by Moonlight_Fox

An item RPG Item: Briar & Bramble has been added to the geeklist 2026 RPGG Challenge: Play Five RPGs You Have Never Played Before (Each At Least Once)

by Evie

Pandion Games very generously sent over a massive package of solo RPGs, and I wanted to walk through everything they included.

As someone who uses creativity at my day job, when I sit down for a solo game or RPG at home, I prefer systems that give me plenty of structure, prompts, and materials to work with, rather than making me invent the entire story from scratch. Pandion’s lineup spans a surprisingly wide variety of genres, from cozy fantasy to sci-fi horror.

Here’s a breakdown of what was in the box:

Cozy Dark Fantasy
🍇 Midnight Muscadines: Being from North Carolina, the muscadine connection immediately caught my eye. It’s a cozy-dark solo RPG filled with oracles, magical jams, creatures, and rich lore to explore.
🧭 The Wanderlustians Field Journal: The companion journal for Midnight Muscadines. It's packed with character sheets, hex maps, point-of-interest notes, and generators to help track everything.
🎨 Coloring Book & Story Cards: A dedicated coloring book (such a cool way to celebrate artists!), plus a deck of double-sided story cards with beautiful art on one side and inspiration prompts (mentors, themes, objects) on the back.



Whimsical Mysteries & Summer Nostalgia
🧇 Waffles for Esther: A mystery RPG where you play a diner waitress trying to figure out where your regular customer, Esther, disappeared to. Includes town mapping, clues, and deduction mechanics.



🏕️ Camp Snallygaster (The Monstrous Summer of 1993): As a former camp counselor, I'm so intrigued by this one. You’re a camp counselor trying to take care of the campers while investigating what happened to your missing camp leader, Murie.



Spooky & Dark Journaling Games
🤫 Whispers in the Walls: A solo horror journaling game where you’re a PI solving a mystery. Uses a standard card deck to drive locations and events toward multiple possible endings.
🤡 The Jester King's Dance: A darker mystery game centered on figuring out who the Jester King is and why they earned the title.
⛈️ The Cold Dark: A wilderness survival journaling game about enduring the aftermath of a crash landing in a storm.



Whodunits & Sci-Fi Thrillers
🕵🏻‍♀️ Estate of Play: A classic whodunit focused on murder, inheritance, and competition. Very much in line with classic Benoit Blanc or Hercule Poirot detective stories.
🧪 Substratum Protocol: As someone who works in science, I’m very intrigued about this apocalyptic, deep-earth mystery. You play scientists left on an expedition to the Earth's core to figure out an anomaly. It's comes with personnel and team folios and an expedition journal to keep you immersed.



I can’t wait to start diving into these - Which of these would you start with? 🧐

by agramore

JudgementDave wrote:

jsteidl wrote:

JudgementDave wrote:

jsteidl wrote:

agramore wrote:

I just don't think they are my "jam", as the kids say (if they still say that). 😆

My older one still says that, but I think it's not current for 20-somethings!

The phrase is being thrown away like yesterday's jam.

I think we have some jam in the fridge that's about as old as the kids. Whether eating that would be more deadly than having to play a game I hate is an open question - and an experiment I will probably never attempt!

I wondered if the phrase ‘yesterday’s jam’ needed explaining…
Have you ever watched the UK sitcom The IT Crowd? Yesterday’s Jam is (iirc) the title of the first episode and a phrase used by one character. It’s met with ridicule by other characters due to obvious reasons.

I've seen clips, but haven't watched an whole episode, much less a series or the whole show. Is that a common expression? I assumed it meant something that was old and had to be tossed out, like jam that had gone moldy.

by rajatz

Many thanks to whoever sent me a star. I always looked that on others badges and wonder how they got it! Now I know haha. Thanks again! Iam happy to be part of this community

by Toxziq

<div>Scott Morris</div>

by GeoffreyB

I've completed successfully GeoffreyB previously rolled d52 = 14 racing games to the finish.

by jjwhite103

aramis wrote:

pelni wrote:

Even the big, traditional, somewhat crunchy games (D&D and Pathfhinder, at least), seemingly moved on to more canned experiences with scripted campaigns?

GDQ was 1982... 7 modules, one campaign. Other sequences existed, too... Traveller Adventures 2, 3, 13 (The Ancients campaign) and The Traveller Book (152 pages of campaign - it's sore misnamed) all predate 1984. Note that the 2-3-13 are not of need one campaign, nor exclusive, but Traveller numbered adventures tend to be well more than a D&D module of 4x the paper covered in terms of play time...
WFRP has by 1990 the Enemy Within... a 4-7 volume campaign (depending upon edition) with a big overarching plot.

They're nothing new. They have become more commmon, but they're not new. Most kinds of adventure are not new.

I think you're both right, and it's the way those meet that's the big thing. Somewhere along the way, and for me it was with the regularly scheduled Pathfinder Society organized play program, things became exceptionally tightly scripted, at least as a matter of timing. Different groups had different characters with different classes and such, but everyone was supposed to be through the room with creature 3 by about the 1:47 mark.

Those old Traveller materials were sketches by design, meant to be fleshed out. That was a virtue, and most users wouldn't have tolerated anything different. The Pathfinder Society materials were the exact opposite. I think it developed at least partially through the convention organized play scene through the 90s as a natural consequence of trying to provide a uniform experience for a large number of players with a large number of GMs, some possibly much less experienced. It's somewhat like the standardization of product and experience that McDonald's pioneered, but I don't mean to say that in a derogatory sense, because the real point is that this was a huge success. People wanted it. Pathfinder took over the #1 selling slot partly through this (yeah, tons of other factors, but this was an important piece).

I think it's easy on niche-within-niche internet forums to overestimate the significance of PbtA within TTRPG as a whole. That homogenized, uniform experience has always outsold it by a massive factor, whether we approve or not.

by shiva666

TrippyHippyEcho wrote:

New games do have the advantage of being able to look at what mechanics and ideas came before and refine them, and are usually better presented and written.

What is New about them then?

by Donogh

An item RPG Item: Against Time and Death has been added to the geeklist 2026 RPGG Challenge: Play Five RPGs You Have Never Played Before (Each At Least Once)

by Hunting_Phoenix

Marko, is this open source? Can you link to Github repos or anything?

As a user whom I've not interacted with, and has recently joined RPGG, I am reluctant to visit this site. I am guessing others may feel similarly.

by shiva666

There's editions... Old games have new. New games have old.

I'd be interested in their choice list.
Let them name their 10 better games for today.

by Donogh

An item RPG Item: Contenders has been added to the geeklist 2026 RPGG Challenge: Play Five RPGs You Have Never Played Before (Each At Least Once)