by Forbidding

by leroy43

An item RPG Item: A Visitor's Guide to the Rainy City has been added to the geeklist 2026 Annual Geek Review Challenge

by leroy43

An item RPG Item: Herbalist's Primer has been added to the geeklist [Roger's Reviews] The Complete Collection

by "L'état, c'est moi."

Welcome to my annual top 20 list. This has become a lovely tradition to look back at the past year and see what's been hitting the table, what I've been enjoying, what I'm still enjoying, and an opportunity to reflect a little on how my gaming habits may have shifted in the interim.

I truly admire those who make Top 100 lists. In the past twelve months, I've played 118 different titles (not including RPGs), and with my self-imposed rule to include only games I've actually played, a Top 100 would perforce include a lot of one-and-done titles. One-and-done doesn't mean they're bad games; there are lots of reasons a game hasn't seen the table again. Often it's a game I've played for the first time at a con and nobody including me owns it, so... 🤷‍♂️

I feel twenty games is a nice manageable number. Short enough to force me into making cuts, yet long enough to showcase a good range of games.

For the sake of those following at home, my top 20 guidelines are:
:d10-1: I have to have played it in the past 12 months (so yes, into the tail end of 2025).
:d10-2: This is a top 20 of the moment, because my tastes do change over time. Heck, if you ask me tomorrow...
:d10-3: Role Playing Games are in the mix because my gaming tastes have shifted that way. Hard.
:d10-4: All other things being equal, I'm going to favour new-to-me games over old favourites.
:d10-5: I'm going to add honourable mentions and Feels like? comments along the way.

Without further ado, onto the list!

#20 EXIT: The Game – Advent Calendar: The Intergalactic Race
Coming in at the bottom of the list is the annual Exit advent calendar. We've done them for three years running now, and this is the one we did for December 2025. The mix of puzzles is pretty good, the complexity is just right for a post dinner bit of fun, and the kinds of puzzles seem to hit everyone's sweet spot at least once.

I think Kosmos is owed some serious kudos for this series. They're a bit uneven, yes, some of the stories and puzzles are better some years than others, but it's been something we've been looking forward to annually now. The other thing I'm really keen on is that the entire thing dismantles into an easily recycled cardboard stack and doesn't clutter the shelf afterwards. I still have the fully completed Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 on my shelf.

Honourable mention: Oddly enough - no other puzzle games were played by me this past year.

Feels like? Any number of logic/deduction puzzle games.

#19 Nemo's War
The late Judd Vance had an annual tradition of challenging those of us who play wargames to play a dozen different ones every year, and this one was on my list.

Tangentially, there are two microbadges available for those that would like to commemorate Judd:
:d10-1:  airjudden fan / RIP Judd Vance
:d10-2:  airjudden fan / RIP Judd Vance

I played it early this year, and even though it had been eleven years since I've had this one on the table, sheer muscle memory had me underway in no time and I completed the entire game in 37 minutes.

I like the new edition, but I prefer this edition. It's got less cruft, plays much faster, and has for me more interesting choices to make each turn. I really like the clock of 52 weeks vs. the clock of a deck of adventure cards. The original edition does have events, but you're not always going to face one because events are die roll dependent, whereas the new edition has events on every turn.

Honourable mention: The 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea movie.

Feels like? Captain Obvious says Nemo's War: The Ultimate Edition

#18 Ark Nova
The base game was well enough, but the addition of Ark Nova: Marine Worlds has made this great game even better.

My wife, who works in the museum industry, calls this game the "margin vs. mission" game, and says that it's a lot like work, and yet she loves playing it. The margin part is the tickets representing getting people through the gate, and the mission represents the conservation missions that are a core part of the game.

I do most of my play on BGA, and some day I'm going to take a nice sharpie and label the conservation points like they do on BGA to make the scoring a little easier at the end (not that it's hard, but simpler is good).

I like animals, I like the theme, I like the mechanics of how it plays. Over 250 plays later, I'm still hooked.

Feels like? Wingspan and Terraforming Mars got together and had an illicit affair.

Honourable mention: Terraforming Mars is an evergreen title in my household, but since it didn't make my top 20 list this time around, it'll get a mention here.

#17 Heat: Pedal to the Metal
I like racing games sometimes, and my Thursday Night Crew likes this one, often as a chaser to our online RPG sessions. Helps that it plays six. One thing that really works for us is that we always seem to manage to get our cars in close proximity, and the baked-in catch-up mechanism for the folks at the back even makes it advantageous to be in the back sometimes.

What propelled it onto this year's list was the Heat: Rocky Roads expansion with its gravel tracks. The heat management gets kicked up a notch, and that South Africa track is 🔥.

Feels like? Downforce, but use the unofficial betting variant.

Honourable mention: I got nothing. The only other deck builder I play regularly is coming up...

#16 Obsession
Over the years I've said that what I would really love to see is a consolidated rulebook, and Dan Hallagan delivered! The Obsession: Victorian Box project gave us backers a new consolidated set of rules, a new box to hold everything in one place, and I continue to marvel at his support for his game.

The game is absolutely a love affair with post-Edwardian England, and this is one of my wife's favourites to get to the table.

Feels like? Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Collector's Edition. Yes, I know they're definitely different eras, and they're very different thematically, but the idea of building an ideal castle is akin to the estate building here.

Honourable mention: Glen More II: Chronicles is another favourite for my wife and me, and it's occasionally a coin flip as to which one we'll play.

#15 Distilled
Distilled is a worker placement game where you collect ingredients, have recipes for making spirits, and then proceed to try and successfully do so. There's a lovely mechanism where you take your deck of ingredients and take off the top and bottom cards as the heads and tails, just like in real distillation.

My friend Jeff has a minor quibble that it's actually easier to make vodka than moonshine, but quibbling aside, the game works well.

I've received the Distilled: Cocktails expansion, but I have not yet had the opportunity to play it. I hope to soon.

Feels like? Worker placement games like this one are a dime a dozen. Ok, that's a bit harsh as well as unfair, because there are worker placement games and there are good worker placement games, and I firmly put this one in the latter camp. With exactly seven rounds to achieve your goals, I'm going to say something like The White Castle with its tight time frame and exactly nine actions to accomplish your goals.

Honourable mention: It seems fitting to put in the other wine and spirit-themed game I really enjoyed this year, namely Viticulture: Tuscany Essential Edition. The only thing keeping me from picking it up is that it's minimum 3p, max 5, which is exactly the wrong size for my usual play at home. The second honourable mention here will be Wine Cellar, a clever light game about catering to wine clients as their personal sommelier.

#14 Twilight Struggle
I don't know what other superlatives I can add to this game that was the BGG #1 - not that being #1 actually means anything, but it's nice when games you like are well regarded by others.

Anyway, as a child of the Cold War, this game holds endless appeal. I have over 500 plays of this, and I'm looking forward to receiving the Twilight Struggle: 20th Anniversary Hall of Fame Edition soon.

One of the things I admire about this game is that despite deck knowledge being a key to playing well, the game is still as tense as ever. Now instead of dreading what card might come out, I now think of when I might be able to expect to see a specific card, or plan ahead to mitigate effects.

Feels like? 1989: Dawn of Freedom, which I believe was the first game based entirely on the Twilight Struggle engine.

Honourable mention: Table Battles. It's not a card driven game. Indeed, it's a dice game with cards and sticks, but like Twilight Struggle, it has a level of abstraction that puts it within the Venn diagram of wargames and other kinds of games.

#13 Clank!: Catacombs
I still love the original Clank Catacombs over any of the various Clank games. I particularly love the building of the dungeon as we delve deeper into the depths.

I have all the expansions. The Clank!: Adventuring Party expansion has allowed us to have our entire Thursday Night Crew play, although we generally eschew the characters because we feel they add cruft without adding significantly to the fun. We adore the Clank!: Catacombs – Lairs and Lost Chambers expansion, especially the times where we can summon a relic to our location when the nearest one is far away.

We liked the idea of Clank!: Catacombs – Underworld, but we ran into the problem that the dragon was being triggered more often and more cubes were getting pulled. Yes, yes, we know the premise of the game. But when the game gives you more tiles to explore and more content to play with, we want to have the time to savour that content.

We've bandied about some ideas for house rules so that we can play up to six with all of the expansions but we haven't come to any conclusions yet.

Feels like? Clank! In! Space!: A Deck-Building Adventure, although that game is a lot snappier. It's the closest to Catacombs in the sense that there is a variable setup. The other I want to highlight is Seas of Havoc, which is a hilarious pirate shoot 'em up game that we've been playing more often.

Honourable mention: Power Grid. Really? Yes. Because it plays six. Has a ton of expansions. And is a favourite of our Thursday Night Crew.

#12 Pacific Typhoon
If ever there were a party game for grognards, this is it. Each turn, the player who's up picks one of two available battles, and then gets to decide how the battle will get played out. Maybe it's 1942, night time, submarine. Maybe it's 1945 day time combined. There are strictures based on the card colours, there are events, and there are no alliances. Each turn players will decide if they're playing Allied or Japanese, or maybe discarding cards.

It's essentially a trick taker mixed with a little bit of poker.

Feels like? A better version of Atlantic Storm.

Honourable mention: Cockroach Poker is another fun party in a box card game.

#11 The Quiet Year
This is a GM-less collaborative RPG where the players jointly decide where their home is, what resources are plentiful, what is missing, and then take turns resolving cards from a deck as they begin in spring and end in winter when The Jackals return.

The absolute best part of this game is the development of the map as the year progresses and the collective storytelling and world building. Good and bad things happen, obstacles are overcome, failures build resilience, and the end-of-game card is randomly seeded in the winter quarter.

There are dice, used as clocks for projects under development. There are skulls, to represent discontent with decisions made by other players.

It's a ton of fun.

Feels like? Last Train to Bremen (Revised), another GM-less RPG that uses dice.

Honourable mention: Gletscherschmelze, a GM-less RPG I played via RPGG forum earlier this year.

#10 Glen More II: Chronicles
Glen More II remains a favourite in the tile drafting genre. The tile selection mechanism, where time itself acts as currency and the player furthest behind takes the next turn, creates a constant, delicious tension between snapping up high-value tiles or taking multiple smaller steps.

My wife and I play this regularly at two players, and diving deep into the various expansion Chronicles over the past year has kept the experience fresh without ever overcomplicating the core spatial puzzle. It's a permanent fixture in our rotation.

Feels like? An elevated, deeply satisfying evolution of original Glen More, with a touch of Glen More’s movement mechanics.

Honourable mention: Obsession, which often shares the two-player evening slot with this one.

#9 Combat Commander: Europe
I like wargames, but I don't love figuring out how to min-max my stacks of counters to get at least 3:1 odds on the CRT. That's why my tastes have always been more with block games like EastFront or dice chucking fun like Ogre.

Combat Commander for me has the perfect mix of risk/reward, the lovely card deck with 72 cards with dice that have the complete distribution of 2d6 twice. Speaking of the cards, I know it drives some mad, but not having a Fire card in your hand when you're perfectly positioned to take advantage of opportunity fire is exactly the kind of antidote to the perfect information problem most hex and counter games have.

The game is chaotic, but there is definitely skill involved. I've been playing on the Combat Commander ladder for a number of years now, and there are folks that are consistently at the top of the AREA rankings.

I am most definitely not at the top. 😜

Feels like? Combat Commander: Pacific is the obvious one, but there is also '65: Squad-Level Combat in the Jungles of Vietnam and the under appreciated Night of Man.

Honourable mention: The Guerrilla Generation: Cold War Insurgencies in Latin America, the latest COIN game I've played.

#8 Startups
I love this game unabashedly. There isn't a dominant strategy. What worked in one game will backfire in the next. There are consistently uncertainties because of the five cards discarded into the kitty, and whatever player count you're at alters the dynamic too. I'm over 500 plays, I've worn out at least one deck, and it's also an unusual game in that every single play has been in person - no online gaming here!

Feels like? In its most distilled essence, this is a stock acquisition game, so... it's not like anything else I regularly play.

Honourable mention: I love card games in general, so the other ones that I've played a lot will get named here - Cribbage, Mojo, Sea Salt & Paper, and new favourite dnup.

#7 Here I Stand
This is a favourite game, but getting six people together in the same place at the same time is a logistical undertaking as it's a long game that can potentially take all day.

It's what I like to call an appointment game. The best time to play it is at a convention when everyone who's in attendance is there to play games, doesn't have to host, and can devote all their attention to the game.

Doesn't the thought of playing one of Europe's major powers for domination while the religious dogma wars are going on in the background sound like the best time ever?

Feels like? Virgin Queen. Or Diplomacy without the sudden but inevitable betrayal.

Honourable mention: Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition, which is the other big appointment game I make an effort to play at game conventions.

#6 Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)
Since last year, I've been invited to join a regular Call of Cthulhu game, and Rick is an exceptional game master.

More than anything, what I love about Call of Cthulhu is that the players are ordinary folk that are thrust up against extraordinary circumstances. The monsters are nearly invulnerable to humans (cue the Brigadier from Doctor Who and his famous line that just once he'd like to meet a foe that isn't immune to bullets), and if you told any folks about your experiences with the supernatural and their horrors, they'd think you were off your rocker.

An easy pick for my top 20 this year.

Feels like? I still give a nod to Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set), if you want some of the flavour of the RPG and like deck construction games.

Honourable mention: An investigative RPG I've enjoyed as a player is Candela Obscura.

#5 ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game: Core Rules Evolved Edition
I'm a fan of the Alien movie franchise. The original haunted house horror and the action-adventure Aliens sequel are still two of my all-time favourite movies. The other ones in the series are hit and miss, and I'm not a huge fan of the direction that Prometheus and Covenant took the franchise to.

However, the new Alien: Earth series has opened up the scope of the kinds of xenomorphs we might potentially see in the RPG books at some point.

All this is a digression about the game itself. I like the stress mechanism in this RPG. You will meet your expected nemesis. You will get scared. You will gain stress. You will panic. Bad things will happen.

Absolutely love it.

I've only played this at conventions, but a good thing is good!

Feels like? If the Alien RPG is more like the Aliens movie, then Mothership (cf.) is comparatively more like the Alien movie.

Honourable mention: Nothing I haven't already put elsewhere in this list.

#4 Luthier
This game is not only stunningly gorgeous, but very fun and involved to play. As a family of musically inclined folks, you're competing for patronage to manufacture instruments to be used in the grand orchestra. It's a contested worker placement game where you never have enough actions to accomplish all the tasks you want to.

With the blind bidding on board locations and turn order being important for order of resolution, this game has multiple layers of complexity in the decision making without making the game itself overcomplicated.

Feels like? My wife feels this is in the same realm as Rococo: Deluxe Edition.

Honourable mention: I would put this in the same category as other games I've mentioned higher up in the list.

#3 The Fantasy Trip: Legacy Edition
I'm surprised I left this off last year's list, but welcome back TFT!

The Fantasy Trip remains, for me, one of the absolute high-water marks in the RPG hobby. It accomplishes in a fraction of the pages what modern multi-book systems struggle to deliver: fast, lethal, deeply tactical combat where every hex step, facing change, and fatigue point actually matters. The 3d6 roll-under resolution is elegantly intuitive, character creation takes minutes without sacrificing mechanical distinction, and the push/pull management of Strength as both health and stamina gives every fight a visceral, desperate edge. It is a masterpiece of old-school design.

It's also endlessly adaptable for everything from tight arena duels to sweeping urban campaigns.

Which makes the current radio silence surrounding the line all the more disappointing. After the triumphant return of the Legacy Edition Kickstarter, and multiple issues of Hexagram and even third-party modules, the support from Steve Jackson Games has quietly ground to a halt.

There is no sustained ecosystem, no regular pipeline of new adventures, and little in the way of expanded setting support. There is an active group of backers and players, but SJG seems content to let it sit as an archived legacy title. Sigh.

Rant aside... I love this RPG. And I'm glad I have a regular group to play with.

Feels like? GURPS (4th Edition), somewhat, but more like Legends of the Ancient World.

Honourable mention: Old-School Essentials Retro Adventure Game

#2 Mothership
Solve. Save. Survive. Pick two.

Mothership is a sandbox RPG. You have tremendous flexibility in what kind of game you want to run. One-off horror movie inspired pressure cookers? Done. An ongoing campaign where the players own a merchant (or perhaps pirate) vessel flitting about the edges of known space? Doable. Gritty dark space crowded space station investigations? Bring it.

But for me, some of my favourite elements are these. The crappy stats and saves are a feature, not a bug. You're competent at being whatever your character is, but your stats aren't about your common competency, they're about how you're reacting to what is not only perhaps the worst day of your life on that remote alien space station, but quite possibly your last one.

I love the sheer variety of materials that creators have put out for this game, the stewardship and oversight by Tuesday Knight Games, and the stack of adventures on my shelf means I will never have a shortage of things to run.

My favourite RPG of the moment.

Feels like? Alien and Call of Cthulhu got together and had a very good time.

Honourable mention: The other RPGs on this list.

#1 Vantage
Taking the top spot two years in a row is rare for my list, but almost eighty sessions in, Vantage has earned it. Last year, I noted how unusual it was for a solo/cooperative title to land at #1, especially one that bypasses traditional cooperative traps like quarterbacking by letting players freely pursue individual destinies alongside shared planet-side goals.

What keeps Vantage at the top of my list isn't just its open-world sandbox structure, but how effortlessly it delivers emergent narrative play. Unlike sprawling legacy or campaign games that demand logistical commitment, you simply open the box and immerse yourself in an alien landscape.

Every session still leaves me thinking about my choices afterward. This is a masterwork of modern narrative design.

Feels like? It evokes the exact same sense of quiet, mystery-laden exploration as 1980s classics like Barbarian Prince or SPI's Damocles Mission.

Closing Thoughts
After a quarter century on this site and nearly 12,000 plays, the biggest realization isn't how much the hobby has grown, but how the table itself remains a constant time machine. Whether we're stepping onto a hex-mapped arena from 1977, navigating the Cold War, or exploring a brand new alien horizon in Vantage, the magic is always the same. Games give us an excuse to gather, to laugh, to scheme, and to share stories that linger long after the box is put away. Here's to another twelve months of rolling dice and making memories with great people.

by Marinxbm

An item RPG Item: Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game Starter Set has been added to the geeklist [Downtown Toronto] Haunted Meeples in D6 No-Ship Math Trade - Oct 31, 2026

by chicaacappella

Related Item: Heckna! Campaign Setting

My husband and I would love to join! Lor M. and Josh S. :)

by Tuari

Just listed! Just listed!

by dagopher

Susan, thank you for being prepared for the parking lot change. It could have been really bad, but I think it was smooth.

by Tuari

An item Board Game: Legacy of Dragonholt has been added to the geeklist BGG.CON Virtual Flea Market 2026

by TrishaGold

Yes, you may, Peter. Thank you for sharing.
*gives back hat*

——————————

A beeping sound blares through the bridge as all your attention shoots towards the main console, where a hologram message appears.

Warning! Important service message incoming.
Sunday is almost over in my time zone, but knowing it has just started for some I'm leaving this open until 'tomorrow'.
I will be back with a roll call soon.
End of service message. Broadcast ended.

by Whymme

The GM decided to have a sandbox campaign, but any lead we picked up led to nothing. At a point where we had nothing else to do, my character brought forward his personal goal; finding the pirates that had murdered his family. Because the rest had nothing to do, they joined my character in nis quest. Until that trail also led dead.

In the WFRP campaign I’m running now, the older brother of one of the PCs is the bad guy of the campaign; he put a curse on a girl in the village, and later was involved in the opening of a chaos gate. In the original The Enemy Within campaign, the PCs find the body of someone who looks exactly like one of them, but for reasons I decided to have it be the brother of one of the PCs instead, among others in order to explain why the two look alike.
Only, the PC in question stated that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with his brother, and does not want to find and arrest him. Sigh. Fortunately, two other PCs do want to catch him.

I think that one right way to do this is to create a general campaign goal and characters’ personal goals in tandem. Or at least let the one(s) be inspired by the other(s). That way, pursuing personal goals and pursuing the campaign goal can go hand in hand.

by Scott308

Related Item: Black Powder and Brimstone Core Book

Here is a description of Tales from the Tape Deck:

Vol 2 Dawn without a Coffin
By Ahmed Suffety

Tales from the Tape Deck, where each adventure is inspired by a music playlist from a specific genre, and the playlist itself serves as a timer for your game.
Volume 2: Dawn without a Coffin is a blood-sucking pointcrawl through 1700s New Orleans. As a party of vampires, you return from a hunt to discover your coffins have been stolen. Fend off pirates, monks, and feral vampires before sunrise burns you away.

Tales from the Tape Deck is a mashup of ruthless, fast-paced, old-school gameplay and a narrative-forward approach. For fans of Mork Borg, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Shadowdark