Yudhishthira’s Dice

Here is my top 10 list for RPGdom in 2006.

10. Agon – for bringing competition between players back to the table in a field that’s grown to be dominated by cooperation as the only model. While it doesn’t push as far as Burning Empires, it is the best step in this direction I’ve seen since Rune.

9. Story Games — A significant new gaming forum where I happened to spend a lot of time, have a lot of arguments, and learned more than a few things about RPGs and RPG design. I have to admit I’ve drifted a bit from the discussion recently, but it was a significant new force for the year.

8. Gender in RPG essays and posts — Jim, Neel, Malcolm, John Kim, Jessica Hammer, Mo, Matt Wilson and especially Peaseblossom have all done some amazing work in putting gender and sex issues back in the forefront of RPG theory discussion. The 20×20 Room and Storygames all had numerous powerful, and often controversial, posts on this subject.

7. Full Light, Full Steam and Ludanta Retero — A combo team! FLFS brings us back to Victoriana, but this time with a coherent system that does a lot of things I like. The pattern matching and protagonist reinforcement of the script system is awesome. It also goes well with the other Sci-Fi and Weird History stuff Josh has been working on: both Agora and Sons of Liberty’s playtests made it a year of the alternate past and future.

6. Hero’s Banner — For being the exact opposite of The Wounded Lion, a game I was working on. Hero’s Banner is a tight game about the things your character has to lose to become a hero, the roads not traveled, and the terrible human price of heroism.

5. Sin Aesthetics — Sure, I’m prejudiced. But in a year with a lot of quiet on a lot of blogs, Mo managed to bring the hammer out on a couple of topics that ended up becoming big. Her work on Push/Pull was cool, but I think her later work on sockets and payoffs is more important.

4. Game Chef — Not just because I know a lot of the finalists either. There were a lot of games done this year, and the contest worked wonderfully to give a lot of folks a chance to cut their chops and learn where they were solid and where they needed a lot of improvement in game design.

3. Spirit of the Century — the best Pulp game to date, full of the nifty and the fun. While its a bit thick to be a game that everyone can pickup, it works wonders as a pickup game so long as one person in the group actually knows the rules. The use of group character creation, novels, reliance on aspects to drive the game, and the FUDGE system make this one a champion.

2. The Great Pendragon Campaign — Massive, detailed, filled with love for both the game and the subject, and the culmination of many years of Pendragon writing and publishing. While it isn’t perfect for me, with my hippy gaming ways, it’s pretty damn close and has enough material for years of solid gaming.

1. Burning Empires — though it moves in a direction away from much of where I’m going in my personal games, this game is a solid step forward in game design. The way that the whole campaign of a game is structured, set up as a group, and ran with straightforward rules about competition really pushes the envelope on RPG as game. It’s also the start of a new movement away from the punk-rock roots of “indie” games — we’re now getting to the point where color glossy and art-filled no longer means “big name publisher” nor “little guy betting his shirt.”