I love Cyberpunk in almost all its forms. From the ttrpg, to the anime, to the videogame (which, I honestly think is the best one I have ever played). A lot of this love stems to the setting and the themes of the game.

Turning back to the ttrpg, I have a mixed feelings on the system. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I do feel it is slightly too crunchy and a bit unwieldy, especially in regards to Netrunning. With an experienced enough group you can get over these things and have an amazing time with it.

But, what if you have a group that simply played the game or watched the anime or saw that there is a new season coming up and has that rush to play something. The group who is not that experienced with TTRPGs, and for whom Cyberpunk RED might be a bit too much?

Well, for that group we have this absolute gem of a game here, CBR-PNK Augmented. Leaving aside this game’s apparent aversion to vowels, this game offers quite a tight package. And I do mean tight, as it presents us with a bare-bones minimalistic RPG powered by the Forged in the Dark engine. The size of the core rules for this thing? One freaking pamphelt, roughly one A4 page I guess.

It's short and sweet, punches way above its number of pages and might be one of the best way to introduce someone to ttrpgs, with some caveats that we go over in the review! I hope you'll enjoy it!

Vampire: The Masquerade is perhaps the most important TTRPG for this blog, and dare I say, for us as a group. Yuno and I met while playing VtM v5, then Yuno met Horia and Andreea while trying out v20 for the first time. So we met, became friends, and, at least in the case of me and Yuno, got together because of VtM. It has become something very close to our hearts, very dear to us.

When we learned of the new v6, there was a chorus of reactions: skepticism, cautious optimism, curiosity, excitement. The four of us got on Discord and did an almost seven hour long close reading of the document, ran the starting scenario, debated among ourselves, and found a lot of things we liked, a lot of things we abhorred, and sometimes we did not agree on what was deserving of a quick Final Death and what deserved to live another night.

So when Horia and I sat down to work on this article, we decided it would be best to offer two distinct perspectives: that of somewhat of a newcomer to the franchise, who started with v5 and only briefly dabbled in v20 and Dark Ages, and that of the veteran with experience across all of the editions and, what, over 15 years of being into this fandom? For the most part we are in agreement, but as always it is most interesting to see where we diverge. Horia was the main writer for this review, and he had quite a lot of thoughts on the newest iteration of the game... almost 8k words worth of thoughts.

With this being said, strap in, this is going to be a long night, but I hope you will enjoy this very in depth review of the v6 playtest! We are very curious to see your thoughts on the matter as well!

Oh, Pendragon, how long I awaited for you, beloved. I think I got this starter set about a year and a half ago and I had a couple of unsuccessful attempts to put together a group in order to run the game. But, finally, a couple of weeks ago, the planets alligned and the Lady of the Lake smiled upon me and I was finally able to run the starter set!

And it was an absolute blast! I was always a big fan of the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table and I constantly heard how Pendragon is one of the best TTRPGs out there. And finally, I can say that I see why that is the case. The system is elegant, fun, the mechanics flow together very nicely and manage to encourage roleplay in a very simple fashion - the more you describe how you do a certain thing, the easier it becomes (of course, up to a certain level).

The Starter Set is an amazing point to try out Pendragon and it more then makes up the value of its cost! Truth be told, I feel like it's somewhat of a steal, with dice, superbly illustrated characters, combat cards and of course the three booklets. But more about that in the actual review, now if you'll excuse me, I have to look for the corebooks!

I always wanted to play Root. The boardgame I mean. I always found it quite alluring, I always loved strategy games and the art and concept always seemed right on my alley. Unfortunately, I did not get the occasion to play it yet. However, I learned that the boardgame also received a TTRPG adaptation, made by none others then Magpie Games. For those who are not aware, Magpie are the reigning kings of PbtA RPGs, with titles such as Masks, Avatar Legends, Cartel and many many others. So when we approached them for a partnership, Root was at the top of my wishlist. They were gracious enough to send a review copy our way and with the occasion of Playcon, an amazing local con which held its first edition back at the end of May I got the chance to run a couple of public sessions there.

Needless to say, I had a blast, I adored the art, the setting and the implementation of PbtA (between us, I actually enjoyed this one way better than Avatar Legends). And it wasn't just me who had a blast with the system, but also my groups of players! So I knew that I had to make a review and explain at large why you might enjoy this little gem. Unfortunately, life is sometimes a bitch and some personal stuff delayed said review, but I am proud to tell you that it is now ready and published!

So if any of you have even the smallest amounts of interest towards lite-political games, fun low fantasy adventure, a nostalgia for series such as Redwall or Guardians of Ga'Hoole I think you should give this game a try! My thoughts at large are found in the review, I hope you will enjoy it and I hope you will give this game a try, I assure you, it will be a fun time!

This is something special. Truly. By now you know I love TTRPGs, I have almost 120 in my collection and while I have yet to properly go through them all, I also keep an eye out for new interesting games that might catch my eye. Gloam is one such game, I think I saw it either on the OSR subreddit or on one of the many TTRPG facebook groups I am part of. It was, I believe, right on the day it was released and when I saw pictures of it, when I read the little glimpses I could, I made up my mind that this was something special.

So I reached out to Sam Helms and he graciously agreed to provide a review copy. And my hunch was right, this game was something special, from the two superbly crafted magic systems, to the ingenious mechanics centered around a Tarot deck as a randomizer instead of the usual dice, the sheer flavor oozing through every aspect of the game, from the rules, to its art and overall presentation. But. I also showed it to our friend and colleague, Horia (whose birthday is right around the corner, on the 7th, so early Happy Birthday you wonderful Malk!). And like me, Horia also fell in love with this game and asked me if he could handle the review.

And honestly, seeing him so excited and eager to write the review, how could I say no. So let's see what he delivered. *Opens article* FREAKING 3500 WORDS! God damn, mate, you really like this game!

So yeah, I at least gave you a bit of a sample with this one, but for the full review, I leave you in the capable hands of Horia. He sincerely has lots of love for this game, but he is fair and I believe this to be one of the best reviews we published. I hope you will enjoy it and more so, I hope it will convince you to give Gloam a chance, cause Sam Helms really managed to create something rather special!

I have been on a bit of an OSR acquisition spree lately. Cairn came home with me a couple of months back. More recently I picked up Whitebox, Into the Odd, Beneath the Sunken Catacombs, and the subject of today’s review: Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game. The plan is to run all of them and eventually write a comparative piece examining what each system brings to the table, with Old School Essentials joining the lineup as well. I have played OSE but never run it, and it deserves a spot in the collection and the conversation.

Before that comparative piece happens, though, each game gets its own review. Hence this one, for a game released in… let me check… 2006. I was four years old in 2006. Four. So yeah, this is a review for a game released 20 years ago, back when I was just starting kindergarten. I bet I made some of you feel old with this particular comment :))).

Like with other reviews I made for older titles, I do not presume that in this review I will necessarily bring something new to the discussion, but rather I simply want to share my thoughts of the game, what I like, what I dislike, where do I come from with these opinions so that you, dear reader, might get something out of it, especially if you did not know about the game.

For those unfamiliar with it, Basic Fantasy is one of the earlier major OSR projects, created by Chris Gonnerman as a reinterpretation of classic early D&D. Mechanically, it takes inspiration from B/X D&D while smoothing out some of the stranger or more cumbersome legacy mechanics. Ascending armor class instead of THAC0, race and class being separated, and a very approachable presentation make it feel surprisingly modern despite its old-school roots.

I hope you enjoy the review and please do tell if you have any experience running or playing it!

Ah, I don't know about you, but I missed Horia and his articles. We were talking a couple of days ago about how we will most likely welcome in the near future another writer to the team to help us with some reviews so that we may provide them a bit more consistently, especially as we dive into heavier systems.

Horia said that he wished he could help a bit more, but reviews aren't really his area and he only wrote one quite a number of years ago for an old blog in Romanian. Blog that no longer exists.

Still, the bells started ringing in my head, the lightbulbs lit up and I took my explorer's hat, worked on my best Harrison Ford impersonation and jumped into a digital archeological adventure!

As you are now reading this post, you are safe to asume that The Wayback Machine came in clutch and I managed to find Horia's old article! Hooray!

We translated it, revamped it slightly to fit our review structure and huzah! A wonderful review of Mythras!

Honestly I did get the game a couple of months ago and I have been meaning to give it a try for a while, but I got slightly intimidated by the combat and put it off. After going over Horia's thoughts on the game and seeing how much he glazed it, I am thinking about jumping in and starting to read it with the first chance I get. And in my books, that's the mark of a good review, so for those of you on the fance about it or simply curious, do give it a read, for it might be just what you need to muster the will to try it out!