Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Final - OSE v Public Access

I've been running this bracket for weeks, and I want to be honest with you before we get into it. I'm not neutral here. I'm currently running Public Access. I'm writing supplements for it. My own megadungeon, Beneath Ahknoor, is built on its Carved from Brindlewood chassis. I have more skin in this game than in any previous round, and you deserve to know that up front.

I still think the pick is right. But this is the one that cost me something to make.

The axes on the chart describe the kind of experience each game produces, not the quality of it. Both of these games are excellent. The question is what they're excellent at, and whether that matters to your table.

Old-School Essentials

OSE is the common language of OSR gaming right now. Trim, fast, clean enough to run from the page without translation, organized so that an entire class lives on a single spread. Character creation takes fifteen minutes and then you're playing. The ecosystem behind it is one of the strongest in the hobby: modules, settings, supplements, and a community writing new material every month. When you reach into that ecosystem, you reach into years of accumulated craft.

The blank slate on the World Presence axis isn't a weakness. It's an invitation. The GM and the dice build the world here, and what gets built belongs to the table that built it. That ownership compounds over time in ways that are hard to quantify and easy to feel.

A good OSE campaign runs for years. Characters die and are replaced. The dungeon remembers everything. Legends get made slowly, across dozens of sessions, by players who are changed by what they survived. If you want to build something vast and slow and accumulative, something that outlasts any individual character or story arc, OSE is the answer. Nothing else in this bracket does that better.

Public Access

Public Access hands you Deep Lake, New Mexico, in 2004, and the Latchkeys, and a mystery that nobody at the table knows the answer to yet, because there isn't one until you make it together. The writers room mystery system is still the most interesting design I've encountered for this problem: no canonical solution before play starts, everyone building the answer from what gets noticed and pursued. The Keeper support is extraordinary: phase structure, move guidance, detailed locations, side characters textured enough to feel real when they come back months later.

The World Presence spike on the chart is the honest read. Deep Lake arrives fully inhabited. The gaps are invitations, not absences.

Eight months at the table with the Latchkeys delivered payoff that compressed what a much longer campaign produces. The Licorice Beastie still limps. That's not atmosphere. That's what the system is designed to build, session by session, until it lands.

The honest case for OSE

This is the round where I have to work hardest, because OSE's argument is genuinely strong and I am genuinely compromised.

OSE won its semi-final on longevity. It beat Under the Floorboards because a game that sustains a decade of play deserves the nod over a game that peaks at a short campaign. That argument doesn't go away in the final. Public Access has a natural arc. OSE just keeps going. Six, eight, ten years of a living dungeon, a rotating cast, a community still writing adventures for it when you need something new: that's not a small thing to walk away from.

And here's the part I have to say out loud: the AD&D campaign I ran for six years produced some of the best table moments of my life. Kreega Two-men-tall. Maine the halfling thief. Those characters lived on an OSR chassis and couldn't have existed anywhere else. OSE is the refined version of the game that made those possible. There is a version of this bracket where that lineage wins the whole thing, and it isn't a wrong answer.

If your table wants to build legends across years of play, OSE is probably the better pick. I won't pretend otherwise.

The pick

Public Access. And here is the argument I'd make even if I weren't the person making it.

OSE beat Under the Floorboards on session shape, on the grounds that a longer campaign deserves the nod. But Public Access is also a long-form campaign game. The question isn't which one goes longer. The question is what you get when it ends, and how often you get there.

A Public Access campaign of eight or nine months produces a complete story with a climax the whole table helped build, a solved mystery, a Deep Lake that means something specific to everyone who was there. Then you can do it again. Six extraordinary nine-month campaigns in the time one OSE campaign runs isn't a lesser outcome. It's a different philosophy about what games are for.

I'd rather have better stories more often than longer legends less often. That's the preference the bracket was always pointed toward, and I followed it here even knowing I'm not a disinterested judge.

The series asked a question I thought was about game design. It turned out to be about what I actually want to be doing at the table. Public Access is the answer. Beneath Ahknoor is what happened when I decided to build in that direction.

That's the bracket. I'm glad we ran it. Tell me in the comments who you'd have sent through, and whether you think I got the final wrong.

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If the mystery system running through a dungeon sounds like your kind of game, Beneath Ahknoor is my Carved from Brindlewood megadungeon. The 0.5 playtest version is free, the 0.6 release is coming this summer, and the devlog is running through the development process. Find it at mountainfoot.itch.io/beneath-ahknoor. Patrons get free access to the paid releases when they drop.

This Week at the Foot of the Mountain (April 25, 2026)

The dungeon breathed back at us Monday night. Arden Vul has a way of doing that: you think you're making progress and then the fiction reminds you that the place has its own agenda. Thursday's Seven Sons session moved things forward in a different register, and I spent some time on Stars Without Number prep, which meant working on factions and brushing up on the rules for psionics.

That reading: I'm partway through Goblindom, a pre-release from the folks at Oddplan!, and I did a full reread of Gord Sellar's Something Tookish! in preparation for a proper review. Something Tookish! holds up beautifully on the second pass. Both reviews are coming in the next couple of weeks.

On the design side, Beneath Ahknoor's structural reorg is underway, about 10% through the text. It's invisible work until it's done, but it matters: tightening the connective tissue so the levels and the moves pull in the same direction.

The more interesting desk work this week was a Kingdom experiment, pre-work for an upcoming post on using Kingdom as faction infrastructure. The hypothesis: you can lift Kingdom's faction-play engine and run it as a standalone tool inside almost any campaign, without running Kingdom as written. The experiment mostly confirmed this. What surprised me was the depth of the result, though it came at a pretty steep cost. This isn't a direct replacement for lighter faction tools. It is great for strategic deployment. The wrinkles are worth a full post, and that's coming. But that's the kernel you can steal right now.

The Radar Chart has been getting some quiet use in the Sweet Sixteen posts, and a few readers have asked about it since the semifinals. If you've been looking at it: what shape does your current campaign make? That's a question that takes thirty seconds to think about and sometimes tells you something useful.

Speaking of the bracket: the final is Monday. Public Access against OSE. One is high-concept mystery, the other is the gold standard of old-school play. Which one do you trust with a new table? Drop the why in the comments.

Coming up: Monday is the final. Wednesday is the Something Tookish! review. After that we're into post-series territory, and I'll be shooting for a weekly-ish cadence.

Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Public Access v Toon

This matchup shouldn't exist. A multi-month horror campaign about young adults encountering horrible things in rural New Mexico versus a Warner Brothers cartoon short that runs until everyone falls down. The bracket did this on purpose and I'm not apologizing for it.

The radar charts are less a comparison than a Rorschach test. What you see in this matchup says something about your table. Public Access spikes on four axes: GM Scaffolding, Session Shape, Narrative Authority, and World Presence. Toon spikes on one. That spike is Tone, all the way to the right pole, pure play with no ambiguity, and it's a stronger argument than the numbers suggest.

Public Access

The writers room mystery system is still the engine everything else runs on. No canonical solution before play starts, everyone at the table building the answer together from what the players notice and pursue. The Keeper is the most supported in this bracket: phase structure, move guidance, adventure support, location details, side characters, and moments to bring them to life. All of it working together in a way that's genuinely different from traditional RPG tools and arguably more effective.

Character creation happens during a scripted Session One with the whole table in on the action. Prompts set up reincorporation that pays off across months of play.

A Public Access session feels like hanging out at night with your best friends telling ghost stories and spooking each other. Deep Lake arrives with texture and mystery. The gaps in the setting are invitations, not absences.

Eight months at the table delivered nearly as much payoff as a six-year AD&D campaign. That compression isn't an accident. It's what the phase structure, the mystery system, and the reincorporation prompts are all building toward, session by session, until it lands.

Toon

Toon is a zany animated chaos train. That's the whole game. Character creation is done in minutes, the first schtick lands inside ten, and nobody dies: they fall down and come back shortly after.

The Narrator leans on fond memories of Saturday morning mayhem more than the book's tools. Creating backdrops is easy because you don't need much plot to run a really fun game. The Acme catalog shows up when a Toon orders something and becomes part of the world. That's the collaborative worldbuilding system, and it's perfect.

Don't expect character growth. The same Toons can show up in multiple games, carrying their mallets and their spray cans and their absolutely unworkable master plans, unchanged and undaunted. That's not a design limitation. It's a design commitment.

I keep thinking about introducing my grandson to this one. A game that reaches across generations, lands without explanation, and turns a new player into a cartoon character inside of ten minutes is doing something most games can't. The mallet always works. The plan never does. Everyone falls down eventually.

The honest case for the loser

Toon's Tone spike is a genuine achievement. Pure play, no ambiguity, contagious fun that builds into something memorable at the table. The accessibility argument is real: walk right in, immediately funny, no investment required. A game that anyone can play and everyone enjoys is not a small thing. And "you can run any kind of game you want as long as it's a zany animated chaos train" is a design philosophy I have enormous affection for. At the right table, at the right moment, nothing else in this bracket touches it. There are so many adventures I want to run in Toon.

The pick

Public Access, and the Rorschach test lands differently depending on who's reading it. A table that wants one perfect evening of cartoon mayhem sees Toon's spike and knows immediately. A table that wants months of ghost stories and accumulated dread sees Public Access's four spikes and already knows. Both readings are correct. Mine is the second one. The ghost stories, the Licorice Beastie, the writers room, Deep Lake: all of it compounding across months of play into something that earns its payoff. Toon is the better game for one perfect evening. Public Access is the better game for everything that follows.

The mystery system is why Public Access wins this. It's also the design lineage I'm working in with Beneath Ahknoor, my own Carved from Brindlewood megadungeon. If that engine running through a dungeon sounds interesting, it's at mountainfoot.itch.io/beneath-ahknoor.

That's my pick. Who'd you have sent through? Tell me in the comments.

Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Semi-Final - OSE vs Under the Floorboards

Two well-tooled games with almost nothing else in common. OSE is a campaign chassis for years of dungeon delving. Under the Floorboards is an after-school special where getting eaten by the cat is technically on the table.

Both games scored identically on GM Scaffolding: lightweight but well-supported, purposeful without being prescriptive. That's where the overlap ends.

This article also marks the first appearance of RPG Description Radar Charts. I was looking for a good way to describe how a game feels in a consistent way. I was inspired by flavor-wheel tasting journals. 

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OSE

OSE hands you tools and procedures that will sustain a campaign well, backed by one of the strongest ecosystems in OSR gaming. Character creation takes ten to fifteen minutes and you're playing immediately. The scope can feel broad for a new player, but OSE is still the game I'd use to introduce someone to the D&D family. It avoids the system creep that weighs down other entries in that lineage.

The GM and the dice build the world here. The book hands you a blank slate by default, with richly realized settings available if you reach into the ecosystem. You could bend OSE toward pulp adventure or light science fantasy without much trouble. Horror, mystery, and supers would require more work than the system wants to do.

A good OSE session feels like a sword and sorcery story: exciting, purposeful, with room for whimsy or darkness depending on what the table brings. It's a fantasy game, and it does that one thing across a very long campaign.

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Under the Floorboards

Under the Floorboards has almost no friction. Two simple mechanics, three well-defined phases, and a setting that players inhabit immediately without explanation. You could hand it to someone who has never played an RPG and be in the scouting phase inside of fifteen minutes. The book hands you richly detailed locations: description, possible goals, obstacles, hazards, and complications layered in. You can play straight from the page on day one.

The scouting phase is where the table builds the world together: naming the location, placing obstacles, describing hazards. That shared authorship front-loads investment in a way most dungeon games skip entirely. Then the expedition tests what they built against what they actually find. The gap between the two is where the game lives.

The register is warm without being toothless. Getting eaten by the cat is on the table. For the most part, though, it's small creatures trying to make do in a big world, and that specific emotional frequency is something OSE can't replicate.

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The honest case for the loser

Under the Floorboards is the more immediately accessible game in this matchup, and the more fully realized one out of the box. The radar chart shows it: World Presence at 4 against OSE's 2 means UtF hands you a complete, inhabitable world before you've written a single note. The scouting phase creates investment that OSE never tries to manufacture. And the emotional register, warm, specific, quietly tense, is something that compounds across a short campaign in ways that stay with a table. UtF might get back to my table first. That's not nothing.

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The pick

OSE, and it comes down to Session Shape and scope. Under the Floorboards peaks at a short campaign. OSE peaks at years of play, a living ecosystem, and a community writing adventures for it every month. In a semi-final, the game that can carry a table across a decade deserves the nod over the game that produces one perfect kind of session. The little gems that a little less scaffolding unveils are still waiting. So is the study with the cat. OSE gets there first.

That's my pick. Who'd you have sent through? Tell me in the comments.

Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - A look back before the Final Four

 For the last bit I've been comparing some of my favorite games across 4 broad groupings. I've shared memories and insights. I've whittled it down to four.  I'll start the next phase of posts on Monday, April 20th. Before I get to that I wanted to share some other thoughts.

About the Sweet Sixteen

To refresh your memory, here's my original bracket with my results (and links so you can go read up on any matchups you missed).

OSR

• (1) OSE v (4) ICRPG
• (2) AD&D 1e v (3) Shadowdark
• Lane final: OSE v AD&D

NSR

• (1) Cairn v (4) Under the Floorboards
• (2) Mothership v (3) Mausritter
• Lane final: Under the Floorboards v Mausritter

Narrative

• (1) Public Access v (4) Kintsugi
• (2) Trophy Gold v (3) Teeth
• Lane final: Public Access v Teeth

Others

• (1) Crash Pandas v (4) Kingdom
• (2) Toon v (3) FATE Accelerated
• Lane final: Kingdom v Toon

Some of these surprised me when I sat down to write about them. I'm sure some of them surprised you too. I'd love to hear what you think I got wrong and why, and game that you'd have put into your own bracket.
I also want to write a bit more about some thoughts that I've had.  Which of these do you want to read about?

1. Kingdom as Faction Infrastructure - Kingdom is a no-randomizer game about communities navigating crossroads and crises. But what if the community isn't the main campaign? Running Kingdom as the off-stage engine for factions in Arden Vul or Stars Without Number might be the most interesting thing I took away from this whole bracket. I want to find out what the Voidsong Collective does when nobody's watching.

2.  What For a Game Reveals About It - When I wrote a room for Under the Floorboards, I built a toybox: description, complications, obstacles, changes over time, goals. When I wrote magic items for Mausritter, I built fuel. The game told me what it needed. That difference, UtF is about the place and Mausritter is about what you find there, turns out to be a useful lens for thinking about any game you're designing for. 
3.  The Mystery Mechanism Is More Portable Than It Looks  -The Carved from Brindlewood writers room doesn't care whether the mystery is a murder, a haunting, or a dungeon. No canonical solution before play starts, everyone building the answer from what they notice: that structure works wherever you put it. The More Than a Mystery jam proved it. Beneath Ahknoor is built on it. I want to think out loud about where else it might go.
4. The Reddit Bracket vs My Bracket - If you polled the right communities, Shadowdark beats AD&D, Cairn beats Under the Floorboards, and FATE Accelerated beats Toon. My bracket diverges from that result in at least three first-round matchups. That gap isn't random. It says something about the difference between the discourse and the table, and I think it's worth naming.
5. The Honest Case for the Loser as a Format - Every post in the Sweet Sixteen includes a section that argues against the pick. That's not throat-clearing: it's the section that makes the pick land. A recommendation that doesn't acknowledge what it's leaving behind isn't worth much. 

 About Beneath Ahknoor

Working on the next release turned into a much bigger undertaking than I'd imagined.

I reworked how the Above Ground phase acts as a reflection of the change and loss that delving brings. I added a full retainer system that contributes to both tension and reputation. I built the Reckoning Move, a mechanic for reckoning with a level at the end of a delve cycle. And I sharpened the level through-line into four connected elements: the Saga, Entry and Re-entry Questions, Unlocking Questions, and the Reckoning Move. That line flows across multiple sessions, giving the table time to build out each level and what it costs the Adventurers.

I also ended up writing four new levels instead of the two I'd planned.

There's some polishing left, a few loose ends to tie off, and a substantial editing pass ahead. The rules now run to 70 letter-sized pages and around 25,000 words.

Two playtest games are lined up. One is with a group of four OSR and narrative gaming veterans from my table. The other is with a mostly 5e group who have spent time at my table as well. I expect to learn different things from each group, and I'm looking forward to finding out which of my assumptions were wrong.

I'd hoped to have the 0.6 release ready by the end of the month, but that's not happening. My revised plan is to release it in the summer.

About my other projects

The Awful Weekend On-Call

A couple of years ago, I wrote a solo RPG based on a terrible on-call shift as an IT worker. It was an act of catharsis.  Imagine my joy at finding a write-up on Reddit!

"Just finished a play of The Awful On-Call Weekend. What a blast. The game concludes either with you unemployed, in prison, or back at work on Monday. I was one circle away from getting arrested so I flipped the narrative and quit. But to end the game I got my character arrested for speeding. It was super fun, engaging, and just crazy watching my errors pile up one after another."

It doesn't get much better than finding something like that written about one of your creations. 

It's Worse Than That!

My latest volume of It's Worse Than That! helps GMs practice their improv skills with a series of scenes built around the Devil's Bargain mechanic. You don't have to play Forged in the Dark or Rooted in Trophy games to use this volume though. I wrote a post on itch about how the same kind of improv is used in OSR games.
Right now, I'm selling both volumes for $4 ($1 off of the combined cover price). If you're looking to strengthen your GMing chops, this is a good place to start.

Some things on the horizon

I'll be writing more about the Stars Without Number and Arden Vul campaigns as they get off the ground, and you can count on reports from both Beneath Ahknoor playtests. Beyond that, there are a few projects I'm itching to spend time on.

The monsters I wrote for Patreon are good, but they could be better organized and more useful at the table. A rewrite is overdue. I also have a short-form Carved from Brindlewood game that's been brewing in the back of my mind for a while, and a handful of solo games that are playable but not yet in publishable shape.

And then there's the rabbit game. It's a horror game about rabbits, and it's nearly done with design. I'm not ready to say much more than that, except that this one is good.

Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - AD&D 1e v OSE

 

OSR Lane Final

This one feels like a heavyweight championship all on its own. It's also a rematch, forty-odd years in the making, of the AD&D vs BECMI argument that split the gaming world in the early eighties. I was on the AD&D side then. I looked down my nose at Basic D&D because I already played Advanced D&D. The irony of where I've landed is not lost on me.

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AD&D 1e

AD&D 1e has a mini-game for almost everything. Figuring out the right set of rules for your table has always been part of the fun. THAC0 takes a lot of heat, but Weapon Speed Modifier and weapon type versus armor class were there too. Poison types, mining rates, construction costs: more options than you could keep in your head, and a specific pleasure in finding the combination that worked for your table.

That toybox is also a relationship. Decades of memories live inside those rules. Kreega Two-men-tall, the half-ogre fighter who rampaged through my Riverton Campaign. Maine, the spoon-flinging halfling thief from Hochheim, just concluded. Those characters ran on this chassis and couldn't have existed anywhere else.

AD&D rewards the kind of player who wants to go deep. The mini-games, the subsystems, the Dragon Magazine expansions: all of it is there for the table willing to dig.

I find myself looking back at AD&D the way you look at a place you grew up. The memories are vivid and the floorplan is still in my bones. I know where everything is, even the rooms I never used.

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OSE

OSE is slim, fast, and fun. The writing is clear and well organized, which is not something Gary Gygax was ever accused of. You can run from the page without translation, find what you need without hunting, and hand the book to a new player without apology.

The design choices compound over time. Customizable thief skill advancement from Carcass Crawler is exactly the kind of thoughtful addition that shows OSE isn't just a restatement of the old game. It's a refinement.

OSE is also the common language of OSR gaming right now. When the community writes adventures and supplements, this is the chassis they're writing to. That portability means everything you run in OSE connects to a living ecosystem of material.

I'm looking forward to rewriting some of my earlier campaign material into OSE. There are little gems waiting underneath the scaffolding, and I want to find them.

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The honest case for the loser

AD&D has a special place in my heart, and I find myself looking there for ideas more often than I expected. The mini-games, the subsystems, the sheer appetite the game had for everything: none of that goes away. If you want advanced play and don't mind the scaffolding, AD&D is still the answer. And if you're having fun and not hurting anyone, you're playing the right game the right way for you. That was true in 1979 and it's true now.

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The pick

OSE, and it comes down to where I am right now. Lighter systems, higher portability, and the promise of new memories crafted with friendlier rules. AD&D gave me Kreega and Maine and forty years of table. OSE is going to give me whatever comes next. The little gems that a little less scaffolding unveils are worth finding.

That's my pick. Who'd you have sent through? Tell me in the comments.

Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Public Access v Teeth

Narrative Lane Final

Two games that lean into horror with different approaches and excellent results. Both shine with tools for shared narrative building and rising tension. Their common heritage in Powered by the Apocalypse highlights the differences between them more clearly than any other matchup in this bracket.

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Public Access

The writers' room mystery system is still the engine everything else runs on. No canonical solution before play starts, everyone at the table building the answer together from what the players notice and pursue. That shared authorship produces investment that pre-written mysteries can't replicate.

What I've learned writing It's Worse Than That! material for Carved from Brindlewood games is what the system is asking of its Keepers. A Night Move scene needs dread, escalating personal cost, and a worst case that's worse than the player imagined. The following scene is from the IWTT! Winter 2025 volume:

The Latchkeys are sneaking around an empty fairground a couple of hours before dawn. Maia watches a skeletal figure rise from the bubbling depths of the Fried HoHo stand's industrial fryer as a cloud of rancid grease fogs the air. Its hollow eyes burn with cold hunger. The player wants to knock the awning supports out and trap Mr. Bones in the kitchen. The Keeper asks what happens if she fails. "I'll be trapped with the skeleton, swimming in hot grease." It's worse than that: Mr. Bones is going to kill her and turn her into a deep-fried minion.

That escalation structure is what Public Access runs on. And the mystery solving mechanism turns out to apply well beyond traditional mysteries. The More Than a Mystery jam explores that range, and so does Beneath Ahknoor, my own CfB megadungeon. The system is more portable than it looks.

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Teeth

The Devil's Bargain is the heart of what Teeth does differently. Where Public Access asks what happens if you fail, Teeth asks what you're willing to offer and who gets implicated by the offer. This scene is from the IWTT! Spring 2026 volume:

Something went into the drainage ditch at the edge of the village and hasn't come out. The smell suggests it has been using it for some time. Reverend Osswick Pale watches from his doorstep with an expression that suggests he knows more than he intends to say. Grusham Fell drops into the ditch and asks for a Devil's Bargain. What do you offer? How does the offer change if the creature has already taken someone this week? What offer implicates the Reverend rather than escalating the immediate danger?

The Clocks in Night of the Hogmen are beautifully drawn. The Vale is a wonderful sandbox. The moral weight that accumulates through Devil's Bargains produces a different quality of consequence than the CfB mystery engine. There's a time and a place for both of these games.

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The honest case for the loser

Teeth is an amazing game that I need to play more of. The hogmen, the burning church, the flooding countryside: that energy is specific and irreplaceable. The Vale is a rich sandbox with room for a long campaign, and the Devil's Bargain mechanism does things the CfB mystery engine doesn't try to do. The reader who thinks Teeth deserved to go further isn't wrong. Right now, at my table, it's not the pick.

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The pick

Public Access, and it comes down to the writers' room. The shared creation of the mystery, the way the mechanism applies to different kinds of problems, the dread that accumulates in a specific place and time: all of it keeps pulling me back. The Licorice Beastie still limps. Mr. Bones is still in the fryer. That's what Public Access does, and it's enough to win.

That's my pick. Who'd you have sent through? Tell me in the comments.