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 - Trophy Gold v Teeth

 

Trophy Gold is a game about doomed adventurers trying to pay off their debts without destroying themselves in the process. The question isn't whether the dungeon will cost you something. It's whether what you find is worth what it takes.

Teeth is a dark comedy horror game set in a terrible corner of eighteenth century England, built on a Forged in the Dark chassis and stuffed with memorable hooks.

Two games that both lean hard into doom and consequence, arriving at completely different tones.

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Trophy Gold

Characters are lightweight even by OSR standards. There's almost nothing between the player and the fiction, which means the fiction has to do the work, and it does.

The combat system is quietly beautiful. No hit points, no war of attrition: just a repeated roll that builds pressure without grinding. Every exchange matters because the math never lets you feel safe.

The hunt token economy is the kicker. Tokens move you through the dungeon mechanically or convert to treasure to pay down your debt. That double function means every decision has stakes beyond the immediate scene. You're always choosing between momentum and survival.

Near the end of our Public Access campaign, we played a session of Trophy Gold as a game within the game: the Latchkeys sitting around a table, playing hunters in a dungeon. The mechanics were light enough that it almost disappeared. The fiction drove everything. It felt less like a rules system and more like the Latchkeys actually playing the game.

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Teeth

The Forged in the Dark heritage brings real weight to every roll. Player agency is respected, consequences are meaningful, and the dice never feel arbitrary.

But the setting is the reason to play. Eighteenth century rural England rendered as dark comedy horror produces a tone that's genuinely hard to find anywhere else. Grim and funny and horrible, sometimes in the same sentence.

The Night of the Hogmen quickstart alone is worth the price of entry. The hooks are immediate, the premise is ridiculous in the best way, and the whole thing runs with tremendous energy.

From a carriage crash in a thunderstorm to a mad dash across a flooding countryside, the PCs in Night of the Hogmen lurched from one misadventure to the next. The session ended with the party trapped in a burning church, fighting off a herd of marauding hogmen. That's Teeth in one image: catastrophe building on catastrophe, and everyone at the table grinning.

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The honest case for the loser

Trophy Gold does something Teeth genuinely can't: it gets completely out of the way. The hunt token economy and the pressure-without-attrition combat system are genuine design achievements, and the game within a game memory is one of the stranger and more satisfying things I've done at a table. If you want mechanics that disappear into the fiction, Trophy Gold is hard to beat.

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The pick

Teeth, and I want to be honest that it took some thinking, some remembering, and maybe a little dreaming to get there. Trophy Gold is a more elegant game. But Teeth is a more joyful one, and that counts for something. The hogmen, the burning church, the flooding countryside: it all adds up to a game that generates stories with a specific, ridiculous, horrible energy I keep wanting to return to. That's enough.

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A related note

Trophy Gold's & Teeth's (FitD) devil's bargain mechanic is one of the things that made them stick with me long after this matchup. That tension between what you want and what it costs is a skill at the table, not just a design feature. I've been working on a zine that isolates exactly that move and gives you ways to practice it. It's Worse Than That! Devil's Bargains is coming this weekend. Keep an eye out if that sounds useful.

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That's my pick, and I won't pretend it was easy. Who would you have chosen? Tell me in the comments.