Proposed short-block games
This page is for games that are on offer for the next short block. The Proposed Long Block games are on a separate page. If ideas in here sound interesting to you, please contact the GM in question.
These are the proposed short block games for Block 2: 20 May 2025 – 3 June 2025. Because many short-block games are organised ad hoc on the night, this is necessarily incomplete.
Week 1
(Including pitches for the next long block.)
GM Workshop
A workshop / discussion for anyone who wants help proposing or running a game at the club. The focus will be to get you offering then running a game in the next long or short block.
We'll cover all the basics of GMing, but I'd especially like to cover the techniques I use for running responsive, player-focused games. I probably won't cover how to prepare plots, scenes or encounters, but will go over the tools needed to support player creativity and choices.
Some key ideas are "play to find out" (there's no pre-defined outcome; playing the game will tell us how things turn out) and "prepare to improvise" (GM prep that's all about making sure you can rapidly work out what happens next, in response to whatever the players do).
Specifics we'll cover could include things like:
- "GM as bass-player" vs "GM as storyteller"
- how to identify the key questions embedded in a setting that make it interesting to play
- turning those questions into factions, people, agendas (at both player level and in-game level), and making sure they're fun to have in the game
- relationship maps, faction maps, and how to use them
- meaningful choices, what they are and how to spot them
- what's a Bang, how you identify them, and building up your bandolier of Bangs
- scene framing, spotlight framing, and other table management techniques
But it's over to you! I don't know what will happen. I'll react to what you throw at me!
- Proposed by: Neil Smith
- Participants: 1-10?
- Weeks: 1 and 3, as required. Note I won't be at the club in week 2.
The Rune Thief Finale
- Week 1: Sails in Flames
- Week 2: The Thief's Gambit
- Week 3: The Last Sacrifice
Something terrible is about to subvert the order of things in Midgardr, threatening the true foundations of reality and knowledge. Dare you face the Rune Thief?
We pick up where the party has arrived at a shipyard hoping to prevent the destructions of the vessels required to carry out the evacuation of Heill Hofn before the army of the Rune Thief attacks. Will the party succeed, or will the Thief's vanguard reduce the ships to ashes?
- Proposed by: Dev D
- System: D&D 5e
- Players: 3-7
- Weeks: 1-3
Red Shift
Extraordinary Jobs in an an Ordinary World
Life goes grinding on, everyone caught in the rat race, just trying to make it to a tomorrow that will still be pretty much the same as today. Wake, shower, grab a coffee, commute, sign in, work, gossip, lunch, meetings, rush hour, dinner, TV, bed. It's familiar, dull but unchanging.
Oh, except eight years ago an eldritch horror descended from space to bring misery and suffering to all humanity, but it got bombed out of existence, or nearly out of existence. The remains of Clinthil the Undying just won't, well die, they just keep endlessly regenerating. It's your job to inflict enough damage on them to keep them from resurrecting fully; Clinthil is huge though, so it's a full time job for several shifts of employees operating around the clock to keep It in check. You work on RED SHIFT. Have a nice day
Inspired by the animations of Luke Humprhis on YouTube & TikTok, this is a fly-on-the-wall documentary style sit-com: think "The Office" set in the SCP Foundation, or "Warehouse 13" in the style of "What We do in the Shadows." Strongly player-lead, your characters are the stars of the documentary and the cameras will follow you wherever you go. Frame your scenes, play out your conflicts and be a fan of the other characters.
- Proposed by: James Mullen
- System: Primetime Adventures
- Players: 3 to 5
- Weeks: 1-3
Ghostlight
You have been at sea about 3 weeks, fighting over the one remaining fresh apple, when a black-masted galleon appears silently out of the mists and pulls alongside your ship. Ghostlight has haunted the high seas for centuries, working its way into sailor folklore as an ill omen, a safe haven, a door to the afterlife or a harbinger of death. Now a ghostly figure invites you aboard. It seems like the famous ship of the dead has a problem only the living can solve.
A surprisingly whimsical tale originally written by The Arcane Library. Level 2 pregen characters provided. Beginners welcome. Expect 90% of the NPCs to have silly pirate voices.
- Proposed by: Becca C
- System: D&D 5e 2014
- Players: 3 to 5
- Weeks: 1-3
Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
"A whimsical slice-of-life tabletop rpg about a found family & their magical home" Set in, to quote the author, a sprawling house where it's always the 15th September, Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast is a nice cozy slice-of-life game. Players vote on and work through 1-hour scenarios, aided by the concierge, to help build the story of the Bed & Breakfast. These situations can be silly, serious, mature, childish, ominous, funny or anything else that the players decide.
With each scenario seeing the players play different characters and slowly fill the book with stickers, scrawlings, notes and pictures like a literal scrapbook, Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast is open to all looking for a break from the action packed focus of other major ttrpgs, those that want to play a Studio Ghibli film, or anyone that's new to ttrpgs and wants to dip their toes into something mechanically light and easy to play whilst also communicating what a TTRPG actually is.
- Proposed by: Alex C
- System: Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
- Players: up to 6
- Weeks: 1-3
As above, So below
There is a secret world, for those with the eyes to see it. The vast majority of humanity blindly swims in a potent psychic melange that suffuses us like a roiling sea of emotion and memory.
Occasionally, through the course of tragedy, trauma, stress, or extreme circumstances, this psychic field can go wild. Manifesting as malevolent presence known as Sins.
You have a single purpose in this world: to hunt down the psychically manifested Sins of humanity and execute them with extreme prejudice.
As above, So below.
This will be mission 2 for returning players, but new players are welcome. Cain is a roleplay-heavy system with dark themes.
TRIGGER WARNING: as “Sins” are made from Trauma and tragedy, this game will directly deal with such subject matter. I ask for player discretion when choosing this game.
- Proposed by: Tom E
- System: Cain
- Players: 3-6
- Weeks: 1-3
Otherworldly Visitors
A naturally created situation ends up with players who don't know each other that find themselves thrown into a world of magic... but all of them have Amnesia. Will they get used to the world around them? Who knows, but at least they have each other.
You find yourself amongst others within a deep, quiet cavern which has coincidentally eroded the final part of an unfinished summoning circle that summons each of you from various corners of other worlds. As you and your new allies progress, you can choose whether to be adventurous, cautious, inquisitive, or chaotic in your actions. You have full control over your story, as long as it fits within the programming of your companion, the System Voice, who will become your guide along the path of your own story.
Set on the continent of Aetrana, you must find a way to survive and your actions will change the course of events that take place in this world around you. Some may have repeating effects, some being one-time moments no other players will experience. Basically... no 2 campaigns are ever the exact same story once you make your way out of the caverns and the initial slightly-linear opening!
Content (Genre): Magic, Fantasy, Isekai, Amniesiac Characters, Drama, possible comedy events
- Proposed by: Keir M
- System: Hexcrawl-style DND-x-CYOA (with a fair blend of DnD 5e elements and races with aspects of originality)
- Die: D4, D6, D10, D20 (& maybe D100)
- Play Style: Dice & Player Choice
- Players: 4 to 5 (Plus additional "System_Novelist" role - an extra person who could log/write a story of the events that take place)
- Weeks: 1-3
Week 2
The Rune Thief Finale
Continuing from Week 1.
Red Shift
Continuing from Week 1.
Ghostlight
Continuing from Week 1.
Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
Continuing from Week 1.
As above, So below
Continuing from Week 1.
Otherworldly Visitors
Continuing from Week 1.
The Alchemist's Lantern Season 3
Please note that this game will START IN WEEK 2 of the short block, since I am away on week one.
Your rickety wagon trundles along a dirt road, through a forest as old as time itself. Gnarled branches, thick with autumn leaves, reach out for you like grasping hands within the ever-swirling mist. Up ahead light shines out from grimy windows beneath a creaking tavern sign.
It is the year 1672 and the world is undergoing a magical industrial revolution. New clockwork technologies are spreading across the land, while magically powered cloudships fill the skies, and the cogs of industry turn ever onwards. In this age of enlightenment, magic is becoming a science, codified and quantified by a host of arcane artificers…
But there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in their philosophies… You are travelling folklorists, peripatetic chroniclers, who wander from one small backwater to the next, trying to record the superstitions and practices of an age that is falling into myth… You know what lurks within the shadows: ghosts and demons, spirits and faeries, Dark curses, blood-stained histories, and the echoes of long forgotten pacts.
You know all too well that the old powers which the Church denies are just as dangerous as they ever were. They flourish amidst the disbelief of this less credulous age, for there are few now with the tools to face them… This game will by and investigative game of gothic horror set in a fantasy world with an Eastern European aesthetic. It will draw inspiration from Slavic and Germanic folklore, casting the PCs in a role similar to that of the Brothers Grimm. This game might play out over a couple of consecutive short blocks. I have ideas for three or four mysteries and there is plenty of potential for more, but I don’t know whether each will be an evening, or two, or an entire block. Each little ghost story will be fairly stand alone, so players can drop in an out as the desire takes them. There is a slight content warning for this one. Expect horror and mystery, harrowing ghost stories, grim fairy tales, and the shadows of transgressions both old and new… Ghosts arise from bloody events, so we won’t shy away from issues like murder, persecution, social injustice etc. I’ll provide some basic pre-gens which can be customised to suit the players.
- Proposed by: Alex Barrett
- System: RP heavy, combat light D&D
- Players: 2-6
- Duration: 2 weeks (from week 2)
- Location: In Person
Week 3
GM workshop
Continuing from Week 1.
The Rune Thief Finale
Continuing from Week 2.
Red Shift
Continuing from Week 2.
Ghostlight
Continuing from Week 2.
Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
Continuing from Week 2.
As above, So below
Continuing from Week 2.
Otherworldly Visitors
Continuing from Week 2.
The Alchemist's Lantern Season 3
Continuing from Week 2.