Next patch of games to consider

• Online or physical: Physically near Horten, Norway, if there is sufficient interest, otherwise online. Local players have priority in any case.
• Preferably weekends (reasonable European time). Evenings European time might work with shorter sessions, but I like sleeping at night and waking up fairly early in the morning.
• Language: norsk/skandinavisk, suomi/kveeni or English.
• Game about once per two weeks, fixed time and date. Start maybe January 2022, maybe in November 2021. Thereabouts.

Play

I will consider any short-term game and particular long-term ones. The main consideration is that what happens in play has to come from a combination of player choices ad creativity, game master preparation and creativity, and unpredictability bought by dice or a similar element. No rails, no fate tokens that guarantee success.

Other options are ones I would be willing to run (in addition to playing).

Sorcerer

Modern day, set in a place one of the players knows well. You are all sorcerers, having summoned a demon. All went fine for a time, but now something has happened or is happening that permanently changes your life, forcing you to act. You, the player, decide what it is and you also design your demon, to a point. We play to see what happens to your character and whether they retain their humanity. The game continues for however long it takes to come to a resolution.

Demons are forces of nature or old gods, no longer actively worshipped.

Game master plus two to three players.

Vancian tunnels

We take the core rules of Tunnels and trolls, but replace weapons lists with martial arts and introduce an organic skill system (no point buy, rest assured). For the world we take inspiration from the writings of Vance and Dunsany: the world is a magical place, with monsters and wonders, but they are not unknown; you can learn where you are going to. Characters have random attributes; some of them will be magicians, some not. We play adventures and we play downtime projects of the mages and others. The adventures are typically high risk, high reward, and characters might very well die. They won’t die of game master arbitrariness, but rather misjudgment, risk-taking or bad luck. And hopefully many will survive.

A beginning mage has a few random spells; might be powerful, might be weak. You can learn more from other mages (if they want to teach you) and from adventures. During downtime you can build magical wonders, though you might first want to establish a sanctum and maybe deal with such details as wealth and ageing. Magical workings tend to take months or years of downtime, giving you an ample opportunity to play other characters in your stable. The adventures are partially designed by players by way of knowledge checks the characters make.

This is an open table game with any number of players.

Excessive drafting of details here, somewhat preliminary and up to simplification: https://ropeblogi.wordpress.com/2021/07/23/vancian-tunnels-maybe-with-trolls/

Apocalypse world

I have run it, once upon a time, two short campaigns. Now I want to come back to the game to see if it is any good, from the perspective I have now. Rules used to letter, to the extent we manage, but understanding that there will be mistakes and problems along the way, as always.

The first session will determine the milieu and such details.

Two to four players, or two to three online, plus the master of ceremonies.

Some other games

For these I would want at least one other participant willing to take equal creative and organisatory responsibility, together with shared creative goals. The bar is not low. Excitement plus proven ability to carry through.

• Burning wheel with some modifications to make the game faster and smoother, and less controlled: https://ropeblogi.wordpress.com/2021/08/03/oiled-wheel/ . Also some simulatory skill house rules: https://ropeblogi.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/burning-wheel-skill-house-rules/ . Maybe other rules, too; replace duel of wits with something out of Miseries and misfortunes, for example. This’ll be a rules tinkering project. Maybe vikings, maybe Paris 1648, maybe mongols, maybe something else historical. Two to four players.
• Miseries and misfortunes, but remove or retool mortal coil, so that it no longer gives automatic successes. Two to four players.
• Long-term campaign play, OSR, neutral referee, wargaming sensibility, etc. Eero Tuovinen’s Muster (a crowdfunding project). Start with whichever basic rules chassis we want, with the expectation that it will change a lot as we get our hands on it and start remaking it to fit our sensibilities of how the world works. Open table, any amount of players.
• Tunnels and trolls, pretty much as written. Any number of players.
• D&D 3 remade to actually simulate some parts of martial combat, and for more spontaneous character advancement. Very much a rules tinkering and design enterprise. Two to five players.
• Investigation, whichever reasonable traditional rules system. Do it properly. No breadcrumbs to follow. Call of Cthulhu (any but the most recent edition) is traditional, of course, but something else is fine, too. Any amount of players, but up to the players to keep the game together.