by guyeatsfood

Actual Prep – 13th Age Glorantha Actual Play

Here’s a new project – I’m fascinated by prep, in all its forms – one-shot, long-form, session notes, handwritten scribbles. My own and others. A quick check online leads me to believe lots of you are, too. So, I’m going to showcase this on the blog. I can’t promise every session I’ll share my prep notes, but I’ll try and do it where I can – and I’ll offer a variable amount of commentary. These are also going to be 50% patreon exclusive – half of them will never be released to the public – so spread the word, and let me know if you’d like to share your own prep and talk to me about it.

Continuing our series focussed on prep, I thought I’d share my development of a 13th Age Glorantha one-shot I ran recently for the channel. I think because I had designer Jonathan Tweet in the group, I over-thought it a bit and went through a few iterations of prep. This is natural! I hope you find this evolution interesting even though it probably makes this a bit harder to run yourselves.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, and the chance to request articles or content, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

I’ve left my original notes here, with my revisions below each scene – the last set of revisions was done by hand on a printout of this, because I was at the actual convention as I did it. All references to monsters are from the 13th Age Glorantha rulebook.

3 Players

1.5 Hours

Ran face to face at The Kraken gaming retreat in Germany – recorded here on Unconventional GMs.

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by guyeatsfood

Hacking #Borg Games

It’s hard to deny the impact that Mörk Borg and its cousins have had on the game space. With a punk aesthetic and layout just this side of legible, the quick-and-dirty system and open license has encouraged lots of related games. And the system is solid – a really good basis for relatively rules-light action-oriented OSRy gaming. We’ve got a few of them up on Unconventional GMs – check out Ronin and Pirate Borg, and there’s more to come. You’ll notice these hacks aren’t used for these games – these are how I’ve developed it since then.

However, based on my own preferences for gaming, I like to hack the system a bit when I run these games – largely to give the PCs a few more options, and to reduce the chances of meaningless character death. So, here are the ways I hack #Borg games, when I’m prepping for one-shots:

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, and the chance to request articles or content, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Your Apocalypse May Vary – the breadth of PBTA

Last month I was at Revelation – one of the only (the only, as far as I know) convention that specialises in Powered By The Apocalypse (PBTA) games and its derivatives. About 45 of us met in Sheffield, and filled out a packed programme of game slots, all loosely (the strictness has lifted through the years) informed by PBTA.

I had a full hand of different games, so I’m going to talk about them – and what they say about PBTA today, and the breadth of its styles

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, and the chance to request articles or content, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

To Boldly Go Further: Star Trek Adventures Supplements Review

Modiphius’ Star Trek Adventures (STA) has to be one of those rare licensed TTRPG success stories; a whole raft of supplements for 1st edition, including sourcebooks for Quadrants, Divisions, and Discovery – and now a 2nd edition, which tidies up some of the rules (getting rid of the fiddly d6 variants) and gives, in my experience, a more streamlined gaming experience.

I’ve had a lot of fun with STA. I ran one of my longest-running TTRPG campaigns ever with 1st edition, and the rules held up well then. I’ve only scratched the surface with 2e (check out our one-shot on Unconventional GMs here) and I like what I see. 2nd edition loosens up the scope a little, rather than trying to fit campaigns into specific Trek eras, and brings a more mature, considered rules system. I don’t mind 2d20 for any game, but in Star Trek it shines – you’ll mostly have skills and extended tasks, with only the occasional ship or personal combat where you can bring out the crunch.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, and the chance to request articles or content, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Actual Prep – Mythic Bastionland

Here’s a new project – I’m fascinated by prep, in all its forms – one-shot, long-form, session notes, handwritten scribbles. My own and others. A quick check online leads me to believe lots of you are, too. So, I’m going to showcase this on the blog. I can’t promise every session I’ll share my prep notes, but I’ll try and do it where I can – and I’ll offer a variable amount of commentary. These are also going to be 50% patreon exclusive – half of them will never be released to the public – so spread the word, and let me know if you’d like to share your own prep and talk to me about it.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, and the chance to request articles or content, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

3 Players

3 Hours

Ran online with Zoom (A/V) a dice roller app (Roll Dice With Friends) and a shared map (on a Google Slide)

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by guyeatsfood

The Original Lonely Fun – How We Read TTRPGs

I’ve just finished reading Every Day I Read, a collection of essays by Korean author Hwang Bo-Reum where she breaks down the joy and approaches she has to reading fiction and non-fiction. Most of my reading tends to be TTRPG books, and it occurs to me that I think we have a really different approach to reading game texts than other non-fiction. 

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, and the chance to request articles or content, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Proper Espionage – Three Gaming Things from The Spy Who Came In From the Cold

I read this through a gaming link; Malcolm Craig, game designer and actual cold war expert, rates this as the best background to the Cold City RPG (or at least, he did when we interviewed him for the Smart Party). So, months later, I’ve finally read it – and it’s a cracking read, a classic John le Carre that manages to convey very well the setting of shifting allegiances and bureaucratic machinations of a (fictionalised) 1970s operation.

Claire Bloom and Richard Burton in the film, which I haven’t seen but I bet isn’t as good as the book

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, and the chance to request articles or content, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Do I Actually Like the OSR?

Two things happened concurrently to me that have ended up being about the same thing, how I feel about OSR play:

I’m prepping Mythic Bastionland, to run for the first time (hopefully on channel) and it occurs to me that the game has rules for combat – and not much else. Outside of combat, there are lots of procedures – for the hexcrawl, for the omens, for task resolution – but even Saves aren’t really skill checks. It occurs to me that many of my favourite games have combat rules and very little else (Marvel Heroic, Feng Shui, 13th Age….) – and maybe Mythic Bastionland is like this.

I’m listening to Between Two Cairns and the hosts talk about how OSR play is an entirely different schema of play to D&D5e play, just like story-games are, and we should maybe be more up-front about it – as they analyse a blog post from Sam Sorensen about his Three-Question Taxonomy. It makes me think I might have run Mork Borg wrong, even though I (and my players) seemed to have a good time, and wonder if it matters. I’ve run Pirate Borg on YouTube with a player-authored montage in it – was that a mistake?

And thinking about  the two together, maybe I actually do like OSR play. I just haven’t realised it yet.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, and the chance to request articles or content, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

The Ultimate One-Shot Sci-Fi TTPRG? – Review: Stay Frosty (Remastered)

Stay Frosty is a sci-fi OSR-ish game of shooting aliens from Casey Garske. Originally self-published, it’s been remastered and published (through kickstarter) by Melsonian Arts Council. You can get it here from Drivethrurpg, and doubtless there are places to source print copies after the kickstarter. I backed it because I’d heard lots about it (mainly from Tom on the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast) and was intrigued. I’ve since run both scenarios in the book as one-shots; as with all my reviews, this is play-informed.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Play These Games! 5 TTRPGs You Haven’t Heard Of

As we creep towards the end of the year (Patreon supporters) or look bright-eyed at the possibilities of 2026 before us, I’ve been looking back at my “games played” spreadsheet. I could talk a lot about my most played games (The One Ring, then D&D), or some of the other TTRPG fun I’ve had, but everyone knows about lots of these games. 

There is, I can guarantee you, more going on in the hobby than you know about, so I thought I’d highlight five games I played for the first time in 2025 that you probably haven’t heard of, and deserve more attention. I’ve put these in chronological order of when I played them – these are all fantastic games.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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