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More 2025 TTRPGs

2025 has been the TTRPG year for me. This 2nd part of the post is about the handful of games I tried during the second half of 2025! onward to 2026 now :D

Adrian C

16 Jan 2026 • 11 min read

LOOK AT THEM THEY'RE CUTE

In the second half of 2025, we sadly stopped our revolving GM table after Channel Fear. And then I started GMing at the university, decided to do some more playing-but-in-English, did a ton of one-shots for Halloween, recruited 6 (and even 7) GM-players for 7 Part Pact, launched a Mythic Bastionland campaign, finished our Invisible Sun campaign, and joined an upcoming Daggerheart campaign. I even tried my hands at a few solo TTRPGs.

What do you mean, that's a lot? Let's talk more about everything!

Games I've GMed

IRL playing - Land of Eem

Three books. The core rulebook is an adventuring party circled by monsters, right atop a mountain. The second is a party in a swamp, oblivious to the monsters around them. The 3rd book is a dwarf fleeing big monsters in a dungeon — The core rulebook, the sandbox campaign setting and the bestiary volume 1 for Land of Eem

Against all odds I was able to assemble a table during summer to try Land of Eem. I was really unsure about everything, since it was one of my first time GMing IRL, a totally new game for me, with complete strangers. And it went great. Like super great. Everyone was really fun and interested in the game, we finished the whole quickstart adventure, a lot of fun and creative (and really dumb) actions, class abilities involved and everything. I completely fell in love with Land of Eem.

The system is relatively light, we're on a somewhat OSR (attributes, skills, fights are the last resort and they are deadly) meets PbtA (scale of success, creative and narrative control to the players in their abilities) game. Behind its colors and cartoon illustrations and humor the world hides a darker, almost grim side. People are being exploited, nature destroyed for the benefits of corrupt rich few powerful guys. The PCs are (sometimes) manipulated and sent on deadly quests, but hey it's fun, you were sent to prove the existence of an urban yeti by a bird researcher, and that witch house is being ravaged by trolls that do dad jokes!!

Anyway, a hexcrawl and sandbox, the right amount of jokes right in my alley, it's as if the game was made for me.

The map of the Mucklands region of Land of Eem. The south is the sea. In the west a forest, in the north and the east moutain range. The middle is a cut down forest. Between the previously-a-forest area and the mountain range in the east, a really concentrated area of rivers, and a swamp — Have you seen this insane map?

So of course we started playing more (and the group got dissolved but we recruited some other players and now we can play again!)

Halloween time!

I'm playing (almost exclusively GMing) in an online French association called Club JDR. They're great. For Halloween they made an event for GMs to do themed one shots, and of course I decided to participate.

Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast

Did I tell you I try to play Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast every single time I can? No? Well you know now. I talked about it for the first part of this post, but I really love this game. This time we went trick or treat-ing, and that involved weird aliens, pumpkin crepes and dissolving doors. We had a great time!

Eat the Reich

I'm not sure exactly what started my "newly found" passion for TTRPGs, but it might be Eat the Reich. Discovered it on kickstarter, fell in love with the art direction and the vibes, stayed for the kick-ass vampires. This time, we used a fan made expansion and scenario, ReVamped that I can't recommend enough.

The game is super explosive, fun and interesting, players (and GM) can get destructive. A great time (and maybe even greater time for me!). I think our whole group and myself got quite more experience and we got more comfortable playing TTRPGs (together). Will probably try another ReVamped scenario next Halloween!

Doomsong

A front and back picture of the book (from a merchant website). It's totally white, with clouds and birds visible, the title written like a medieval manuscript — I wish I could go for physical books more often because this looks nice

Oh my god Doomsong. I'm one of those people that get games when Quinns Quest even mentions them. So when he wrote a sentence about the game, I did a quick search and discovered another banger that I immediately bought.

It's great. Really. Yet another horror game when I usually NEVER consume any horror media, but I can't stop. It's a medieval and religious horror fantasy game, where, in the first campaign the players are gravediggers that found in themselves the duty to kill a heretic god. Everything will be fine, right?

NO IT WON'T. Take 1 to 3 dice, roll them, add/subtract your tags and conditions, take the result in a scale of success. But you could play head or tail with a cursed coin to maybe make your result better. Or worse. And die an horrible death. Yeah do it, it's really fun.

Anyway, superb game, you even get a lifepath, yes you can die creating your character, and you can also give your soul to one of the heretic god to get cool powers.

There are really great odds I'm GMing a whole westmarches campaign of Doomsong after the first half of 2026. Like it's really high on top of my list. We were supposed to play one (1) one shot, my usual table did 2 and only stopped because we weren't ready for a long campaign, and then I did 3 other one shots with other players from the Club JDR. It went even better and greater. Awesome game, 10/10 would do it again.

A one shot of Rapscallion

A close up of a pirate with a magical book, over the eye of a kraken. His ship is probably sinking. The drawing is super colorful and beautiful — I mean, who could resist this kind of artwork??

Not exactly a big pirate fan, but welll it looked cool. Also my first PbtA game. The book was actually quite bigger than I though. And a bit... boring? to read. The actual game at the table was fun though. The characters are also deeply flawed, there is quite a found family vibe. Said family will probably explode and burn with the ship when everyone involved is at the very least egocentric. I tempted one character to kiss the siren queen (he did it) right in front of his actual lover (prone to violent outbursts). The other pair was someone who swore to avenge their dead brother, and the mad scientist that killed said brother. Yep, our one shot ended in a few explosions.

The game lends itself better to (short) campaigns, but a one shot still works great. I think the PbtA way is kinda cool too, and it worked better than I thought for me and the table. I still needed some restraint about "rolling for [insert standard attribute/skill] from time to time, but we had a great time.

My campaigns

Mythic Bastionland

72 close up of the Seers in the game. The art style is pretty weird, like pale but still pretty intense colors that have been applied flatly, and every single one of those character is an alien looking human. Or not at all human. It's disturbing — What's the weirdest Seer in your opinion?

I talked about Quinns Quest, yes, he did it again. The reading was a bit rough. My first "real OSR game"™️, it's like 18 pages max of rules (and we're talking 1 concept of rules per page so it's going by quickly) and then 150 pages of knights and myths (problems your knights have to fix) and random tables and ideas and cool art and...

Sure there are rules explanation at the end, but OOF. What a game to get ready to GM. I felt absolutely not prepared, and to be honest I still feel like that after ~4 sessions. But oh god those sessions are gooood. Characters are knights and their squires (and random peasants they recruited, yeah this will end badly), they are quite mortal (they rolled real bad, the average stat is below 10, they have less than 1/2 odds of success) but they're also quite deadly. It's basically a game of "who will drop the nuke first" and the fights are so tense.

They met an old witch, didn't take her seriously, she almost killed one knight and the other two nuked her in return, but got Fatigued. We had almost 2 dead characters Session 2 because they got in a 3(+3 squires) vs 1 old lady fight. Insane.

There are lots of random table and inspiration tool in this game, and as always sometimes there is the super coincidence of rolling the EXACT thing that makes everything fall into place. They met a living armor knighted by the very neighboring Seer, and while the armor wants them to kill it, the Seer might not agree with that. Can't wait to see their decision!

Invisible Sun

Some kind of weird fairy, with their face detached from their head, and multiple parts of their body floating around themselves. They're actually going through a floating door which leads to another dimension. A moon crescent crosses the door from the other dimensions, a part in the night looking sky and the other in this kind of canyon

We finished our Invisible Sun campaign, after 18 monthly sessions, in about 2 years. That was quite a ride. My first ever campaign finished. We're already planning a second "season", but some players needed a pause. I still think this is one of my favorite game, but it's getting crowded here. It needs the right table to shine, the right GMing style probably. Whereas other games I tried this year were almost out-of-the-box-and-with-everyone amazing. Sooo, uh. They ended up fighting for a gigantic forgotten lake of magic against their nemesis, and during the climax got interrupted by a (somewhat magic) clone of one the PC here to collect and get the fuck out of here with the nemesis. Why would they do that? They will see. And it's not even multiverse or time travel shenanigans I swear.

7 Part Pact

Probably the most insane campaign I have. What started as a "let's see if we can get 3/4 players and do a one shot to playtest the game" is still an ongoing campaign of (as of writing) 10 sessions in a group of 7 persons. We even had one departure bot got someone else to replace it in two weeks. And we're playing 2 to 3 times a month!! This is insane to me.

And what a campaign. Our wizards are a band of toxic men but they don't even realize it. We're having so much fun seeing everyone else's plans going badly in real time, and for the first 6 sessions of fucking around we're dangerously finding out right now. I think we've only just devastated half of our islands without realizing it, and one of us still doesn't want to put his shiny new toy back in the drawer even though it's creating storms everywhere all the time.

I'm trying to make the king Emperor, and the player handling the royal court is really happy about that. I also need to kill the king as soon as he becomes the Emperor, and that player doesn't know that 🤭. That player is also the only wizard allowed to kill everyone else without much question. I'm sure this will be fine.

I still can't believe we're 10 sessions in, and I really can't wait to see what will happen next!

From the player side of the screen

Daggerheart

The image is divided in two. In the left, a strange looking deer, with 3 eyes, in a canyon traversed by a river and two moons over it. In the middle, one half of the canyon. In the right, a group of adventurers overlooking a dragon, itself looking at two fighters — Well looking at that it does seem less basic fantasy. But well, what is written is written (and I'm a bit lazy)

With the group from Rapscallion we tried Daggerheart, with someone else as the GM! It was a cool experience. I liked the character creation, which I've found more entertaining, even at low level, than D&D.

The actual game itself went well. It might still be a bit of a "classical fantasy game" by default, when there are a few others going for a more original vibe. But still, I think they took really good parts from other TTRPGs and assembled them very well. I have a few D&D adventures and campaigns I would like to run someday, and I might very well do it in Daggerheart instead.

We're supposed to start a campaign very soon, in the witherwild campaign frame. I will be playing a blood hunter that got killed, reanimated and mutated into a werewolf by some weird plants, this will be fun!

Wildsea

A makeshift ship posed on the very top of very big trees. There is a bit of fog, a few birds, very little colors apart from green, but still, a very calm image — This is fine

The Wildsea is a cool game. The books are full of imagery and great ideas, I really like the universe they created and keep feeding. The first actual play I listened (and really enjoyed) is My First Dungeon season of it. And it rocks. So of course I had to try the game. We sadly didn't never finished the two/three-shots. The initial session was fun though! I played one of the mantis character with the desire to fly, but like, really fly at high speed and all.

Spire

Almost cyberpunk like image, the city is very metallic, with lots of pipe, and a few characters in cape, with guns and weird looking swords. Some are hidden in the dark — I just noticed there were people at the top of the cover. I hope I'm not alone

Another game from Rowan, Rook and Decard. Me, a fan? yeah. I'm a little bit less inspired by it than by Heart: The City Beneath, which is set in the same universe and more or less system. I still haven't read the full game though, so that might change. The game and the session went really great. I think everyone got to shine for a bit and show off their cool abilities. The premise was fun too (a wedding set in the church of guns), and the GM killing NPCs before my horrified eyes was great for setting the world. This time I kinda played a brute. It was fun and new for me!

Hollows

Multiple almost humanoid faces in various stage of screaming. All very alien. They're also all in very brute stroke of painting, in very different color themes. They all represent strong emotions and needs (pride, anger, hunger, grief, dominion etc) — I wanted to use another image here at first. But this one is so cool I had to put it

A second "Another game from Rowan, Rook and Decard", yep. Tactical combat, horror, Victorian era, cool ideas and always insane vibes. They really do great games. Playing in English is still a bit stressful to me so I try to not talk much, but I really need to get out of my shell. The game is calling me.

My character is a previous soldier that rebelled against his superior to prevent their squad from taking a suicide mission, but doing so they all got killed while waiting for orders. And now he is haunted by that, and he keeps putting blood and mud from the trenches in every metaphorical space he is going into. I just got a parasitic thought that means someone from my past is participating in titanesque fights against me and the other players, and if my character wasn't fucked up he will be very soon now.

The best and most horrible part? We're doing an adventure written by Jay Dragon involving boarding school, authority and how we perpetuate trauma through children. And uuugh this is so terrible, traumatizing and cool at the same time. And of course we will destroy the school and leave nothing standing, probably keeping children from education. But we don't care, we're here to kneecap monsters made of trauma, we can't do it all. Can't we?

And it's illustrated by Johan Nohr so it's beautiful in its weird ways.

Onward to 2026

I regret not writing that bits by bits all along the year, a lot. But well. This was my biggest TTRPG year, and it's insane to think I will keep going at this pace (or even do more), but it feels great! I'm loving discovering games and settings and collaborate on cool stories with my players.

I'm not super sure I will be able to play that much different games in 2026, mainly because I'm having more and more long campaigns, but we will see how it goes!

Next one, after Mythic Bastionland should be Dagger in the Heart (for Heart: The City Beneath), but we will see what the table vote on!