Games at the Top of My Must-Play List

7 Games I Can’t Wait to Play

Running a TTRPG podcast production company means that I get to play a lot of games. So it may surprise you—or perhaps it won’t—that I don’t play anywhere near the number of games I’d like to be playing. This list will be a non-exhaustive account of the games I hope to get to the table by the end of the year, whether in a recording or just for fun. It will serve as one part recommendation and one part aspiration. And who knows, maybe if I put this into writing I can somehow manifest these game sessions into existence before 2026!

I’ll break this down into two sections: Games I Want to Play and Games I Want to Play More Of.

Games I Want to Play

Realis by Austin Walker

Realis is one of the most interesting and self-assured games I’ve ever read, and it’s currently just an ashcan of the full game! Using archetypical Sentences that change over time becoming increasingly more specific as the core game mechanic sounds like something the groups I play with could get VERY into. It’s a surprisingly poetic system that seems like it will lend itself well to epic space opera stories. Plus, the ashcan is incredibly well written and contains one of the greatest sentences I’ve ever read in a TTRPG: “As we see it, the value of this game is the ease with which you make it yours.”

Now THAT’S an invitation to play. [Listen to our interview with Austin and Realis publisher Tyler Crumrine of Possible Worlds Games]

Land of Eem by Ben Costa & James Parks

We spoke to the designers of Land of Eem for a recent episode of Talk of the Table and when they described it as “Lord of the Rings meets The Muppets” I was pretty instantly sold. But there was much more to love about this game than just that. The game tells the GM to make every monster, enemy, and NPC a full person and rewards creative problem solving, like talking your way out of a fight or even running away. Plus it has one of my new favorite classes: The Loyal Chum. This game is more than just a cute hex-crawl, it has a strong, narratively-propulsive mechanical base and a pair of prolific designers who are already deep into plans for ten additional setting guides to their world.

Land of Eem gets more enticing the more I read it.

Brindlewood Bay by Jason Cordova

If there is a game that is tailor-made for a marquee season of My First Dungeon, it’s Brindlewood Bay. The pitch for the game is compelling enough—old women in a murder mystery book club solving real crimes in their cozy seaside town and slowly unravelling a much greater and darker occult conspiracy—but what really intrigues me is the core mechanics behind the game. If you’ve ever run a TTRPG mystery you know it can be HARD.

“Carved by Brindlewood” is a novel system for creating a murder mystery where the GM doesn’t have a predefined solution to the mystery. Rather, the players “play to find out” by gathering clues throughout the session using PbtA-style moves and find a solution to the mystery collaboratively. I’ve been bingeing old episodes of Columbo which shows you who the murderer is and how they did it in the opening act and instead derives its narrative tension from how Columbo will catch them (less whodunnit and more howcatchem). By shifting our expectations of what solving a mystery looks like, Brindlewood Bay becomes much more effective at providing a satisfying murder-mystery experience.

Brindlewood Bay is making the kinds of mysteries I want to solve.

OSR - MORK BÖRG by Johan Nohr & Mausritter by Isaac Williams

I’ve never played a game in the Old School Renaissance tradition and it is simply time to correct that. OSR games are popular, versatile, and wildly varied. MORK BÖRG is possibly the most maximalist book in all of TTRPGs and is described as “a doom metal album of a game.” Meanwhile, Mausritter is a “swords and whiskers role playing game” that has you playing noble mice adventuring through an abandoned estate fighting off magical, malevolent bees.

What games are top of your list to play this year?

Both of these systems are rules-lite, brutally fast, and incredibly flavorful. The OSR is such a popular part of TTRPGs because the games within it are often SO evocative and lean on a feeling of the mechanical danger of a very squishy character. After playing in a run of games where death is driven more by story than by hit points, I’m eager to play a game where just surviving is an accomplishment.

I think I just want to play a weird little guy with like 2 HP.

Games I Want to Play More Of

Triangle Agency by Caleb Zane Huett

The MSM team was fortunate enough to play in a one-shot of Triangle Agency run by the designer, Caleb Zane Huett, for our Patreon and it simply wasn’t enough. Much like Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, Triangle Agency is a legacy game, which means that many chapters of the book are “locked” and should only be read after the characters reach certain milestones.

I hate spoilers. So this means that there are large, tantalizing sections of Triangle Agency that I haven’t been able to read because I wish to experience them the way they were meant to be experienced: through play. So if I ever want to read more of this book I’m simply going to have to play it—woe is me ;)

Deathmatch Island by Tim Denee

After over a year without a home game, I was invited to join a game of Deathmatch Island run by Shenuque Tissera for me and Elliot and a bunch of other friends. We’ve played two sessions and it was likely some of the best and most intense roleplaying of my life. The game is great, the vibes are immaculate, and Shenuque is a fantastic GM—after playing in front of a microphone so long I was totally thrown when he stood up and started moving around the living room, describing the scene like Poirot revealing the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel. Our group had a very strong, pre-established trust as friends so we were able to dive deeper into the emotions of the game and play through the kinds of intense arguments and decisions between very flawed characters that are iconic in shows like Squid Game or movies like Battle Royale. We’re telling a great story and I’d like to know where it goes next.

So, Shenuque…when are we playing next???

— Brian

💸 Coupon Clippings

Use these codes to score deals on some of our most favorite games and keep an eye out for more coupons coming up in future newsletters.

MFD2025 — 20% off anything in the Mythworks Store (Go grab your copy of Slugblaster!)

MFD20 — 20% off Stewpot from Evil Hat Games

MANYSIDED - 20% off anything from moreblueberries.com (excludes pre-orders)

🗞️ News Worthy

5 GMs in a Trenchcoat won Best Actual Play at the LA Webfest. BlackwaterDND’s Godkiller: Balance took home Best Story Actual Play and The Cleanup Crew won Best Ensemble Cast.

Rowan, Rook, and Decard announced they had made the difficult decision to not attend Gen Con 2025 citing safety concerns surrounding increasingly protectionist policies in the US. They will still have a booth, but none of the UK-based staff will be in attendance and they’ve cancelled their extremely popular multi-table games.

Mythworks announced that due to the protectionist tariffs in the US that the reprint of Slugblaster: Game of the Year and Slugblaster: Core Rules is on an indefinite hold. Ray Chou, owner of Mythworks, goes on to say “the added tax is a real threat to our existence.”

Possible Worlds Games launched Tacklebox & Better Strangers: Two Card-Based TTRPGs on Kickstarter as part of their recently-announced multi-year lineup of releases.

🎲 What We’re Bringing to The Table

🎥 Watch: Night of the Hogmen: a TEETH RPG Misadventure (YouTube - The Panic Table)

📚 Read: Polygon sold to GameRant owner Valnet (The Verge)

🎧 Listen: The Ultimate RPG Podcast | Ep. 20 - Preservation and Studying Actual Play with Dr. Emily Friedman!

🎙️ New From The Studio

Talk of the Table with Zach Cox (Monday May 12th)

My First Dungeon: Mad as Hell | One-Shot (Monday May 12th)

My First Dungeon: Slugblaster | Session Two (Thursday May 15th)

PATREON EXCLUSIVES

My First Dungeon: Slugblaster Talkback (Thursday May 8th)

Triangle Agency | Part 3 (ft. Caleb Zane Huett & Taylor Moore) (Friday May 9th)