Read
I've mostly been going through Magpie's cursed pirate PBtA game Rapscallion. I'm not sure I'll ever get it to the table, but it's got a really evocative setting that still leaves lots of blank space for the party to fill in with their own details.
I want to give the Discworld quickstart adventure a go, if I can, so I've been skimming that, too. I backed the Kickstarter in the end, but only at the basic hardback level; I'd originally been eyeing up the GM kit, too, but the art on the screen is so bad I didn't bother.
Play
Two sessions into BG: Avernus as my short, nerdy, bunny Librarian wizard. We're still not in Avernus yet, but cultist investigations are ongoing. I've not been a player in a while, so it's a bit of a gear shift, and it's a big group (6 PCs), so I'm still learning who everyone is (characters and players). As an Order of Scribes wizard, I feel duty-bound to keep good notes, though.
GM
Aside from the regular 5e, I ran a one-shot of Mission: ImPAWsible a few days ago for a uni friend who's visiting. The caper's villain - a hippo businessman in an ill-flitting suit and bad wig, who wanted to use a space laser to cut Florida off from the rest of the US and establish his own country to avoid prosecution for his many, many crimes - seemed much funnier when I wrote the mission several months ago…
Read
I've been reading quite a lot of RPGs. I feel like I want to lose myself in reading a big RPG and planing out an epic campaign but nothing is quite right. There are so many games now, and so many new games, you'd think I'd be happy, but no, nothing's quite right. I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Probably just nostalgically trying to recapture reading through Earthdawn or Tribe 8 back in the day.
I might give up on reading games, and instead try reading some campaigns. Reach of the Roach God and Beyond Corny Groñ right here. I bought a bundle of Delta Green books which included a few great campaigns. Oh, or the bundle of Paranoia books…
Oh I had a flick through the new 5e books. Not impressed.
Play
I'm currently playing through Luka Rejec's Witchburner, which seems very cool. Early days yet though.
GM
I'm thinking of running something on Thursday. Probably Into The Odd.
I spent quite a bit of time last week rolling up a Traveller sub-sector. If I finish it and it seems fun I might drop some players into it.
Additional Read:
I've added Dragon Age to the pile. I don't know if I know Thedas well enough to run it, but Veilguard has me enthusiastic about the setting in a way I haven't been since Dragon Age II - and I have a concept for a Tal-Vashoth Saarebas I'd quite like to play.
I'm sure there's plenty of fun to be had in the Dragon Age setting but the A.G.E. system is nothing special. Although Aniki ran a bunch of The Expanse so maybe he's got some insights to share.
I played in Alice is Missing last night. It's fine. Kinda. The format is you play teens texting each other in a group chat after their friend/sister/crush/girlfriend has gone missing. It's different and fun, but also quite limiting. It's gmless too so the story wrap up is mostly a random card pull. It's fine. I guess.
Although Aniki ran a bunch of The Expanse so maybe he's got some insights to share.
My main problem with AGE is that its biggest differentiator – the Drama Die, or Dragon Die in Dragon Age, which gives you points to spend on special, cool Stunts – is also the thing most likely to grind everything to a halt at the table.
There are just so many stunts, with their own conditions and triggers and situations. It would be better if there were fewer, broader bonuses (regain fortune, inflict additional damage, give someone else a bonus or penalty to their roll) instead, that let the players decide the narrative impact of their extra success rather than skimming a list trying to figure out what might be applicable (and useful).
That said, while I played a bit of Dragon Age back in the day, I don't remember much about it specifically, so anything else I can say is just going to be about The Expanse-flavour AGE.
I liked running The Expanse a lot, though. It's got a mechanism where a PC's de factor hit points – Fortune – can also be spent as a resource to boost dice rolls, giving it a really interesting push-your-luck element; players had to balance succeeding at their goals against keeping enough in reserve to soak damage later. And character creation was very freeform, with a ton of room for players to build characters that felt unique and had mechanical differences based on their backstories rather than a more limited race/class combination (or the Playbook approach that a lot of the other games I've run have used).
Though honestly, my favourite thing about running The Expanse game was getting to throw out a ton of langbelta to my players, which only the Belter PC's player could grasp at all. Amash namang ye gonya pochuye walowda ting mi ta tilli showxa, so im bera wating mi du fo sif.
Read
Dropout released a short (like, four pages) version of the Kids on Bikes hack made for Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up campaign, which I'm kinda curious about trying out for a one-shot. I feel like as an actual product it might have been better to reframe it as more of a one-shot thing (rather than including all of the upgrade paths from the Dimension 20 show) – something more akin to Eat the Reich. Maybe take the group suites and reframe them as Crew moves that everyone can use, chosen at character creation?
Play
Nothing. Ever. 
GM
I was away in America for a week and couldn't make my Dragonbane slot (one of the players has a long-term injury that's prevented us from running the last couple of sessions) and last night's Land of Eem session was cancelled because one of the group has a bad flu and I'm very jetlagged.
