Probably not the type of game you are thinking of, but in the Gauntlet community, Jason Cordova ran DCO using Trophy Gold (all the videos with The Profundal Zone). I didn’t play it, so I cannot say how they meshed, but I’ve enjoyed playing other sessions of Gold with him.
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It’s been a while since I answered, so I want to give my update on what I’m playing.
I’m in a sporadic “weekly” Shadowdark game. Unfortunately, scheduling seems to be emerging as the BBEG of this campaign. I like it fine, but I’m feeling a little cautious going forward. The GM’s tastes are a bit different than my own (he really likes Pathfinder, wants to play Lancer, etc. whereas I love Brindlewood Bay or Pasion de las Pasiones). Neither is better than the other, but it does mean that he’s been slowly adding rules to our game. Nothing outrageous, it’s just writing down the rulings mostly. But my crunch-o-meter goes off a little. 
Some dear dear friends are moving close again, and we’ll be able to game in person again! We’ve been on a bit of a break from our chill D&D 5e game for a while now. Yes it might seem hypocritical that I run some 5e but am balking at playing in a Shadowdark game that’s getting some more rules added. I wonder why that is… Anyway, I am so super excited to be able to play with them! I’m thinking of picking up that new Dragon book Wizards of the Coast put out. It’s like the first one I’ve ever really wanted to get.
I have a play-by-post game of Broken Tales that I am running. It’s one of my favorite games, and I write a scenario for it that I’m pretty excited about. 
So not much gaming lately as my Shadowdark game has been almost two months without a session. My toddler starts preschool in the fall, so maybe I’ll be able to schedule some short sessions and mini-campaigns in the future!
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I am currently coming to the end of my groups long running Curse of Strahd campaign.
I just finished running Escape from Innsmouth, converted to Delta Green.
I have a fortnightly Masks of Nyalethotep campaign on going, but in a summer break
I have a fortnightly The Enemy Within campaign for WFRP 4e
I have a fortnightly one shot session, where I run games other than 5e DnD for players who’s predominant experience of RPGs is 5e. Tonight, for that, I am Stygian Library running Electric Bastionland.
Which frankly is all a little to much, and I am hoping that one of the players in my curse of strahd game will step up and run something! Frankly ANYTHING, so I get to play for a little while!
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I am currently running a Shadowdark the gloaming campaign that has outgrown the initial setting after 36 sessions and has now become a greyhawk political struggle where they try to maintain their realm under threat from Iuz.
Other than that i have been running a little bit of Daggerheart to find out if it might be for me, and so far I like what I see but still have a few worries regarding slog.
When I have extra time (which isn’t that often unfortunately) I play a bit of solo S&W which I greatly enjoy.
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At the moment I’m running a weekly game of Mörk Borg which I’m really enjoying, but I think I need to stop pulling my punches and really lean into the lethality of the game to really get the most out of it.
I’m currently playing:
- D&D 5e (fortnightly)
- Star Wars: Edge of the Empire (fortnightly)
I’m enjoying both for the friends I’m playing with more than the systems.
I’ve just finished playing:
- Warhammer 40k: Wrath & Glory at my FLGS to try it out with a friend.
- I was woefully out of my depth when it came to the lore. I probably won’t play it again.
- The Witch is Dead by Grant Howitt
- One of the players from my Mörk Borg game GMed for the first time! It was probably the best session I’ve ever played.
I have a backlog of games I want to run (or play if I find a local game), the current top 3 are:
- Into the Odd
- Troika!
- Cy_borg
I’ve also toyed with the idea of starting up a Cairn PbP to fit in even more gaming to my weeks. I blame Yochai for making it sound like such great fun
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Time for a short update. Finished running a short Mythic Bastionland campaign. I think eleven sessions, seven or eight Myths solved, and a finale where the Knights promised all the gold of the land to a giant fire snake to recruit it against the winter Elf.
The game was great, all the random elements fitting together like clockwork. We had so many snakes for instance, from several myths, character starting equipment, plus a knight who would earn respect from beast for having defeated animal of the same species. It all came together.
Now prepping for running a bounty hunting campaign for Mothership with the draft from Wages of Sin.
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Playing
- Traveller - My first time playing! I made a Streetwise 2 character so got to do some fun sneaky talking to some criminals heisting a cruise ship
- Let Us Build a Tower - Graciously being run by the game’s creator! I’m having a great time with the babel stone magic system, casting spells by mixing keywords around and such. Very different than DnD’s magic system.
- West Marches B/X Campaign - @JustinH is running a very fun, open table campaign. I’m enjoying playing the system’s spellsword style class; my PC’s spells have been pretty critical to the party so far. Got petrified by a medusa we randomly encountered, but thankfully my party was able to kill it and unpetrify me (after waiting in-game for several weeks lol)
Running
- My “Terrarium Ark” megadungeon campaign, which has the PCs swept away Bermuda Triangle-style to be participants in a Dungeon Crawling Game run by mysterious Archons who in truth created the material universe (Gnosticism is a big theme here). We’ve had four sessions or so, and it has been going really well! Aside I guess from some scheduling hiccups, as I only have three players, so the lineup is a bit inflexible. Because the Crawl is an actual “game”, I’m having fun with diagetic mechanics, e.g. a Quest system that rewards XP in the actual lore of the setting, no need to abstract it like one usually has to. My players seem to really like digging into the mechanics without sacrificing character interaction as well
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Wow, I played 6 sessions and we just solved one myth.
Burning Wheel campaign is coming to a close.
I’m looking ahead, considering my impulses of motivation of the moment.
I’ve received my Dolmenwood pledge last week, the books are gorgeous. I might just dive in and play Dolmenwood next.
I’ve been wanting to try a proper OSR game for a short campaign for a while. So maybe OSE.
I’m also eyeing my The One Ring 2E for a while and that could be a contender.
We’ll see next year!
I’m running Curse of Strahd using the Mothership rules re-skinned for gothic fantasy.
It’s been great so far!
Recently played some one-shots of Cairn and Don’t Tell Mom and Dad
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Tell us more about using Mothership for gothic fantasy? What was the reason for that rather than one of hundreds of fantasy systems?
I’ve been thinking of doing something similar, so I’m keen to hear your thoughts!
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I was looking for a system that could do two main things: fear mechanics and extremely dangerous combat.
That said, I think when choosing to run any game as a GM we gravitate towards systems we are at least somewhat familiar with. While I know there are many fantasy horror systems out there, I haven’t run them. I didn’t feel confident delivering the experience I wanted for my players on something I was still learning.
Next I tried to find the sweet spot of rules that supported the gameplay I wanted to highlight while also being pretty lightweight. For instance, I had considered both Warhammer Fantasy 2e and Call of Cthulhu but ultimately didn’t want to go as crunchy as those systems.
I thought a lot about horror films rather than novels (ironic, given that Strahd is a riff on Dracula). I like that in a horror film the protagonists are dead unless they know what they’re up against and prepare. In the OSR that’s often the case, but I wanted to go even more extreme. For instance, a B/X goblin can kill you pretty easy at first level but players still grow in power enough to outmatch them eventually. I want to simulate the horror movie vibe that, if any monster shows up, its immediately life or death.
This came down to two Sci Fi systems (again kind of ironic): Alien and Mothership.
I think they both have brutal combat, great fear systems, and overall pretty streamlined rules. I had also run both and had good experiences. In the end Mothership just edged out Alien by having a slightly sharper fear system and slightly more brutal combat.
The big downside was that now I had all this genre reskinning work in front of me. That was kind of a lift, but still fun.
So far the game has been great! The players are always thinking about how to solve their next objective without fighting and trying to learn as much about the situation as possible before putting themselves at risk. There are so many things in Curse of Strahd that are spooky but don’t mean anything beyond flavor in 5e. Here we’re doing Fear and Sanity saves all over the place, it really makes parts of the book shine.
Like, there’s a random encounter with a skeletal horseman in the campaign. In 5e it’s just like, they show up and maybe you fight a skeleton? Here it’s all about the reveal. This rider comes into view out of the mist, the adventurers approach hoping for directions, then they realize his lantern casts no light and he doesn’t respond to their calls. Do they go closer and risk a Fear save or Panic roll upon seeing this undead rider? Do they avoid him and worry about stumbling directionless into a worse situation? It rules. Even if the result is that they get spooked and run away.
The one thing I’m not happy with is that a big part of vampire horror is melodrama. People act on their emotions all the time in that genre, often to their detriment. Aside from the fear, I don’t have a great way to mechanically support this. One of my players pointed me to Vampire the Masquerade for mechanics to look at and I’m also trying to incorporate some kind of character archetype thing to mechanically inform how players should rp. Quinn’s review of Slugblaster made me want to look a bit at that.
There’s all sorts of other rules tweaks I’ve made but this post is already long.
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The doom dice, from Trophy (ruin) or Alien (stress) or Vampire (thirst). It’s just a distinctive die
Libreté’s Black bile is also great for communicating unease / playing out stress with an excuse
Apart from that: playing a lot of Zhenya’s wonder tales, it’s so easy!
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Currently I’m preparing a couple of Durf one-shots in order to introduce my family and friends to TTRPGs. I’m also running a solo Cairn campaign to get a feel of the system. Lastly, I’m planning a Ryuutama sandbox hexcrawl set on a somewhat fucked up world.
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Since I posted here last January, I’ve finished DMing my 5e Storm Kings Thunder Campaign which wrapped up satisfactorily at level 12 after 4 years and 119 sessions played.
I’ll return to the GM seat soon, but for now I am enjoying being a player in 3 campaigns. I am playing a thief in a shadowdark game, a champion in Break!!, and a mole person from the underground in a classless dying earth X wuxia homebrew system.
I am more of a published adventure guy but I have mad respect for all my current GMs who are all making their own content. When I get back to GMing, I hope I can put into practice some of the wonderful lessons I’ve learned from my many GMs about how to run a fair and fun OSR games.
I can finally reply, it’s been ages since I’ve ran something. Playing Mythic Bastionland. I wrote about initially prepping for the game and my first session on my blog. Was a lot of fun. Our first session was pretty quiet, but I think that just made for a gentle introduction to the realm. Will see how the next sessions go. So far it feels easy to run, but I like running from minimalist notes.
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I am prepping The Valley of Flowers to run my family through using Cairn 2e.
I am really looking forward to it. I have teased things from the setting to my kids and they are ready to get going.
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You’re missing some links!
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Thanks, fixed those links!
I’m currently running two weekly campaigns: Mystara (BECMI/RC, started 2023) and Dark Sun (AD&D 2e, started last year). I also plan new ItDR playtests and hopefully some OD&D+Chaimail after we finish off Dark Sun.
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