I’ve had a draft of this post sitting around for months. It boils down to a few key points, but I don’t think it’s quite useful for others yet. I tend to rely on a lot of handwaving, or more accurately, not focusing on making the OSE part of the game fully work.
I still want to refine it further. That said, I think once switching to Cairn in my campaign becomes imminent, I’ll likely do more gameable conversions and have more helpful insights to share.
I’ve started playing OD&D again, albeit one house ruled by my friend Brendan, with a bunch of other OSR nerds in Toronto. Has been a good time playing simple OD&D again. I have a bunch of games I want to try and get the table—Swyers and Break to start—but it’s hard to find the time.
I‘d be interested in your houserules! Currently thinking about kicking up a swords and wizardry campaign.
Currently playtesting revised rules and character options for Wastoid, a gonzo/satirical/post-apocalyptic RPG. It’s kind of like if Knave had a baby with the The Black Hack with 7 stats, but definitely did not call their baby “SPECIAL” because they did not want their baby to get sued.
Trying to find the right balance between “I should playtest this thing to find out if the new rules are working” and “it’s been so long since I had the opportunity to play a game with my friends that I should ignore the playtesting part and just make sure my friends are having a good time.”
I am currently playing DCC with my friends, they still have to finish the last encounter in ‘Sailors’ but somebody is always sick and we have to postpone it all the time 
With my pupils at shool I currently use and play Maze Rats. For ease of use we called it mini D&D 
Last week I had to play it nearly every day and I am kind of getting headaches, but one shouldn’t complain when you’re Job basically is playing RPG’s with kids But I am quite proud they GM now as well on their own and become more independet and self-reliant, which should be the goal.
I’m currently playing Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. Two of my neighbors invited me into their new group with some of their coworkers, and it’s been a blast so far. We played our second session last night, with the first one being session zero. Most of the scenes were about setting things up, but I like the vibes in the group, and I feel we’ll figure out our coterie’s dynamic and cause some fun chaos.
It’s my first campaign with a Storyteller system. I’m still grokking the mechanics, but I do enjoy a good dice pool with a twist.
Will link them if they end up online, they will be on Brendan’s blog one day I am sure. But maybe that’s ages from now.
I have a mix of “when we meet” sort of games, and a few more regularly scheduled games.
I've been running the updated Enemy Within using Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e for maybe like a year now, in person, roughly once or twice a month. We're kind of through Death on the Reik, but its been so heavily modified who knows where the PCs are going.
I pretty much regret using WFRP 4e - I have all of the books and have had fun with it when playing here and there with some friends at cons, but the system is pretty chunky with lots of keywords that get referenced all over, and enough state that you have to track all the time that it is VERY easy to mess up and forget. I kinda with I had just gone with any random version of BRP.
This is a dark fantasy game set in one of my long-running settings. We're using a heavily home-brewed version of OpenQuest 3 with some stuff thrown in from Dragonbane, BGB BRP, and my own stuff. This is a twice-a-month open table game, although most of the players have been consistent from day one.
The players recently crashed a boat onto a mysterious island that came out of nowhere and "shouldn't be there," so this session we'll see what they do to get off the island. It's got a folk horror vibe, and you can kind of think of the setting as Berserk-ish or probably more appropriately Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne but ripping off more 12th century Europe than later.
I am also running an open table of Mothership in the Gradient Descent dungeon. We have a bunch of regulars but also new people jump in here and there. This is technically the "off" week from Cosmic Wound. The players thus far have started experiencing some of the weirdness related to the "bends" mechanic and impersonator droids, but I won't spoil stuff for people who haven't played this.
I've been running the GPC using Pendragon 5.2 for a few years now, and we're still solidly within the anarchy. Unfortunately my schedule doesn't line up too well with the days we can play, and a bunch of us are often busy with other things, so we don't play as much as I would like, but its fun whenever we do.
I run monthly one-shots, typically with the genre and theme randomly generated and slapped together. Most of these are ran in a loose 2d6 vs. 8 sort of psuedo-feeeform, with the rulings reflecting whatever the world is.
Otherwise I'm signed up for Amagadeth which is a playtest science fantasy campaign ran by Spinachcat that I am looking forward to, and I often drop into friends' games here and there when I have the chance.
Not currently playing, but played yesterday. I played a quick game of For the Crown with my husband when we both had about a half hour free. It was super slick to pull it up on forthedrama.com and set up a quick game. Due to the time constraint, we didn’t dig into the scenes and prompts super deep. We kept it a bit high level, but I still thought it was a complete, satisfying experience.
I am definitely interested in playing more game in the For the Queen family. 
I have a regular group of friends with whom I run the following games:
Then I have some public games I run:
And finally I want to close out two games in the city I moved from last years and still go to from time to time:
I have a list of like two or three campaigns I’d want to run, and several oneshots I’d love to test… but obviously, will not have the time to do so 
I’m playing a Dolmenwood set game with Cairn, online with old friends. We’ve had a bit of a break due to Christmas and ilness but hoping to rekindle things soon.
I like to play indie games when meeting up with folk, this month had a session of Fiasco, For The Queen and Trouble for Hire which were all fun.
My work colleagues are curious to play “DnD” so I have that to plan for!
I’m running a Dolmenwood campaing that started with OSE before converting to Dolmenwood proper. I just love this game, both because of its system and its setting.
I’m also running one shots of many different OSR games. I’ve tried DCCRPG, ShadowDark, Mausritter, Stars Without Number and Cairn, but I’m hoping to also run Knave, Through Sunken Lands, Black Sword Hack, Break!! and Worlds Without Number.
Outside of my OSR-related obsession I’m looking forward to run or play with Tales of Xadia, Dresden Files Accelerated, Mage the Awakening, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Scum & Villainy, Imperium Maledictum, Mindjammer, Broken Empires, Brindlewood Bay, and Shadow of the Demon Lord.
I posted around the new year that I was going to be running The Valley of Flowers using The Black Hack. I threw some fairly extensive tweaks on to The Black Hack (flat dmg reduction armor, Black Sword Hack stat generation, OD&Dish XP based leveling, allowing a GLOG like spell casting mechanic, Cairn 2e point crawl between known locations on a road, simple hex crawling for “off road” exploring and a few other minor things).
We’re a few session in now, and it’s going extremely well, it’s a pretty awesome feeling when you finally get to a system that just clicks as a DM.
I kicked off a sandbox campaign with Cairn 2E tonight. This is my first time hosting what should be a regular group in person since COVID came around - great intro session
I unexpectedly got to run The Bruja, the Beast, and the Barrow in Errant today. I did not have the pdf on me, but I know it well enough to run off the top of my head.The players were new to the ttrpg and it was great! They got the hang of it pretty quick and made their way through the hall of statues like pros.
Highlights include The Violent hurling a pig into the warded chamber and dippin out as Beastie threw a chunk of the altar right back at her.
Last night I made my first foray into the NSR with the first session of a Tannic two-shot set nebulously in the late 80s/early 90s. I ran it in Cairn 2e with the backgrounds from Liminal Horror, and some of the details changed around to fit the setting (the Midsummer Festival became a Ren Faire/State Fair, the fire in Old Tannic occurred sometime around the Gold Rush, etc). Three of the four players rolled the same background (Store Clerk) and the party decided they were running a food stand. It took a bit of finagling to get the party to bite the hook, but once they were promised a portion of the proceeds from the fair’s opening weekend as a reward & some fair staff to cover their stand, they were quite happy to venture off into the woods to look for the missing teens.
The group’s usual GM in particular was fond of the simplicity of the system compared to 5.5e, and I think everyone surprisingly enjoyed rolling up random characters quite a bit. I’m glad they enjoyed the session because I ran it as sort of a pilot for an eventual portal fantasy/isekai-esque Dolmenwood campaign once I receive my physical books.
Burning Wheel
The Thursday night group is jumping into Burning Wheel. We’re 2 sessions in. The group is a retinue supporting a young squire (soon to be a knight, maybe?) whose tower manor is in the middle of a pair of warring dukes.
Apocalypse World Burned Over
Playing the Sword & Sorcery playbooks from the patreon. I’m a warlock and my spouse is playing a bloody sword. Good fun.
Death in Space
Playing a monthly or so game with some friends. A good time. I made patches for the shit we’ve survived.
Mostly playing Sky and Steam Miscellany, multiple groups, adding in material.
Finishing up a 5-year 5e campaign which I am happy to let go of! Another group member is wanting to DM, so it is a nice baton handoff. I can just play without getting frustrated with my evolving system preferences.
Also starting an RPG club for work, so that will be a twice a month open table affair, probably using Cairn or similar.
Classic Traveller '77. Inspired by Out of the Box, on the inestimable Tales to Astound blog, I’ve been digging back into my very first role playing game from way-way back and I think it’s a singular work of genius. I run a private game for local friends that meets as often as we can, which ends up being 2-3 times per month. This game is played in person.
Worlds Without Number + AD&D + Blades in the Dark + Some Shit I Derived from The First Fantasy Campaign + 5e. I have a very experimental group of players who happen to be my wife and one of my very best friends and we play-test a lot of ideas using characters and settings we’ve had and played within for many years. This is my “D&D” game.
Whatever I Feel Like Running. I belong to a game club with a good-size membership and every 3 months, I get to run a new 6-session game of pretty much whatever I want and have a full table. I’ve run EZD6, Scum & Villainy, Knave, and Cairn. This next season I’m going to run a drop-in table of Classic Traveller and improv at least one entire session starting from character generation and using the random tables in the book to generate patrons and encounters – I may even generate the subsector with the group.
Wow, that’s a great gaming “setup”! I would love to run a Traveller sandbox, but I’m intimidated. I’m not used to running sci-fi, plus the sheer quantity of improv that appears to be required is massive. But every time I read someone describe their Classic Traveller game, they say it’s quite easy. I’ll have to pull the trigger eventually!
