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. This one is about why, and what it looks like when you apply the same discipline outside a bracket, at the table, in your design work, in the way you talk about games you love. 

 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.

Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Under the Floorboards vs Mausritter

 

NSR Lane Final

Who doesn't want to play a tiny creature hunting for matches in a study, trying not to get caught by the family cat? Under the Floorboards puts you right there. Mausritter puts you in the same basic situation and hands you a magic sword.

Both games knocked out higher seeds to get here. Under the Floorboards sent Cairn home in round one. Mausritter edged out Mothership. Two different takes on tiny adventures in a big world, and two very different ideas about what the table needs to make that work.

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Under the Floorboards

The scouting phase is still the thing that sets this game apart from everything else in its lane. You build a mental map before you go in. Then the space surprises you. The gap between the plan and the reality is where the game lives, and no other dungeon game I know manufactures that gap as reliably.

The cozy register keeps doing work. Small stakes produce real tension because the creatures living them are so vulnerable. A flooded cellar is a catastrophe. A cat in the hallway is a boss encounter.

Writing a supplement for UtF taught me what the game is asking of its designers. A room for UtF needs description, complications, obstacles, changes over time, and goals. It's a toybox for the Narrator, layered and alive. The game is fundamentally about the place.

I'd go back to this game with new tools now. Years of running narrative games have given me a sharper eye for complication and escalation. I know things about pacing and reincorporation that I didn't know in 2019. The study with the cat and the missing matches is still waiting. I want another run at it.

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Mausritter

The faction system remains the game's quiet infrastructure. Factions pursue their own agendas, create pressure the players didn't generate, and make the world feel like it exists between sessions. That's harder to build than it looks.

The magic system compounds across play in ways that keep sessions surprising. Spells as items, items as spells, recharging as a decision point: it rewards players who pay attention to what they're carrying.

Writing two collections of magic items (here and here) for Mausritter taught me what that game is asking of its designers. Mausritter needed fuel: objects that spark adventure, that players pick up and carry and use and argue about. The game is fundamentally about what you find. Put enough interesting things in the world and the fiction generates itself.

A crew of adventurer-mice outfitting themselves for the cats of Zyan (hat tip to Ben Laurence) is the campaign I keep turning over in my head. The faction system and the magic items and the sheer weight of a strange city at that scale: it's all there waiting.

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The honest case for the loser

Mausritter is the better game for a campaign. The faction tooling, the magic system, the way the world accumulates pressure between sessions: all of it compounds over time in ways UtF isn't built for. If you want to run six months of mouse adventures with real stakes and a living world, Mausritter is the answer. The cats of Zyan aren't going anywhere.

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The pick

Under the Floorboards, and the designer lens tipped it. What UtF asks of its Narrators and its supplement writers is a deeper engagement with space and place than Mausritter requires. That depth produces something I keep wanting to return to and push harder. Whichever of these I play next, I'll borrow tools from the other. But the study is calling, and the cat is somewhere in the hallway, and I want to find out what changed while we were planning.

That's my pick. Who got robbed? Tell me in the comments.

Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - Kingdom v Toon - Others Lane Final

 

No one dies, they just fall down. No Dice, No Masters. An industrial-sized box of ACME mayhem against a thinking game about a society's attempt to survive.

Both games knocked out stronger seeds to get here. Kingdom sent Crash Pandas home. Toon edged out FATE Accelerated on a banana peel. Two games with almost nothing in common except that they both belong in this bracket.

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Toon

Toon is about choosing the funniest thing you can do in the moment and running as hard and fast as you can in that direction. That's the whole game. The rules exist to keep the momentum up and get out of the way of the chaos.

The contagion is real. New players catch it fast. The zaniness is self-explaining in a way that most RPGs aren't, and the table energy it generates builds into something genuinely memorable. 

The new edition is reason enough to revisit it. A game this fun deserves a fresh audience, and it holds up.

I keep thinking about introducing my grandson to this one. It won't be his first RPG, but I think he'll latch right onto it. A game that can reach across generations and land without explanation is doing something most games can't.

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Kingdom

Kingdom is about exploring questions and communities. The conflict isn't between PCs and monsters or NPCs. It's between ideas. That's a harder game to sell in a sentence, and a more rewarding one to play across a campaign.

The no-randomizer design keeps coming back to me. When there's no dice to hide behind, what the characters say and do carries all the weight. The clarity that produces is unlike anything else in this bracket.

We're wrapping up a Kingdom campaign now, and I'm already half-tempted to bolt it into the faction play in my Arden Vul and Stars Without Number campaigns. The Voidsong Collective is out there somewhere, navigating its own crossroads and crises, and Kingdom is the perfect engine to find out what happens to them off stage.

That possibility, Kingdom as living infrastructure for games that are already running, is the most exciting design idea I've taken away from this tournament.

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The honest case for the loser

Kingdom is going to see more play at my table than this pick suggests, probably as the backbone of faction play in my SWN campaign. The way scenes accumulate into crossroads and crises, the weight that comes from removing randomizers, the clarity about what actually matters: all of it bleeds into every game that comes after it. If your table likes to ask hard questions about what a community is and what it costs to keep one together, Kingdom is the answer. This pick is about what works at my table right now. At another table, the result might be different.

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The pick

Toon, and it came down to my grandson. 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 Kingdom can't touch. Kingdom is the more sophisticated game. Toon is the more joyful one. Right now, joy wins.

I'd love to hear what works at your table. Tell me in the comments.

Tabletop Sweet Sixteen - AD&D v Shadowdark

 

AD&D 1e is the great-grandfather of everything else in the sweet sixteen: crunchy, sprawling, and alive in ways that modern players often miss entirely.

Shadowdark is modern D&D trimmed down, lightened up, and given a grimy old-school wash. It really hums at the table.

The oldest game in the bracket against the newest. One built the toybox. The other figured out how to ship it lighter.

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AD&D 1e

The system tries to do everything, and what it didn't cover out of the box arrived month after month in Dragon Magazine. It was an extraordinary time to start gaming. The fiddly bits accumulated into something you could grab and play with, keeping the parts that mattered to your table and leaving the rest in the book. Weapons versus armor class might never have come up at your table. Domain level play might have been the whole point. The game was different everywhere it landed.

The ease with which AD&D absorbed science fantasy still impresses me. Gamma World crossovers, technology rolls, figuring out how a laser pistol worked in a world of swords and spells. The game had an appetite for everything and the chassis to hold it.

Domain play remains one of the great unrealized promises of modern D&D. A high-level fighter attracting followers, building a castle, developing the land around it: that's a whole second game waiting inside the first one.

Wilheim the Paladin fell from grace consorting with the wrong companions. His god came to him in a dream and gave him a quest: take the foul cloak to the sea's teeth three days east, wash it in the water, burn it with wood carried from the ruined shrine. Bring one companion pure in heart and true. Wilheim chose Wulfgang, the guard dog. He fought goblins and a hagborn and barnacle-crusted skeletons rising from the waves. He burned the cloak. He heard his god's voice again that night. He rode home. That quest ran on the AD&D chassis and couldn't have happened anywhere else.

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Shadowdark

The roll to cast mechanic isn't unique to Shadowdark, but the implementation is good and the pressure it creates is real. Spellcasters make decisions differently when the spell might not come.

The old-school wink is there without being overwhelming. Play a goblin spellcaster. Feel the lethality accumulate. The OSR pressure is on, but delivered in a way a modern player can understand without feeling ambushed by save-versus-die.

That restraint is the game's real achievement. It knows what it is and doesn't oversell it.

Our opening sessions of Shadowdark went through the entire set of pre-gens in a couple of sessions. The lethality arrived fast and without apology. We started over with new characters and kept going. That willingness to start over, and the lightness that makes it feel fine rather than punishing, is Shadowdark working exactly as intended.

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The honest case for the loser

Shadowdark does something AD&D genuinely can't: it gets a modern player to the table fast, running old-school pressure, without a week of rules reading first. The pre-gen massacre in our opening sessions felt earned rather than arbitrary, and that's a harder trick to pull off than it looks. If you want to introduce someone to what OSR play actually feels like without handing them three hardcovers and a stack of Dragon magazines, Shadowdark is the answer.

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The pick

AD&D 1e, and thirty years of memories made it inevitable. Shadowdark is a better on-ramp. AD&D is a better destination. The toybox, the domain play, the appetite for everything from dungeon crawls to planar quests to Gamma World crossovers: all of it adds up to a game that shaped everything that came after it, including Shadowdark. Wilheim and Wulfgang walked to the sea's teeth and back on this chassis. That's not nothing. That's everything.

New zine: It's Worse Than That! (Devil's Bargains)

The second volume of my GM training zine series is out today.

It's Worse Than That! (Devil's Bargains) focuses on a single technique: how to put a real, costly choice in front of your players and mean it. Devil's bargains show up across a lot of game traditions, from Forged in the Dark to Trophy to old school play. The moment when a player does something unexpected and you need a consequence that fits the fiction, costs something real, and gives you material to build on later: that's the move this zine is built to help you practice.

Dougal on the Trophy Discord saw the sampler and put it well: "Devil's bargains can be tough when you're not feeling inspired and somehow tough to explain too." Worked examples, practice scenarios, and a clear framework for exactly those moments.

Vol 2 is $3. If you already own Vol 1 (Night Moves), you pay $2. Both volumes together are $4 as a bundle.

https://mountainfoot.itch.io/its-worse-than-that-spring-2026
https://itch.io/s/183782/its-worse-than-that-is-better-in-a-bundle

Thanks for reading.