Day 48: Mummy A lot of people think Werewolf was the 2nd OWoD game. Mummy came out nearly a year before it. While it was called a sourcebook for the first 2 editions, it was a complete character making rules & background fluff. 3e would see Mummy finally treated like the other 5 core OWoD games.

Day 47: Demon Hunters Powered by FATE and brought to you by the makes of JourneyQuest and The Gamers, we have a comedy-horror RPG based on one of the lesser known properties. This is actually the 2e. The first was very different, by Margaret Weis Productions & just didn’t do the property justice.

Day 46: Nightbane. The other CJ Carella TTRPG, although this might be the better known these days since Palladium is still in business. Want a Nightbreed game but without the license? Here you go. There’s about six releases for Nightbane & they’re all pretty old, with the last coming out in 2017.

Day 45: Mothership. Mothership has been the hotness for a few years now. It’s a great setting with easy to follow rules & a lot of high quality content when it first came out. I had a lot of fun running/playing this. Sci-Fi horror isn’t done that often and this is the best of the offerings so far.

Day 44: Raiders of R’Lyeh KS warning here. A Cthulhu game with a Howardian feel set in the 1910s sounds great, yes? Well, the KS felt apart instantly. The book came only in b&w & NONE of the extras paid for. Cipher Bureau disappeared for a few years until they released a campaign for the game.

Day 43: SLA Industries. SLA was a weird game that had a ton of mystery surrounding the metaplot. Then when people learned how the sausage was made. Words can’t describe how bad the reveal was. Consequently the game died until a few years ago when 2e was released. We don’t talk about the Minis game.

Day 42: Vampire: The Requiem VtR 1e was a bust. White Wolf ended VtM too soon, & people just didn’t want this, even with nWoD having some nice ideas & rules. The NWoD languished for a while & when V20 came out it all but died on the vine. Which is a shame, because The Strix Chronicle was amazing.

Day 41: Shadows of Esteren A low fantasy horror game originally from France, SoE calls itself Ravenloft meets Call of Cthulhu, but it’s really a low fantasy Vampire: The Dark Ages meets Chill, with a little Eternal Darkness thrown in, which is honestly better.

Day 40: Ghosts of Albion. While this is a fun game about Victorian haunting, you might not realize this is a licensed title! Based on the BBCi series by the same name, this Flash series became a series of books & this TTRPG. People who remember this series still have found memories of it.

Painted up the first of many Barrow Guard today.

Day 39: Wraith: The Oblivion Werewolf & Vampire get a lot of love, but the other three OWoD games are a “little” bit harder to conceptualize, much less play. Wraith is so well written, with gorgeous art, wonderful concepts & a great metaplot; but it takes a certain GM to really make the game work.

Day 38: Delta Green. This started off as a Call of Cthulhu spin-off, which of course is a BRP spin-off. Delta Green brought the Mythos into an X-Files like era, similar to Conspiracy X. It became its own beast years later, with its own ruleset & fiction line. It’s still going strong decades later.

Painted up Joker for DC United today.

Day 37: Ravenloft 3e Ravenloft + White Wolf? One of the easiest & smartest ideas ever to happen. 3e is not only the best version of Ravenloft, but is also the best campaign setting for the entire edition. The Gazetteers alone are some of the most beloved books in the history of the industry.

Day 36: Liminal Horror Out of the the many new horror games that have come out over the past few years, this has been my favorite. The rules are easy to learn, it can be applied to any type of horror & the adventures are fun; many of which are homages to older TTRPG adventures for other systems.

Day 35: In Nomine About 30 years ago, SJG brought over a French RPG about Angels & Demons. Although not a horror game in the usual sense, this is a morality play in RPG form. it IS pretty easy to make this a creepy or scary considering we are dealing with Hell and its denizens.

Painted up a Mind Controlled Superman for DC United today.

Day 34: De Profundis. There are a lot of Cosmic Horror TTRPGs out there, but this one stands out. As an epistolary game, this is primarily writing letters between other players and the GM. Think the format of the novel Dracula but as a RPG. It reminds me a lot of the golden era of PBEM & PBW RPGs.

Day 33: The God Machine Chronicle. Easily the best bit of the New World of Darkness, it is the creepiest thing ever put out for either WoD. It is surreal, mysterious & purposely vague about the God Machine’s origins & intent.

Day 32: Red Markets. Red Markets is a zombie game, sure - but it is also a game discussing socio-economic horror via metaphor. This is the type of RPG that a certain audience will think is SO COOL because it’s exceedingly violent & then will complain years later that “they made it political.”

Did a mediocre job on Harley Quinn today.

Day 31: Chill 1e. I miss OG Pacesetter and 80s Chill. A wonderful tribute to Hammer Horror and Roger Corman films alike, Chill was the first ever traditional Horror RPG (CoC was cosmic horror) & it died more because of Pacesetter’s internal issues rather than a lack of popularity.

Day 30: The Shivering Circle 64 pages. PWYW. Folk Horror. There’s absolutely no excuse not to own this gem that came out in 2018. It’s rules-lite, heavily focused on storytelling, & is more MR James than survival horror. Little indie games like this are well worth supporting.

Day 29: CthulhuTech The original CthulhuTech was THE EdgeLord TTRPG. It was doing Black Dog without the tongue in cheek. That helped kill it as quickly as it gained attention. This year, CthulhuTech came back, but sans the purposely offensive bits. What remains are nifty ideas & solid mechanics.

Day 28: Don’t Look Back. One of my favorite indie horror TTRPGs, I discovered the second edition of this game in a bargain bin decades ago and I loved the charm of this mostly one man show. In 2017, 175 people backed a KS for a Third Edition, using the d6xd6 system. Remember when that was a thing?

Painted up Corvus Glaive for Marvel United.

Day 27 - Curseborne. Wish Onyx Path was still doing World of Darkness 20AE? Well, it kind of is. Curseborne uses the Storypath system & is a truncated version of the five WoD games - barring the trademarks & IP. The feel, look & writing all reminds me of 2e VtM, just with less Timothy Bradstreet.

Painted up Bullseye for Marvel United.

Day 26 - Dead Reign Not your usual Palladium game in rules or mechanics. It’s a post apocalyptic Zombie filled world, but it feels more like a BRP release than anything RiFTS-like. I always liked the covers for this game and Nightbane, even if I prefer AFMBE for my zombie fix.

Day 25: Bram Stoker’s Dracula. My copy is old & well loved. It’s too bad there isn’t a PDF option. The game is infamous for its charts & insane stats for everything, but the mechanics are fine. It revolves around finding clues & an eventual encounter with a big bad. It makes a fun Scooby Doo game.

Day 24: Army of Darkness It is crazy to think that there has only ever been 1 TTRPG featuring Ash. There have been some Evil Dead board games, & Leading Edge put out a miniatures line (also a board game), but nope, Eden Studios’ version with Unisystem mechanics is it. Thankfully it’s very good.

Day 23: Accursed Accursed has a pretty crazy history. It’s a Ravenloft meets Castlevania setting for Savage Worlds, but it’s moved around from Melior Via to Sigil to Star Anvil. Now it’s apparently going to Baskerville Games. This has kept the game from finding an audience & roots.

Day 22: Transylvanian Adventures TA took DCC & made it into (more of) a horror game. There were supposed to be 2 more books. They never came. Author apologized & promised the rules would be put out in PWYW format. They never came. You CAN use the book - just not to the full effect. Shame.

Day 21: Arkham Horror Arkham Horror started as a Call of Cthulhu board game. After being dead for decades, FFG brought the board game back. Then they made a LCG with it. Now they’ve made an RPG, which makes it a RPG based on ANOTHER RPG, & it’s an RPG of a LCG of a board game of a RPG. Oy.

Painted up Robin for DC United today.

Day 20: Ghostbusters While Paranoia & Star Wars have seen life long after WEG died, Ghostbusters has not. No edition of the game has been reprinted, nor has anyone picked up the license. I get that the game didn’t have the best rules set, but an anniversary edition would sell just from the license!

Day 20: Witchcraft Witchcraft was the first game to use the Unisystem, spawning everything from Army of Darkness to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, there was AFMBE as well. Witchcraft didn’t have a lot of supplements but what was released was pretty fun.

Painted up The Huntress for DC United today.

Day 18: 10 Candles. This is one of those games that is more about the narrative than the mechanics. Like a lot of modern horror, your PCs die at the end of this. When the last candle is left, it’s time for the PCs to expire. So this is about the journey and not the destination.

Painted up Hush for DC United.

Day 17: Ravenloft (TSR) Ravenloft gave us so many memorable characters, domains & new monsters to slay. It gave us a TSR equivalent for CoC’s Sanity. The novel line was excellent. Every new release captured my attention, which was something because I was never a D&D guy. But Ravenloft made me care.

Catwoman for DC United.

Day 16: Cthulhu Dark Like Call of Cthulhu but don’t like a lot of rules and mechanics in your cosmic horror? This is for you. The basic rules are 3 pages long. The advanced rules are 9 pages. The full book clocks in at almost 200 pages, so there is a LOT of content here for you to peruse.

Painted up Batman for DC Super Heroes United. Compatible with Marvel United, so finally I can have The Bat punch The Red Skull.

Day 15: Aliens Adventure Game. This is the ORIGINAL Aliens game from Leading Edge Games. These were TTRPGs made by people literally from NASA, so you can imagine how they weren’t for everyone, despite scoring licenses for this, Lawmower Man, Bram Stoker’s Dracula & Army of Darkness.

Painted up Pixie for Marvel United today. the last five figures have just not turned out as well as I would like.

Day 14: Cryptworld. Cryptworld is a retroclone of Chill 1e without any of the IP. It was so well done, but Labyrinth Lord took up most of Goblinoid Games’ time, despite Cryptworld getting solid reviews. If only 200 people know your game, even word of mouth isn’t going to keep it alive.

Day 13: The Portal at Hill House. Solo RPGs are great. You don’t have to deal with people if you don’t feel like it. This is the size of an Archie digest & comes in at only twenty pages. All you need is it & a deck of cards to explore a spooky house. Think of it as a journaling exercise.

Painted up a sub-par Squirrel Girl today. Just not feeling that I’ve been doing even a mediocre job with the last few figures.

Day 12: Dracula’s America. This might actually be better than our current America, despite it being one where Dracula conquers The United States during the Civil War. This is what happens when you let people write an alternate history that has no cultural attachment to the product.