Greetings!
2024 is careening towards us. Time to look back at an eventful 2023.
With many (and wonderful!) school, family, and theater commitments, it has felt at points like the past year was a fallow time for games for me. And that’s not, per se, a problem—many things in life have seasons of being at the fore and seasons of simmering on the back burner. But, also, looking back, I see a lot of wonderful game things did happen in 2023, and I will celebrate them here. Welcome to Cloven Pine’s Top 10 of 2023!
(The meaning of the ordering the Top 10 is left as an exercise for the reader.)
10. Rusalka
If I had to pick a “game of the year” that I discovered in 2023, it would be Nick Wedig’s Rusalka. It’s finely crafted storytelling game delivering dark fairy tales about capricious water spirits and the foolish, desperate mortals who ask favors of them. I played this game with the creator at Gen Con, then ordered a copy and played it again with local friends. Pitch-perfect vibes both times.
9. Winning multiple ENNIEs
An exciting honor! I was part of multiple ENNIE-winning teams this year. 9th Level’s Level 1 Anthology (featuring my game “To Wield the Sword of Ages”) won another gold ENNIE for Best Free Product. Avatar Legends (which I wrote two playbooks for) won gold ENNIEs for Best Rules and Best Family Game. Trophy (which I wrote Incursions and other content for) won a Silver ENNIE for Best Rules. And Brindlewood Bay (which I wrote a Mystery for) won a Gold ENNIE for Best Electronic Game.
This brings my lifetime total of ENNIE wins (counting generously) to six! Congrats to everyone on the teams that created these great, award-winning games/anthologies.
8. Playing Masks
I love Masks. Magpie’s teen superhero RPG is a really fun game. This year I got to play a short campaign set in a version of the MCU and it was a silly, superhero-y blast. My character was a version of Andromeda, an obscure Atlantean from Marvel Comics, but modified to fit the MCU’s Talokan. I used Brandon Leon-Gambetta’s fanmade Masks playbook The Gladiator and had a lot of fun. Our team (Squirrel-Girl and the Exiles) fought the Rhino, nearly fought Doctor Doom (turned out to be a Doombot), enrolled in high-school (at least we met Spider-Gwen), and got put under contract by Mojo.
7. Gen Con
I had another exciting Gen Con this summer! Some highlights:
• Playing DIE with Creator Kieron Gillen, and being handed a beta sheet for the playable Master class. (Also, fighting a dragon representing everything wrong with the game industry.)
• Playing Rapscallion in the Magpie Room and commandeering a second pirate ship (and whole new ship playbook) during our one-shot adventure.
• A wild LARP called “Age of Heroes” that has me mulling writing a Greco-fantasy LARP of my own about Athens on the verge of the Persian War.
• Running great sessions of Vow of the Knight-Aspirants and The Great Soul Train Robbery.
• Playing Rusalka (see above).
• Creating a roguish fox thief in a cozy session of Wanderhome.
6. SargeCon
Also this summer, we hosted SargeCon at Cloven Pine headquarters! Eight games were played in all:
Back Again from the Broken Land (x2)
Plutonian Shards
Last Stand Against the Darkmaw
Showdown at Wolfsbane Manor
Checkpoint Midnight
Vow of the Knight-Aspirants
The Dagger and the Dance
One of those Back Again sessions was my very first time playing the game as a player. Before, I had always GM’d. It was lovely to be a small adventurer at last. I was Faramond, the Shepherd, who learned the ways of heron-tending from his father, and now wondered if he was worthy to bear the fallen shepherd’s mantle home.
The session of Last Stand Against the Darkmaw tested some radically overhauled rules, and delivered on a seriously epic boss battle including two PCs fusing into a sun-powered fantasy-mech to deliver the final blow against the Darkmaw.
And it was extremely fun to get back into Checkpoint Midnight! It’s been a while since I ran it, but playing a one-shot with players new and old reminded me why I love this oddball game of supernatural operatives in Cold War Vienna. Our session ended on a cliffhanger when the Unburied was blackmailed by Death herself into slaying a dragon-in-human-form—even though he was friendly to the PCs!
5. Dice Exploder
Another great part of gaming in 2023 was Sam Dunnewold’s podcast Dice Exploder! (Conveniently also on Substack.)
Sam brings on great guests every episode to dig deep into a single mechanic from an RPG. The resulting conversations are detailed, enriching, and always give me game design inspiration. Some of my favorite episodes are the one on Divine Favor is Agon and the one on Whispers in The Wildsea.
Plus, as a bonus, I was moved by a shout-out to The Great Soul Train Robbery in Sam’s special episode about, of all things, Blaseball. (Discussion of GSTR’s “666” dice mechanic occurs around the 38 minute mark.)
4. Talking Tolkien
Two fun opportunities to talk about the intersection of my passions:
• I am quoted as an "independent game designer" & Tolkien-enthusiast (true!) in this NPR piece on the new Magic: The Gathering set based on The Lord of the Rings. I discuss what I liked and where I found a sticking point—namely, the Ring's temptation mechanic.
• I appear on this roundtable episode of the podcast Sidekicks and Sidequests to discussion Tolkien, Catholicism, and D&D. The biggest question: does D&D “get” Tolkien’s deeper themes, or only the surface trappings of his work?
3. Getting Play Reports
I love, love, love getting reports from folks playing my games! Here are just two that brightened my 2023:
• A testimonial from a GM who ran Back Again from the Broken Land for Games on Demand at PAX Unplugged:
I ran Back Again From the Broken Land for a bunch of D&Ders who'd never played a PbtA game before. They took to it like fish to water! We told a beautiful, tragic, melancholy, hopeful story.
• These kind words regarding Secret Science Sewer Siblings (my free, one-page game, available here):
2. Playing Fall of Magic
The main in-person campaign I got to play this year was Fall of Magic, and what a great campaign it was! Unscrolling our journey session-by-session was wonderful and melancholic and suspenseful. See this post for more on our Fall of Magic campaign:
1. Developing Vow of the Knight-Aspirants
By far the biggest thing I worked on in gaming this year was developing Vow of the Knight-Aspirants. I ran many playtests, some one-shots, some multi-sessions. I polished the Lessons mechanic and revised Conditions into Tarnishes. I’m proud of how the game is shaping up and getting great feedback from those who play it.
Near the beginning of the year I ran a one-shot stream for Plus One Exp that was a lot of fun:
And some other sessions from this year (including a two-shot called “The Whispering Mists”) are viewable on this playlist.
That’s it for Cloven Pine Games’ top 10 of 2023! Thanks for reading, folks. I hope to update this Substack a little more frequently in the coming year, but I may keep playing around with the format.
Feel free to comment with any thoughts on the games discussed here or your own highlights of gaming in 2023!
Great list, and thanks for the shout out :)
Really hoping I can get back to more cons myself soon. I miss them!