This is a work-in-progress page. Shout at me somewhere if you still see this text sometime in 2025.

I’ve split this into two parts, tabletop role playing games and tabletop strategy games. While they are clearly related, they are also quite different.

Role playing games

Dungeons & Dragons

As with so many people, Dungeons & Dragons was my first introduction into all things tabletop.

I’m currently in a long-running campaign with some friends where I play Torunn Skybreak, a swashbuckling and fast-talking bard, who is also this worlds equivalent of a wrestling superstar. Usually we play about once a month, but scheduling is hard, because being an adult sucks.

History

I have some very vague memories of hearing about it when I was a small child and trying to "play" by just writing down whatever stats and imagining stories. I don't remember using dice or anything. Or playing with someone else, I think I just did it to entertain myself. I should ask my parents if they remember anything about that, could make for a fun story.

Later, I started watching internet personalities play actual D&D with some oldschool VTT, using terrible voice chat and streamed in horrible quality. And it was the shit. Shout out to TheSpoonyOne and his Dethklok campaign! Being a teenager then, I of course had to replicate what I saw, and asked / convinced / forcibly drafted some friends.

Stars Without Number

The second game I play, although even less frequently, is Stars Without Number, an OSR-adjacent sci-fi game. It’s made by Kevin Crawford, who does a lot of super cool things, including multiple other Thing Without Numbers system. Check him out! He has lite versions of most of his rules available for free on DriveThruRPG

Shoutout to the Swan Song campaign on YouTube that got me interested in the system. Beware though, some people in that campaign are horrible or just difficult people, but there’s also Steven Lumpkin, who might be one of my favourite people in the space.

Strategy games

Warhammer 40'000

Fuck Game Workshop. Yeah, I got into building and painting miniatures through a friend getting me a Warhammer 40k starter set, but I learned very quickly what a greedy and dogshit company they are. Nevertheless, they should be mentioned here.

…

Also, the T’au are probably one of my favourite designs in all of sci-fi. God damn it.

Conquest: Last Argument Of Kings

I got into this Rank & File fantasy game by complete accident. A friend of a friend of my then-girlfriend-now-wife happened to be a Community Vanguard of Para Bellum and organized a tryout session at our local game store, just as they released the City States faction, which are kinda gearpunk ancient greeks, with beautiful artwork, and suddenly I had a box of them at home.

It is a super fun game, but I don’t play enough to really get the rather expansive ruleset into my brain, so it’s also still quite stressful to play. The rules are free, so if you are intererested, check them out here.

I currently own enough minis to make about 1 1/2 City States lists, so I don’t have much choice during list building, but we’re getting there! I’d say about 3/4 are even painted!

Conquest: First Blood

Buy one line of miniatures, use them for two very different games? Sign me up! This is the skirmish sized sibling to Last Argument Of Kings, and I think it is great! My usual TLAOK group is not really interested in First Blood, and my other friends are only just starting to get their warbands together, so I don’t have many chances to play currently.

The rules are free, so if you’re interested, check them out here.

One Page Rules

If you are interested in tabletop strategy games, but were always scared off by the rule systems, check this out! Free rules you can learn in a few minutes, and get playing with whatever minis you have laying around! There’s different systems for all kinds of game sizes. It’s almost too good to believe.

Go look at them, and if you like them, why not give them some support? I think projects like this need to be supported!

Also, apparently they have started writing short stories and more lore for their universes? I literally just saw this as I was writing this text, so I’m excited to dive into this as well!

Grimdark Future: Firefight

This is a skirmish sized game in the Grimdark Future universe. I’ve played several games with friends, and it’s excellent. We had several people go from not knowing a thing about the rules, to playing their first games and having fun in maybe 15 or 30 minutes.

You control single miniatures or very small units in alternating activations. Each activation is mostly just one of four actions. Attacking and defending is a single roll each. 1s always fail, 6s always succeed. It’s all so elegant and easy, and it’s fun!