tabletop games – PopCult Reviews

31 Days of Character Creation #31 – Dungeon Crawl Classics

Wow. This is the first time I’ve ever done one of these X Days of Y things and I actually completed the damn thing. I mostly see drawing related challenges and I can’t draw to save my life. I really enjoyed getting to look at several systems I’d never even cracked open before and see the mechanics and how characters work. It’s led to me choosing several systems I want to play sometime in the future like Outgunned, Star Trek Adventures, and Dragonbane. Here’s our final character.

31 Days of Character Creation #30 – Ryuutama

Not all fantasy tabletop RPGs are the same. Ryuutama is a great example of that. World building is a collaborative effort between players and GM with a world creation sheet passed around the table allowing everyone to add an element. XP isn’t typically derived from killing monsters, but from traveling and exploring. The more difficult the terrain the greater the reward for passing through it. The general feel here is of a Hayao Miyazaki game with a lush, verdant world to explore.

31 Days of Character Creation #29 – Marvel Multiverse RPG

I don’t typically like most superhero ttrpgs because they focus more on the crunchy minutiae of powers and fail to provide anything regarding the sprawling soap operatic nature of the medium. I’m less interested in the power ratings of one character over another than I am the deep lore of the different people who’ve held the title Green Lantern, the zany Rogues Gallery of Shazam, or the legacies of the Justice Society. When the Marvel Multiverse RPG dropped I didn’t even pick it up and after looking it over yesterday for this character I probably wouldn’t play it unless someone else was running the game and knew it like the back of their hand.

31 Days of Character Creation #28 – Forbidden Lands

This is another Free League game, a company I have come to adore over the last year. Forbidden Lands has arguably been Free League’s biggest success outside of popular IPs they make games for. It’s another fantasy game which may feel like more than well-trod ground in the tabletop space, but they do offer some unique twists to this world that makes it feel quite different from the Tolkien-inspired Dungeons & Dragons fare that has become a sort of default.

31 Days of Character Creation #27 – Vampire: The Masquerade 5e

I can remember having a vague awareness of Vampire as a LARP from picking up magazines like Wizard or Inquest as a kid. It seemed like something “weird goth kids.” I don’t think I was completely wrong in that evaluation, but in the following decades I’ve learned a bit more and seems like a fine game. There is a solo ruleset for Vampire, so maybe one day I’ll give it a spin.

31 Days of Character Creation #26 – Spire, The City Must Fall

I saw the compelling review of this game on the YouTube Channel Quinn’s Quest and it made me want to play it at some point. If you haven’t seen Quinn’s Quest it is one of the best produced tabletop RPG review channels I’ve ever seen. Watching his videos introduced me to this and The Wildsea and also helped me know a game like Lancer wasn’t for my particular tastes. Spire is a game where the characters are Drow in a vertical city ruled by tyrants. The player characters are intent on bring this power structure down.

31 Days of Character Creation #25 – Savage Worlds

Savage Worlds is a game I’ve known about for over a decade, but just have never sat down to play. In solo tabletop RPG circles, I see it being written about often and decided to go through character creation to get a feel for the system. Savage Worlds doesn’t have an official setting, but many creators have made settings that add elements to character creation.

31 Days of Character Creation #24 – G.I. Joe

Ironically, I was a huge G.I. Joe fan as a kid. Jump to 43 and I think the U.S. military is one of the most evil institutions on the planet. Life is funny that way. I decided to make a character for the G.I. Joe, but with my take. I wanted this to be G.I. Joe as if it was continuing on in 2025 after being started in the 1960s. In this political climate things are not so black & white.

31 Days of Character Creation #23 – Runequest 6e

I am conflicted over the Basic Roleplaying system, the engine that runs things like Call of Cthulhu and this game. I see these character sheets and my eyes just glaze over because it’s so much stuff. I’ve found the layout for the character creation process in these books is…not great. I think perhaps I’ve been spoiled from rules light games and systems with great flowcharts. I think I created this character correctly, but I’m not editing this. Took me three hours.

31 Days of Character Creation #22 – Mutant Year Zero

After trying out The Electric State I became a big fan of the Free League model of games. Most of them use a variation on their proprietary Year Zero Engine which is fairly quick and easy to play with. I’d be eyeing this game as I have been on the lookout for something post-apocalyptic that wouldn’t be a resources number crunching chore to play. I like the way this game feels, so I think it may be what I was looking for.