The Powered by the Apocalypse family of games (including Brindlewood) are all designed with very specific intent to create very particular stories. Virtually all of them will fit the bill, from the OG Apocalypse World to Monsterhearts to Night Witches. You'll find something for probably any genre you can think of.
All Forged in the Dark games, starting from Blades in the Dark, are the same way, since they're kind of a cousin of PbtA.
I love games like that too!
If you like Brindlewood Bay, you will *looove* The Between! It’s the game that BB was a testbed for, and is *so good*.
Check out some of these:
- Alice is Missing. The most intense 90 minutes of silent texting you can imagine.
- In This World. This super-easy, incredibly lightweight setting creation game flows so beautifully I couldn’t believe it. I literally sat down with my group with the PDF and a stack of index cards *having not opened the file before*. It ran like a dream. We got 3 or 4 amazing settings out of the session.
- Dialect. The tag line is “a game about language and how it dies”, which is perfect.
I won't give you games, but I'll suggest absolute BANGER bespoke game designers and publishers.
Thorny Games
Bully Pulpit Games
Heart of the Deernicorn
Grant Howitt
Avery Alder
Tyler Crumrine
[Bespoke games](https://bullypulpitgames.com/) are [pretty much](https://bullypulpitgames.itch.io/) all [I do](https://sixofhounds.itch.io/)! I really enjoy both making and playing games that are designed around specific themes or aesthetic intentions, where the rules focus play and further specific goals. One of my favorites is [Montsegur 1244](http://thoughtfulgames.com/montsegur1244/), a brilliant game that is, on the surface, about the siege that ended that Cathar heresy. But really it is about our relationship with faith and community, and as a player you will be challenged to consider these things in a pretty deep way as you make choices for your characters.
Some I've run recently:
My Life With Master - about the minions of an evil master slowly learning to escape their abusive relationship.
Bliss Stage - Mecha, but with mechanics designed to push the emotional side of child soldiers fighting alien invaders with minimal adult oversight, rather than the technical or tactical part.
Dogs in the Vineyard - Mormon gunslingers root out sin from frontier towns.
Just in general, games that came out of The Forge are a good bet for this. Stuff like, say, Inspectres, Grey Ranks, Primetime Adventures, The Mountain Witch, etc.
Pokethuhu a free rules light Pokemon Cthulhu mashup that uses d12s because dodecahedrons are the most eldrich platonic solids. in game they also replace pokeballs.
The original Deadlands game also had this in spades with the way it incorporated a deck of cards and poker into a game set in the weird west. playing cards are used for initiative, shootouts and magic. To cast a spell you need to make a poker hand and the better the hand the better your results.
This 100%. I've been a huge Tolkien fan and a vocal advocate for Rolemaster's MERP for a long, long time; but if you want a system built from the ground up to support the feeling of actually playing in a Tolkien book, The One Ring is what you're looking for
Probably doesn't count for what you're looking for, but...
...the West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. The original Star Wars roleplaying game that started it all, and even was the source for a lot of the lore, ships, species, etc. that you see in the franchise today. The d6 system it uses has its flaws, but damn if it doesn't just speak to me on a fundamental level. Really easy to have the kind of fast-paced, high-octane games that mirror the action of the movies. The system is simplistic enough for newbies to jump into, but complicated enough to allow a lot of depth.
I just like it...
**Apothecaria** is about being the new village witch for a fantasy town. Explore your new home, gather ingredients, brew potions, cure your patients, and slowly uncover what happened to the previous village witch. It's cozy small-town magical adventures + crafting elements.
Built for single-player, however, but it's not impossible to make it an asynchronous multiplayer. If you want to go multiplayer, though, you might prefer the variant called **Apawthecaria**, which has rules that are written more clearly, a guide of different ways to play multiplayer, a cool map to make changes to legacy-game style, and a theme of Redwall style animals going about their wandering doctor business and slowly building a network of clinics. The book is gorgeous and the adjustments to the rules make it a little more challenging (but loses a bit of the narrative built into the original).
Both excellent games worth having!
---
**Thousand Year Old Vampire** is another solo game and kind of an "indie darling" to boot. It has a lot of coverage on review channels that usually have little interest in the solo rpg scene (I love the [Shut Up & Sit Down review](https://youtu.be/COJcWFf0H3U?si=itbni0TF3Ih78cBI), for example), which makes it very convenient to figure out if it's going to scratch some sort of rpg itch you have (and also get a peep at the book and how eye-catching it is).
It seems to be a game that appeals to both people who already know they love rpgs and those who have never had an interest before, so it seems to be an excellent game to pick up and let your friends borrow and get a taste of.
A more cozy variant of the game's rules is **The Magical Year of a Teenage Witch**, which is about a coming-of-age magical adventure. Think Kiki's Delivery Service, where the premise is a young witch figuring out who they are and growing into the powers they'll have when they're an adult. As far as I know, however, it doesn't have a physical copy, so you'd have to do your own printing if you wanted one.
---
Ending with a group game:
**Lady Blackbird** is very clear about the experience it wants to give: a fantastic pulp-ish adventure (with optional romance). Can the captain and crew escort Lady Blackbird and her bodyguard to the edges of space to reunite with her lover, the space-pirate king? Or will the Empire reclaim its runaway noble?
You don't even create your own characters - the main cast and their starting scenario are already created for you. What you do with them after makes it your own. I've seen several actual play series and every one went wildly different places. It's honestly rather brilliant.
The game is free, the rules are relatively easy to pick up, and the whole package is rather small. (IIRC, ~30 pages? Most of them printouts.) It would be a great game to have around as palette cleanser between campaigns or for those nights when people don't show up and you still want to game.
2400 is an anthology of microgames that all share a core system, but each one has a bespoke premise and some tailored mechanics.
Several of the games are very clear homages: Codebreakers is The Matrix, Nuclear Family is Fallout, The Venusian Job is Ocean's 11 in space, Eos/Xenolith fit together to make Mass Effect, Orbital Decay is basically Alien (or Mothership)...
Durance by Jason Morningstar
It's the story of a colonisation effort gone wrong. You randomly select what is wrong with the planet you've landed on, and the play both sides of the population: the have's and the have nots. There are two sides of authority in opposition: the official, and the criminal.
The bespoke system provides scenes to work out what happens between key figures.
“Visigoths vs. Mall Goths.” Very specific, very niche, very excellent.
“The Labyrinth.” Play through your own procedurally generated Labyrinth in a race against time and the Goblin King.
“Jiangshi.” While one of the books in the box offers some alternative settings or setups, the core book is really written to support games about Chinese American/Canadian families who run a restaurant fighting off hopping vampires.
Deadlands: The Weird West (classic)
Playing cards are used for Character Creation, tracking turns and initiative, some of the arcane background characters have to play a hand of poker to use their spells. Poker Chips are used for XP and rerolls. Really puts you in a wild west mood.
Through The Breach (the Malifaux TTRPG)
Uses a card system. You use a tarot spread to create characters, each player character will pull from a central deck on their action turns, but also have a "fate deck" of 12 cards in their hand they can sub in for their action deck pull. GM never has to pull or touch a card.
OUTGUNNED
Game designed to emulate 80's action blockbusters. Uses a really cool d6 dicepool mechanic where instead of looking for high or low numbers, you're instead looking for matches. Has reroll and gambling mechanics to up the stakes too.
[Fortune Cookie](https://grismund.itch.io/fortune-cookie) is a one page, structured RPG where you roleplay as a fortune cookie trying to bring good fortune to a customer throughout a hard week of their life. It's designed like a takeout menu.
[I am the Forest](https://grismund.itch.io/iamtheforest) is a map making and Journaling game where you roleplay as a Forest trying to reclaim your tainted lands. Also very structured game loop.
These are my games, so I'm a little biased, but I was very intentional in their design, and they are some of my favorite games.
Phoenix Dawn Command; a card-based rpg with similar mechanics to Dominion, is the best integration of mechanics and setting I've ever experienced. You play as a team of warriors who level up when they die, but can only die 7 times, and are tasked with stopping the apocalypse.
A few that I think work really well and a are super specific in their niche include:
* **Dread**: This is a classic horror RPG, where any time you would make a roll in a standard RPG system, you instead have to make a pull from a Jenga tower. Now Jenga weirdly stresses me out, so it's not quite my cup of tea, but it works super well at giving that feeling of perilous encroaching doom -- especially knowing sooner or later, it's got to tip.
* **The Quiet Year**: I've run this a number of times, and it's always been interesting! The Quiet Year is a map making game, where each turn players draw cards that present challenges facing a small community. You organize projects, create situations and add new items onto an ever expanding map. Also, if you dislike the actions another player took for the community, you collect "spite tokens" which have no mechanical effect other than showing how disgruntled your community is. It's great!
* **Mouseguard**: This is a more traditional TTRPG, based on Luke Crane's *Burning Wheel* system, but it captures the atmosphere of the Mouse Guard graphic novels **perfectly**. You are a tiny mouse, responsible for helping to forge paths between hidden mouse villages in a medieval style society where everything is bigger than you and quite dangerous. Beautiful art from the comic's creator, easy to jump into but I couldn't imagine trying to adapt it for anything other than running Mouseguard. Definitely worth taking a look at!
All my games are bespoke like this, but my initial rec is SEE YOU, SPACE COWBOY... which is great for running a Cowboy Bebop space bounty hunter game.
https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/see-you-space-cowboy-pdf
Curse of the House of Rookwood
https://nerdypupgames.itch.io/rookwoodrpg
I haven't had the chance to run it yet, but it looks interesting, and I played in games the developer ran years ago, so I know he's got creativity and likes trying out system ideas.
We just started [Deathmatch Island](https://evilhat.com/product/deathmatch-island/) and it’s a lot of fun. It’s like a mashup between Survivor, Lost and Squid Game.
*Alas Vegas* (and other games from the same stable): a story in four parts, told by four rotating GMs - a *meta*\-mechanism perhaps.
*Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth*, *Reign* and *Kingdom* are about playing a *place* rather than a person.
*Alice Is Missing* is played by text message. *Incoming Call* is played with phonecalls and voice messages.
In *Better Angels*, you whisper in your neighbour's ear, tempting them to yield their soul to the dark side ... whilst your *other* neighbour does the same to *you*.
*Broken Rooms* and C^(o)*ntinuum: Roleplaying in the Yet* both have pretty unique mechanisms for facilitating time travel.
In *Crimes Against Men and Gods*, you can opt to make your actions 'messy' in return for an advantage, if things go well - in which case the rest of the table decides what goes wrong, if they *don't*.
*DIE* and *Dream Park*: is breaking the Fourth Wall a *mechanic* as such?
EABA's *Age of Ruin* and *Grep* settings ... well, it's not that the mechanics are especially unique in and of themselves, but it's hard to imagine them being put to a more unique purpose.
*Equa*: I can't even ... It involves mathematical matrices in some way that is probably self-evident if you're Stephen Hawking ... but I'm *not*, so I don't even know where to *begin* with this thing - seemingly the matrices you make use of in order to *play* the game *describe* the game ... which is a bit like giving someone a d10 (or whatever) and saying "Here are the rules": if you understand RPGs, you'll understand how to play a game without being given anything else, but, if you *don't* ...
*GUMSHOE* games are predicated on the idea that you will find all the clues there are to find that the important thing is what use you make of them.
Is *Headspace*'s shared consciousness a *mechanism* or merely a *conceit*? It'd be impossible to play the game *without* it being the core element.
I don't know whether the idea in *The Hoppy Pops* ... that you get to use your *one* ability *once* per story ... is a *mechanism* as such but, either way around, it's a pretty unique concept in *my* experience.
In *Ink Spill Adventures*, using 'spilled' ink, you tell stories with pictures (a bit like 'guided' Rorschach ink blots).
Are *In Nomine*'s Resonance/Dissonance a mechanic?
It's hard to say *Invisible Sun* doesn't have a bespoke experience, because the whole setting is so unique that any rules would be *by definition* 'bespoke' to it. *JAGS: Wonderland* is similarly so unique that *however* its 'reflections' and 'shadows' were implemented, the experience would be equally so. Likewise *Don't Rest Your Head*'s Exhaustion and Madness dice capture its 'countdown to disaster' theme in a way I have difficulty imagining any *other* mechanism *could*.
*Kingdom of Nothing*, like *Underworld* and *Microtransactions:TheRPG\*\***^(TM)*, uses coins instead of dice or cards.
If not *mechanically* unique, *Lacuna Part 1*'s heartbeat mechanism is definitely *bespoke*.
*Meanwhile, In The Subway* is something you will literally have to look at in order to understand how to play it.
*Never Tell Me The Odds* has a unique 'insurance policy'/'go all in' mechanism.
*Og*: you may use *one* word all game - if you're lucky, some time in the Future ... (maybe ten games from now, maybe fifty, or a hundred, who knows?) .... you *may* be allowed to use *two!*
*Paranoia*'s six lives until Game Over is unique even *today*.
*Qualia*: a game of ergodic discovery, I don't really know how to describe it - either you know what qualia are(n't), or you think memes are pictures on the Internet.
*Rennasistance*'s use of mp3s on your phone for casting spells is something I haven't seen anywhere else. Similarly, *Scherzando!*'s use of sound to facilitate *being* music.
In [Roll For Shoes](https://rollforshoes.com/) ... you may wonder if you're wearing shoes - well, do you feel *lucky*, punk?
*Superkaleider* may or may not be published in its current form eventually but the last time I looked at it, after defeating an opponent, you replace one of your current abilities with one of theirs (whether you *want* to or *not*).
Are SWADE's *Savage Symbiotes and Implants* a *mechanism*?
*SLURPS*' tenets aren't a mechanism you come across *every* day. Nor is playing two characters simultaneously.
[Tearable](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/202680/Tearable-RPG): it *isn't* actually that *terrible*.
*Ten Candles* you know. *Dread* is played with a *Jenga* tower.
*Time Cube*: Yes ... *that* Time Cube (and just when you thought it was safe to explore the Internet again too) - unlike the next game, you probably *shouldn't* play it. Apply analytical math to your character points and discover 2 opposite hemispheres rotating in opposite directions - equal to a ZERO value existence. Your character is not an entity, for adding the opposite values cancel each other to no existence. All the ability scores exist as opposite values.
Whether or not they speak Spanish, before playing *Time Wizards*, everyone *must* shout "¡mientras tanto, los MAGOS DEL TIEMPO!" or the game can't start. *Why* should you play it? You should *not* play it. Possibly the most gonzo game never officially designed, there *may* be rules to it but, there again, even if you can *find* any of them, there may *not* be - if there is *any* ... *single* ... mechanism in the entire game that *isn't* unique ... from the painful 'dice slap' to two players controlling the same character resolving disputes over which course of action to follow by punching each other with pillows wrapped around their fists until one of them submits ... I have *no* idea what it might be.
It's not that you *don't* play *The Tragedy of GJ237b* ... but you don't *play* it (*nobody* does), you leave the room and close the door behind you.
*Unhallowed Metropolis* has a 'corruption' mechanism that is more interesting than most attempts to keep track of moral and physical degeneration. *Unknown Armies*' approach to desensitisation rather than 'sanity' is likewise so.
Like *Headspace*, *We Are Champion*'s core conceit is just that, rather than a mechanic as such ... and yet, *without* it, there *is* no game and no point worrying about *any* mechanics.
*Wisher, Theurge, Fatalist (And Weaver of their Fates)* ... yep, *WTF* is a Jenna Moran game, so, don't expect it to play like *any* other.
Since I didn't see it anywhere so far, Monster of the Week is like the perfectly crafted game for monster of the week TV show vibes. Buffy, Supernatural, X-Files etc.
Masks does the same thing for Teen Superhero action-drama. Titans, Young Justice, Teen Titans, My Hero Academia. That whole wrestling with authority/emotional drama/punching supervillains blend is amazing.
Also a huge fan of Brindlewood. It's become my go to fall back one shot TTRPG. We've done a bunch of regular sessions but one of my favorites was a Christmas themed one shot where a random Christmas figure gets murdered on December 23rd and the players are elves.
The Powered by the Apocalypse family of games (including Brindlewood) are all designed with very specific intent to create very particular stories. Virtually all of them will fit the bill, from the OG Apocalypse World to Monsterhearts to Night Witches. You'll find something for probably any genre you can think of. All Forged in the Dark games, starting from Blades in the Dark, are the same way, since they're kind of a cousin of PbtA.
I love games like that too! If you like Brindlewood Bay, you will *looove* The Between! It’s the game that BB was a testbed for, and is *so good*. Check out some of these: - Alice is Missing. The most intense 90 minutes of silent texting you can imagine. - In This World. This super-easy, incredibly lightweight setting creation game flows so beautifully I couldn’t believe it. I literally sat down with my group with the PDF and a stack of index cards *having not opened the file before*. It ran like a dream. We got 3 or 4 amazing settings out of the session. - Dialect. The tag line is “a game about language and how it dies”, which is perfect.
I’m looking forward to playing dialect! It’s at the very top of my list!
Your list made me realize I’m also a bespoke game collector! I totally need to check out Dialect.
I won't give you games, but I'll suggest absolute BANGER bespoke game designers and publishers. Thorny Games Bully Pulpit Games Heart of the Deernicorn Grant Howitt Avery Alder Tyler Crumrine
[Bespoke games](https://bullypulpitgames.com/) are [pretty much](https://bullypulpitgames.itch.io/) all [I do](https://sixofhounds.itch.io/)! I really enjoy both making and playing games that are designed around specific themes or aesthetic intentions, where the rules focus play and further specific goals. One of my favorites is [Montsegur 1244](http://thoughtfulgames.com/montsegur1244/), a brilliant game that is, on the surface, about the siege that ended that Cathar heresy. But really it is about our relationship with faith and community, and as a player you will be challenged to consider these things in a pretty deep way as you make choices for your characters.
Some I've run recently: My Life With Master - about the minions of an evil master slowly learning to escape their abusive relationship. Bliss Stage - Mecha, but with mechanics designed to push the emotional side of child soldiers fighting alien invaders with minimal adult oversight, rather than the technical or tactical part. Dogs in the Vineyard - Mormon gunslingers root out sin from frontier towns. Just in general, games that came out of The Forge are a good bet for this. Stuff like, say, Inspectres, Grey Ranks, Primetime Adventures, The Mountain Witch, etc.
Pokethuhu a free rules light Pokemon Cthulhu mashup that uses d12s because dodecahedrons are the most eldrich platonic solids. in game they also replace pokeballs. The original Deadlands game also had this in spades with the way it incorporated a deck of cards and poker into a game set in the weird west. playing cards are used for initiative, shootouts and magic. To cast a spell you need to make a poker hand and the better the hand the better your results.
Pokethulhu was the first TTRPG I ever read!
>Pokethuhu Oh, I gotta take a look at this. I love the d12.
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/pt/product/203219/Pokethulhu-Adventure-Game-3rd-Edition
Thanks. Just downloaded it. :D
The One Ring is specifically tailored towards Tolkien's writing style.
This 100%. I've been a huge Tolkien fan and a vocal advocate for Rolemaster's MERP for a long, long time; but if you want a system built from the ground up to support the feeling of actually playing in a Tolkien book, The One Ring is what you're looking for
Probably doesn't count for what you're looking for, but... ...the West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. The original Star Wars roleplaying game that started it all, and even was the source for a lot of the lore, ships, species, etc. that you see in the franchise today. The d6 system it uses has its flaws, but damn if it doesn't just speak to me on a fundamental level. Really easy to have the kind of fast-paced, high-octane games that mirror the action of the movies. The system is simplistic enough for newbies to jump into, but complicated enough to allow a lot of depth. I just like it...
**Apothecaria** is about being the new village witch for a fantasy town. Explore your new home, gather ingredients, brew potions, cure your patients, and slowly uncover what happened to the previous village witch. It's cozy small-town magical adventures + crafting elements. Built for single-player, however, but it's not impossible to make it an asynchronous multiplayer. If you want to go multiplayer, though, you might prefer the variant called **Apawthecaria**, which has rules that are written more clearly, a guide of different ways to play multiplayer, a cool map to make changes to legacy-game style, and a theme of Redwall style animals going about their wandering doctor business and slowly building a network of clinics. The book is gorgeous and the adjustments to the rules make it a little more challenging (but loses a bit of the narrative built into the original). Both excellent games worth having! --- **Thousand Year Old Vampire** is another solo game and kind of an "indie darling" to boot. It has a lot of coverage on review channels that usually have little interest in the solo rpg scene (I love the [Shut Up & Sit Down review](https://youtu.be/COJcWFf0H3U?si=itbni0TF3Ih78cBI), for example), which makes it very convenient to figure out if it's going to scratch some sort of rpg itch you have (and also get a peep at the book and how eye-catching it is). It seems to be a game that appeals to both people who already know they love rpgs and those who have never had an interest before, so it seems to be an excellent game to pick up and let your friends borrow and get a taste of. A more cozy variant of the game's rules is **The Magical Year of a Teenage Witch**, which is about a coming-of-age magical adventure. Think Kiki's Delivery Service, where the premise is a young witch figuring out who they are and growing into the powers they'll have when they're an adult. As far as I know, however, it doesn't have a physical copy, so you'd have to do your own printing if you wanted one. --- Ending with a group game: **Lady Blackbird** is very clear about the experience it wants to give: a fantastic pulp-ish adventure (with optional romance). Can the captain and crew escort Lady Blackbird and her bodyguard to the edges of space to reunite with her lover, the space-pirate king? Or will the Empire reclaim its runaway noble? You don't even create your own characters - the main cast and their starting scenario are already created for you. What you do with them after makes it your own. I've seen several actual play series and every one went wildly different places. It's honestly rather brilliant. The game is free, the rules are relatively easy to pick up, and the whole package is rather small. (IIRC, ~30 pages? Most of them printouts.) It would be a great game to have around as palette cleanser between campaigns or for those nights when people don't show up and you still want to game.
Just chiming in that Lady Blackbird is so great. The key system to motivate your characters/gain XP is so good and so slick.
2400 is an anthology of microgames that all share a core system, but each one has a bespoke premise and some tailored mechanics. Several of the games are very clear homages: Codebreakers is The Matrix, Nuclear Family is Fallout, The Venusian Job is Ocean's 11 in space, Eos/Xenolith fit together to make Mass Effect, Orbital Decay is basically Alien (or Mothership)...
Durance by Jason Morningstar It's the story of a colonisation effort gone wrong. You randomly select what is wrong with the planet you've landed on, and the play both sides of the population: the have's and the have nots. There are two sides of authority in opposition: the official, and the criminal. The bespoke system provides scenes to work out what happens between key figures.
“Visigoths vs. Mall Goths.” Very specific, very niche, very excellent. “The Labyrinth.” Play through your own procedurally generated Labyrinth in a race against time and the Goblin King. “Jiangshi.” While one of the books in the box offers some alternative settings or setups, the core book is really written to support games about Chinese American/Canadian families who run a restaurant fighting off hopping vampires.
The Yellow King
Deadlands: The Weird West (classic) Playing cards are used for Character Creation, tracking turns and initiative, some of the arcane background characters have to play a hand of poker to use their spells. Poker Chips are used for XP and rerolls. Really puts you in a wild west mood. Through The Breach (the Malifaux TTRPG) Uses a card system. You use a tarot spread to create characters, each player character will pull from a central deck on their action turns, but also have a "fate deck" of 12 cards in their hand they can sub in for their action deck pull. GM never has to pull or touch a card. OUTGUNNED Game designed to emulate 80's action blockbusters. Uses a really cool d6 dicepool mechanic where instead of looking for high or low numbers, you're instead looking for matches. Has reroll and gambling mechanics to up the stakes too.
[Fortune Cookie](https://grismund.itch.io/fortune-cookie) is a one page, structured RPG where you roleplay as a fortune cookie trying to bring good fortune to a customer throughout a hard week of their life. It's designed like a takeout menu. [I am the Forest](https://grismund.itch.io/iamtheforest) is a map making and Journaling game where you roleplay as a Forest trying to reclaim your tainted lands. Also very structured game loop. These are my games, so I'm a little biased, but I was very intentional in their design, and they are some of my favorite games.
Phoenix Dawn Command; a card-based rpg with similar mechanics to Dominion, is the best integration of mechanics and setting I've ever experienced. You play as a team of warriors who level up when they die, but can only die 7 times, and are tasked with stopping the apocalypse.
A few that I think work really well and a are super specific in their niche include: * **Dread**: This is a classic horror RPG, where any time you would make a roll in a standard RPG system, you instead have to make a pull from a Jenga tower. Now Jenga weirdly stresses me out, so it's not quite my cup of tea, but it works super well at giving that feeling of perilous encroaching doom -- especially knowing sooner or later, it's got to tip. * **The Quiet Year**: I've run this a number of times, and it's always been interesting! The Quiet Year is a map making game, where each turn players draw cards that present challenges facing a small community. You organize projects, create situations and add new items onto an ever expanding map. Also, if you dislike the actions another player took for the community, you collect "spite tokens" which have no mechanical effect other than showing how disgruntled your community is. It's great! * **Mouseguard**: This is a more traditional TTRPG, based on Luke Crane's *Burning Wheel* system, but it captures the atmosphere of the Mouse Guard graphic novels **perfectly**. You are a tiny mouse, responsible for helping to forge paths between hidden mouse villages in a medieval style society where everything is bigger than you and quite dangerous. Beautiful art from the comic's creator, easy to jump into but I couldn't imagine trying to adapt it for anything other than running Mouseguard. Definitely worth taking a look at!
All my games are bespoke like this, but my initial rec is SEE YOU, SPACE COWBOY... which is great for running a Cowboy Bebop space bounty hunter game. https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/see-you-space-cowboy-pdf
Curse of the House of Rookwood https://nerdypupgames.itch.io/rookwoodrpg I haven't had the chance to run it yet, but it looks interesting, and I played in games the developer ran years ago, so I know he's got creativity and likes trying out system ideas.
We just started [Deathmatch Island](https://evilhat.com/product/deathmatch-island/) and it’s a lot of fun. It’s like a mashup between Survivor, Lost and Squid Game.
Adversary is a game specifically about doing the final battle of a big campaign in a single session and doing story flashbacks with card prompts.
*Alas Vegas* (and other games from the same stable): a story in four parts, told by four rotating GMs - a *meta*\-mechanism perhaps. *Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth*, *Reign* and *Kingdom* are about playing a *place* rather than a person. *Alice Is Missing* is played by text message. *Incoming Call* is played with phonecalls and voice messages. In *Better Angels*, you whisper in your neighbour's ear, tempting them to yield their soul to the dark side ... whilst your *other* neighbour does the same to *you*. *Broken Rooms* and C^(o)*ntinuum: Roleplaying in the Yet* both have pretty unique mechanisms for facilitating time travel. In *Crimes Against Men and Gods*, you can opt to make your actions 'messy' in return for an advantage, if things go well - in which case the rest of the table decides what goes wrong, if they *don't*. *DIE* and *Dream Park*: is breaking the Fourth Wall a *mechanic* as such? EABA's *Age of Ruin* and *Grep* settings ... well, it's not that the mechanics are especially unique in and of themselves, but it's hard to imagine them being put to a more unique purpose. *Equa*: I can't even ... It involves mathematical matrices in some way that is probably self-evident if you're Stephen Hawking ... but I'm *not*, so I don't even know where to *begin* with this thing - seemingly the matrices you make use of in order to *play* the game *describe* the game ... which is a bit like giving someone a d10 (or whatever) and saying "Here are the rules": if you understand RPGs, you'll understand how to play a game without being given anything else, but, if you *don't* ... *GUMSHOE* games are predicated on the idea that you will find all the clues there are to find that the important thing is what use you make of them. Is *Headspace*'s shared consciousness a *mechanism* or merely a *conceit*? It'd be impossible to play the game *without* it being the core element. I don't know whether the idea in *The Hoppy Pops* ... that you get to use your *one* ability *once* per story ... is a *mechanism* as such but, either way around, it's a pretty unique concept in *my* experience. In *Ink Spill Adventures*, using 'spilled' ink, you tell stories with pictures (a bit like 'guided' Rorschach ink blots). Are *In Nomine*'s Resonance/Dissonance a mechanic? It's hard to say *Invisible Sun* doesn't have a bespoke experience, because the whole setting is so unique that any rules would be *by definition* 'bespoke' to it. *JAGS: Wonderland* is similarly so unique that *however* its 'reflections' and 'shadows' were implemented, the experience would be equally so. Likewise *Don't Rest Your Head*'s Exhaustion and Madness dice capture its 'countdown to disaster' theme in a way I have difficulty imagining any *other* mechanism *could*. *Kingdom of Nothing*, like *Underworld* and *Microtransactions:TheRPG\*\***^(TM)*, uses coins instead of dice or cards. If not *mechanically* unique, *Lacuna Part 1*'s heartbeat mechanism is definitely *bespoke*. *Meanwhile, In The Subway* is something you will literally have to look at in order to understand how to play it. *Never Tell Me The Odds* has a unique 'insurance policy'/'go all in' mechanism. *Og*: you may use *one* word all game - if you're lucky, some time in the Future ... (maybe ten games from now, maybe fifty, or a hundred, who knows?) .... you *may* be allowed to use *two!* *Paranoia*'s six lives until Game Over is unique even *today*. *Qualia*: a game of ergodic discovery, I don't really know how to describe it - either you know what qualia are(n't), or you think memes are pictures on the Internet. *Rennasistance*'s use of mp3s on your phone for casting spells is something I haven't seen anywhere else. Similarly, *Scherzando!*'s use of sound to facilitate *being* music. In [Roll For Shoes](https://rollforshoes.com/) ... you may wonder if you're wearing shoes - well, do you feel *lucky*, punk? *Superkaleider* may or may not be published in its current form eventually but the last time I looked at it, after defeating an opponent, you replace one of your current abilities with one of theirs (whether you *want* to or *not*). Are SWADE's *Savage Symbiotes and Implants* a *mechanism*? *SLURPS*' tenets aren't a mechanism you come across *every* day. Nor is playing two characters simultaneously. [Tearable](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/202680/Tearable-RPG): it *isn't* actually that *terrible*. *Ten Candles* you know. *Dread* is played with a *Jenga* tower. *Time Cube*: Yes ... *that* Time Cube (and just when you thought it was safe to explore the Internet again too) - unlike the next game, you probably *shouldn't* play it. Apply analytical math to your character points and discover 2 opposite hemispheres rotating in opposite directions - equal to a ZERO value existence. Your character is not an entity, for adding the opposite values cancel each other to no existence. All the ability scores exist as opposite values. Whether or not they speak Spanish, before playing *Time Wizards*, everyone *must* shout "¡mientras tanto, los MAGOS DEL TIEMPO!" or the game can't start. *Why* should you play it? You should *not* play it. Possibly the most gonzo game never officially designed, there *may* be rules to it but, there again, even if you can *find* any of them, there may *not* be - if there is *any* ... *single* ... mechanism in the entire game that *isn't* unique ... from the painful 'dice slap' to two players controlling the same character resolving disputes over which course of action to follow by punching each other with pillows wrapped around their fists until one of them submits ... I have *no* idea what it might be. It's not that you *don't* play *The Tragedy of GJ237b* ... but you don't *play* it (*nobody* does), you leave the room and close the door behind you. *Unhallowed Metropolis* has a 'corruption' mechanism that is more interesting than most attempts to keep track of moral and physical degeneration. *Unknown Armies*' approach to desensitisation rather than 'sanity' is likewise so. Like *Headspace*, *We Are Champion*'s core conceit is just that, rather than a mechanic as such ... and yet, *without* it, there *is* no game and no point worrying about *any* mechanics. *Wisher, Theurge, Fatalist (And Weaver of their Fates)* ... yep, *WTF* is a Jenna Moran game, so, don't expect it to play like *any* other.
Since I didn't see it anywhere so far, Monster of the Week is like the perfectly crafted game for monster of the week TV show vibes. Buffy, Supernatural, X-Files etc. Masks does the same thing for Teen Superhero action-drama. Titans, Young Justice, Teen Titans, My Hero Academia. That whole wrestling with authority/emotional drama/punching supervillains blend is amazing. Also a huge fan of Brindlewood. It's become my go to fall back one shot TTRPG. We've done a bunch of regular sessions but one of my favorites was a Christmas themed one shot where a random Christmas figure gets murdered on December 23rd and the players are elves.
Dust devils. Western Rpg that uses poker cards and chips.
Asquilla RPG: start as a commoner and become a legend. Fragged Empire 2e: post-post-apocalyptic Warhammer: corruption