto's Terrifying Cuisine" felt okay as I was running it, but it was largely too surreal (it was hard for players to make informed choices) and many of the elements of the rooms were ungameable or very tricky to adjudicate. It felt icky after it was over, though the players said they enjoyed the change-of-pace, and I had enjoyed making oddball ambient music playlists. "Bad Myrmidon" has most of the flaws of old school homages (monster zoo in both the hex crawl and dungeon, static scenes that are just waiting on the PCs to arrive, gratuitous sexism), but at least provided a skeleton for some interesting play. "Hounds of Hendenburgh" was turned into a soap opera by the players (in a good way), helped along by the choice of Beyond the Wall as the system. "Well of Frogs" proved to be a compelling city-box for two different groups. "Jeweler's Sanctum" is a very well-crafted problem-solving set-up, and rewards thoughtful and curious players. "The Sunbathers" was a wonderfully weird detour in a campaign. I would recommend "Parallel Dungeons" even though it deliberately leans into cliché, as long as gonzo is setting-appropriate. "Nunsuaq Station" underwrites the clues to the central mystery in the crawl, and has editing issues, but my players enjoyed the horror it evoked. "One Night at the Shelterwood Inn" has B-movie plot holes and a timeline that seems unlikely with PCs about, but my players dug the spookiness of the scenario and its pace, which was concluded by a tidy (and very unlikely) TPK.

Riffing on a Rise Up Comus skeet

Characters

During the year I played Sk^^^ (Lizardman Animist)**, Yarah Bayam-el al-Tehomat (Warlock [Marid], 4), Rodger the Skewer (Assassin, 1), Flimm Peppercorn [né Cutcorn] (Illusionist of the Red Robes, 6), Jenno-Jando (Bard, 4), Geronimo la Vergalunga (Acrobat, 3), Vooch (Thief, 1), Hoke (Elf, 1), Roach (Thief, 1), Fulg Scrape-Pate (Magic-User, 1), Todd Brown (ex-Historian), Rinnsal (Rill Runner), Einschlag (Kettlewright), Winthorpe (Bonekeeper), and Sugar-Boy (Caribbean Sorcerer, 2). All but two were human, and the elf, admittedly, was a min-max move in a pick-up game.

My favorite character names of my players and co-players include: Dorf, Ginkgo, Goden Son of Goshen, The Ink Knight, João-Jean, Kulunin Who-Looks-Eastward, Lazlo, Mark the Elf, Matthieu Baudelaire, "No One At All," Saartu, Sylvia, Volpert the Wandsman, and Ygra, a few of whom were carry-overs from 2024. As a GM I slew at least twenty-five PCs, but only Volpert from the list above. A solid name choice just might subconsciously help your targeting odds...

** Never, ever choose glottal acrobatics for a PC name. You will begin to dread speaking of the character in third person.

Miniatures and Inconspicuous Consumption

These days I need external motivations to finish painting figurines. There were five months where I painted none, and one month with just one finished, and a small one at that. Having face-to-face sessions imminent drove 80% of 2025's production: 19 for a cancelled Pirate Borg cabin weekend and then 14 more for the make-up date nine months later; 1 "emergency" for FreeRPG day; 7 gifts due for a niece and nephew and 6 more for my high school D&D club students. I am a competent enough painter for the tabletop, but not contest-grade. Maybe this year I'll reach the century mark, finally. It is almost unforgivable that I bought nearly two hundred figurines, but I've got a mass-painting scheme for NPCs lined up. The models finished comprised 25 N/PCs, 25 monsters, 8 terrain pieces, and 1 giant miniature monster.

In another bout of bourgeois excess, I acquired almost forty RPG systems, more than twenty supplements, eight 'zines, and all five Knock!s (in physical form). There was a little restraint with dropping cash for only five kickstarters or backerkits this year. Only three bottles of paint were purchased and five small tubs of specialty basing mixes (could you resist "Soil of Sparta" or grimdark flock?).