2024 – Page 12 – PopCult Reviews

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Eldersworn: Florida Grotesque Part Two

Eldersworn
Written and Designed by Wasteland Sniper

You can access this game through the Ironsworn Discord server.

I had yet to mention this in my first part, but Eldersworn has adapted the dungeon design mechanics from Ironsworn: Delve to build mysteries. Mysteries operate with the same progress tracks that everything else in the Ironsworn family does, but developed with help from Crime and Narrative cards. Like the Theme and Domain cards in Delve, these provide two Oracles to work with. They contain Plot Features and Threats/Dangers.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Eldersworn: Florida Grotesque Part One

Eldersworn
Written and Designed by Wasteland Sniper

You can access this game freely through the Ironsworn Discord server.

Read Part Two here.

It was inevitable. At some point, all tabletop RPG systems get a Lovecraftian/cosmic horror hack. It may be one of Newton’s Laws. I was curious how the Ironsworn system would handle mysteries. I could imagine some ideas based on its progress-tracking system, but I couldn’t nail down the concrete mechanics of how that might work. Leave it to Wasteland Sniper, the author of the in-development Eldersworn game, to come up with a pretty ingenious collection of investigative moves that, like the official Ironsworn content, remains genre-neutral so you can layer it over any mystery style.

February 2024 Posting Schedule

Film Series
[Movies About Movies] – Feb 1st thru 28th
All About Eve, Contempt, Day for Night, Intervista, The Player, In the Soup, Irma Vep, Millennium Actress, Goodbye Dragon Inn, Overnight, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, One Cut of the Dead

TV Reviews
Feb 4 – Rain Dogs
Feb 11 – Lars Von Trier’s The Kingdom Season One
Feb 18 – The Venture Brothers Season Seven
Feb 25 – Neon Genesis Evangelion Episodes One thru Six
Feb 29 – The Venture Brothers: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart

Comic Book Reviews
Feb 3 – Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Five ***
Feb 10 – Uncanny X-Men: Mutant Massacre
Feb 17 – Uncanny X-Men: The Fall of the Mutants
Feb 24 – The Flintstones: The Deluxe Edition

Solo Tabletop RPG Reviews & Actual Plays
Feb 4, 11 – Eldersworn: Florida Grotesque Part One, Part Two
Feb 18, 25 – Wanderhome Part One, Part Two
Feb 10, 17, 24 – Little Town: Bright Falls Episodes Four, Five, Six

Podcast Episodes
Feb 4 – Bunny Lake Is Missy/Taste of Honey
Feb 11 – Babe: Pig in the City/Happy Feet
Feb 18 – TBD
Feb 25 – TBD

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Into the Odd Part Two

Into the Odd Remastered (Mophidius)
Written and designed by Chris McDowell
Graphic design by Johan Nohr

You can purchase this game here.
Read Part One here.

The treasure hunters feel along The Coral’s spongey-smooth exterior, careful not to slice a hand open on the jagged bits and edges of the cracked shell. Edmund holds out his hand and helps Poddin step onto the outcropping of sand between the Coral and a gray morning tide sloshing in and out. She points out a large opening they could use to enter the structure and step closer. It’s a sandy slope that likely fills up at high tide. It’s dark down there. Poddin goes first, sliding down on her bottom, reaching the Pit, and turning her lantern on. Edmund comes down shortly after that.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Into the Odd Part One

Into the Odd Remastered (Mophidius)
Written and designed by Chris McDowell
Graphic design by Johan Nohr

You can purchase this game here.
You can read Part Two here.

Into the Odd is another in the OSR subgenre of tabletop roleplaying games. See my first post about Mork Borg for a more detailed definition of what OSR is, but the short one is it is a throwback to the original way of playing Dungeons & Dragons mixed with more contemporary elements. The result is gaming experiences with the nostalgic familiarity longtime players enjoy, with fresh takes that can help bring in new players. Into the Odd is a game I have heard a lot about since it began development in the mid-2010s. Chris McDowell hasn’t sat on his laurels and continues to refine the system with additions like Electric Bastionland and the recently funded Mythic Bastionland. Into the Odd has also inspired further hacks like Cairn and Knave, which have inspired more games. These come up fairly often as solo-friendly systems, so I decided to start at the source and, over time, try out the others to see which one I mesh best with.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Blades in the Dark Solo Part Two

Read Part One Here.

Inspector Benjamin de Winter stands in the middle of his basement, looking up at the perfect hole cut into the ceiling, a path directly into what had been, until this evening, his secure vault. He crouches down and lifts the gate on the box at his feet. Matte black objects, each a handful, dart out and skitter across the basement floor.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Blades in the Dark Solo Part One

Blades in the Dark (Evil Hat Productions)
Designed and written by John Harper

Purchase Blades here
Purchase Alone in the Dark here

Read Part Two Here

Blades in the Dark was a huge game. I backed it on Kickstarter. But that was when I “fell out of love” with the hobby because of some very toxic personalities I had encountered. There was so much social media drama at the time that soured what made these games fun for me. Blades is also a very dense text at the start. There are no accusations of these being rules-lite, though once you get a flow of how it plays, it feels straightforward. I remember reading one of the Kickstarter drafts and not having the bandwidth to parse it all. Since then, Blades has helped birth a whole new subgenre of game, Forged in the Dark. When I started playing solo games, I noticed how many FiTD titles there were and decided I should probably see if Blades could be played solo. And it could.

January 2024 Posting Schedule

Film Series

[Some French Classics] – Jan 1st thru 8th

Grand Illusion, The Rules of the Game, Night and Fog, Hiroshima mon Amour, Last Year in Marienbad, The 400 Blows

[Palestinian Cinema] – Jan 10 thru 29

Chronicle of a Disappearance, Divine Intervention, Paradise Now, Salt of This Sea, The Time That Remains, Five Broken Cameras, Omar, It Must Be Heaven, Gaza Fights for Freedom

State of the Blog 2024

No year is what we imagine it will be, for all the good & ill that comes with it. It’s starting to feel bizarrely normal to come to the end of another year in the 2020s with such dread looming for the following year. Things on this planet are pretty dire, especially what humans are failing to do with urgency. I spend a lot of time in my head. I don’t come to any particularly enlightening conclusions, but I ponder things a lot. Who can say where we will be one year from this day? Such volatile times mean seeing our way through the fog is difficult. I hope that wherever this new year finds you, you are as safe as possible, and when the next one comes, your safety continues. And for those lacking safety, may the cause of their harm be obliterated in the following months.