In 2025 I purchased not one, nor two, but three new shelving units for my home to free up a bit of space for my expanding library. Dolmenwood, Paranoia, Fallout, X-Crawl Classics, LANCER, and a dozen more systems were added to my collection. Whole games and editions were shuffled into bankers boxes, those boxes into a storage unit so that the new games could have a bit more room to breathe. I haven’t had a chance to play more than a fraction of the games on the shelf, much less the new ones.

In 2026 I’m going to play 26 new RPGs, come hell or high water.

How useful is a ★★★★☆ rating? 7 out of 10? Do you have any idea what the author’s idea of a 10/10 is? What they mark stuff down for?

Let’s set out a rubric for reviewing RPG books & products. That way you’ll at least know what in the world I’m thinking when it comes to games.

Sometimes you’ve got the bones of a system, and it just needs something pretty to put on top. This quick and easy system allows you to pick up a set of dice and bang out a scene in seconds, with nothing but d6s.

Do you want to be the very best, like no one ever was?

The ideas of collectible card games and RPGs go together like peanut butter & jelly, and we’ve seen plenty of versions of this over the years. Here’s another.

Using bad magic should feel good… then bad again. These rules allow you to impose a real cost for deals with demons.

Way, way back, when the only way to know was to hear the stories around the campfire, humans tamed the great beasts of the world. Sleep. Madness. Ocean. The very concepts under your feet and before your eyes are just the husks of that time before time.

The castle as a body…

Not metaphorically. It’s a big guy.

In the wild, post-apocalyptic wasteland a good weapon is more valuable than a good friend - but both can turn on you without warning.

This set of rules provides a quick and easy way to incorporate weapon misfires into any system with a d20 attack roll and variable damage dice based on weapons (like, say, OSE, Shadowdark, or D&D).

What’s the wonder of the Old School Renaissance? Simplicity! So who wants to remember all those dice sizes? A dagger is a d4, but a longsword is a d8? No, too much.

This set of rules builds on the common hack that your class’ hit dice = your weapon damage, expanding it to use the class hit die for virtually everything.

Bloody Mary. Bad Luck. Scrying. There’s a reason we throw sheets over old mirrors, and it’s not to prevent them breaking. Deep down we know - we know - that there’s something on the other side of that mirror…

What this adventure presents is exactly what’s on the other side of that strange mirror you’ve come across in the antique shop.

Use this to add a bit of fighting game style to your combats! Build up combos with your first strikes, then deal big damage later.

You’re saying when a guy gets brained with a six-pound lump of sharp metal, he loses some ‘hit points’? Nah, we want to see bones break & brains concuss.

Above the sere rises the vast wing of some ancient mechanical bird. In its wake, a few small fields survive.

Friend! Boat!