Hey all!
Back in September I shared my October TTRPG schedule on Twitter. I had a great time putting that calendar together and choosing the games that were going to be on it. There was a whole wide mix both in vibes and type! Twitter also isn’t the best place to talk about multiple games at a time and I wanted to share more about them – now that I’ve run them, I have a bit more to say! So here we are; grab a cup of tea and get comfy for a quick trip around the games I ran/played in October!
Have you played any of them? Do you want to after reading this? Let me know!
Stay spooky,
Loira
Dance of the Dead is not included because: I’m writing that one, I didn’t wind up running it, and I decided to make it a November writing project!
Oct 01: Ghost Of Northwood House
From Mythical Mystery Games come The Northwood Fables: Volume 1 – The Ghost of Northwood House. Available on Itch for $10.0USD or more, Northwood House comes with everything you need to run this mystery party game as a group, or on your own!
This was good fun. Some people had truly hilarious voices for their characters and talking over the whodunnit at the end is a great time! It’s just fun to puzzle out together and requires truly minimal amounts of prep (read about your character, decide if you’re going to do a voice and, if so, what that sound like – you’re done, yay!). We had two people spectating this game who will be joining u next time. Took us about 90 minutes in all and everyone was very excited to play again at month’s end!
Oct 05: One Day at a Thyme
From Jei D. Marcade comes One Day at a Thyme. This cozy, whimsical solo journaling game sees you playing the inhabitant of a cottage in a magical world, and is available on Itch as a Pay What You Want (PWYW) product, with a suggested price of $5.00USD.
To play you’ll need a d6, a deck of playing cards, and something to write in/with! There’s even an expansion for the game now called One Night at a Thyme: Spooky Season, which can be played independently should you wish!
I’m looking forward to setting up my cottage, and then telling the adventure of my witch! I think I’m going to use this game to get a better feel for a character who has been rolling around in my head lately.
After playing: I decided to use this game to get a better feel for a character who has been rolling around in my head for the last few weeks. She’s a fairy who lives in a small town under protection of the hags. I decided ahead of time that I was going to play for an in-game week and this, along with the game encouraging you not to pressure yourself into writing long entries all the time, made it extra enjoyable! The combination of prompts and rolls, along with an undetermined number of events happening per day, gave a nice sense of pacing to the week. If you have a few hours, One Day At A Thyme is a great way to spend some of them!
Oct 15: Anomaly Hunters
From Wendigo Workshop we have Anomaly Hunters. This is a monster hunting TTRPG where players are protagonists of an investigative reality TV show trying to find weird creatures and eliminate them. The group I’m running this for plays a lot of Phasmophobia, and watches Welington Paranormal fairly regularly, so I think the mix of cheesy and scary is going to go over very well! Anomaly Hunters is available on Itch for $5.00USD or more.
I’m hoping to keep episodes sort and sweet and intend to run through three episodes! We’re doing a very limited series, but if the show’s ratings are high maybe it’ll come back for another run next year! This one is going to be fun for me to flex my ‘make it cheesy AND unsettling muscles’. I want my players to be laughing, and also to be a little bit uneasy sometimes!
After playing: We played two episodes of Anomaly Hunters, with our Cameraman and Face as the show’s main characters, and other specialists being brought in! The dynamics between the PCs were entertaining and having players buy into the concept of the Cool Factor and this being a TV series was a delight. I did minimal prep outside of becoming familiar with the rules, so the story was entirely shaped by what PCs did and we got two very different tones of episodes between the first two. I think having ideas for what Backpack items can do would be helpful, but my players were all super familiar with Phasmo and so we drew our inspiration from that and it was cool to collectively build what their effects were as they came up! Each episode was about 90 minutes, which made for a short and sweet afternoon of fun.
Oct 19: Beneath the Canopy
From Monroeroe we’ve got Beneath the Canopy, an Over the Garden Wall inspired journaling game for 1-3 players. It is currently on sale for $7.50USD on Itch, and you can pick it- and a bunch of other games – up as part of Monroe’s Wedding Bells sale for $15.00USD!
I’ll be playing this one as solo journaling game, and if I’m really luck the new tarot deck I ordered will be here in time (doubtful, with shipping being what it is, but this would be a lovely way to start its use!). I’m not sure about my character for this on yet! Maybe I’ll use Éabha, my Witcher inspired lass, before she started her training. We’ll see! Characters are always what I get stuck on the most!
After playing: I played this as Lesaine, my Eberron character as a “my good friend Greshel dropped me in someone else’s forest to learn about fear” and it was delightful. This was another one where I had decided I was going to pull seven cards and, if Lesaine hadn’t won or lost by then, her story was going to end with hanging out in the forest, trapped, for longer than she would have liked. As it happened, I pull the winning card on my last day! I think this game did a great job of channelling the atmosphere of its inspiration and allowed me to play in a fun space of “something’s not quite right” and a creeping, building sense of horror.
Oct 21: Whisper of the Weave Walker
From Dana Braga and Endhy Pino we have Whisper of the Weave Walker! As characters face the bizarre events of Pardosa, they’ll have to survive the unseen whispers that threatens to take control of them. Designed for Tier 1 players, this adventure is meant to take 4-6 hours to complete and is available on DMSGuild for $4.95USD. The adventure includes descriptions and images of spiders, as well as body horror and gore. Safety guidelines are included as part of the release.
I think the adventure flow chart is an incredibly useful inclusion. At a glance it lets you know the different paths available without having to flip back through several pages of content to go “umm hold on” (a thing I have done and will continue to do as you can’t prepare for every player decision!). One thing I am looking forward to exploring is the ‘dreadful’ mechanic. I’m a huge fan of horror in my games, so options that can result in terrifying consequences? Yes please!
After playing: This was a fun adventure which translated incredibly well to running by text! We played it over two sessions (Friday night and Saturday afternoon) for a total run-time of about seven hours. One of my players decided on using the “has family here” hook and so fleshed out that PC’s background a bit more, which was great to see! I learned a lot about how I want to structure my text sessions from this, with a tighter focus on moments of consequence while still allowing for players to make consequential choices! The “flow chart” was SUCH a helpful tool. Great adventure all around, and I’m so glad to have had a chance to run it!
Oct 29: Boardroom Siege
Also from Mythical Mystery Games come The Northwood Fables: Volume 2 – Boardroom Siege. Available on Itch for $10.0USD or more, Boardroom Siege comes with everything you need to run this mystery party game as a group, or on your own!
This is going to be the third Northwood Fables game I’m playing, having run the Prologue in September and Volume 1 earlier in October. The additional twists uncovered over the last two games have sent me reeling, and the writing allows for moments of “wait is this person X?” and the answer, usually, is yes. It’s nice to get together and laugh with a group of friends for a game that nobody really has to do any prep for! There’s no stress!
Because it’s a busy weekend, we decided to postpone this one until later this year!
Oct 30: The Witch’s Bones
Last but not least is the The Witch’s Bones from Giovanni Sabatino! The sleepy town of Riverspoke has been beset by an evil curse from a dead witch. Unless her bones are returned to their final resting place, the town will be destroyed by sunrise. Designed by 3rd level characters, this adventure is meant to take 3-4 hours and is available on DMSGuild as a PWYW product with a suggested price of $.050USD.
This adventure sees the party coming together to return bones to their resting place less the town be destroyed by the witch’s curse. I think what I find most interesting about this adventure is that the DM is the one deciding which side is sympathetic – and it can be both, or none!
After playing: This adventure leaned into its spookiness without being scary. There was tension throughout and great pacing, but at no point did the horror elements feel overwhelming! I liked the variety in the encounters seen here as they varied from silly but spooky, time sensitive emergency, and a general “haha oh that’s bad“all before reaching the final encounter with the witch herself! I’d run this again.
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