From "want to read" to "want to play"

I'm posting this here instead of the Games Tavern because it's not a specific pitch for a specific game...yet.

Late last year I stumbled upon this "New Year, New Me RPG challenge" promoting you to make one character for every day of January for a game you'd like to play. I decided to use it as fuel to read through a bunch of rulebooks I've been meaning to check out, so I left out all the systems I was familiar with and went for 31 new games.

Almost at the end of the challenge now, the list of games I wanted to read has turned into a list of games I want to play. Prime candidates are Spire: The City must Fall, Heart: The City Beneath, Sigmata: This Signal Kills Fascists, RuneQuest, Eclipse Phase and Stars Without Number.

As a secondary option, I have those I call "medieval fantasy alternatives" like Castles & Crusades, Midnight, Hackmaster, For Coin & Blood, Shadow of the Demon Lord, maybe even Knave or Mörk Borg.

Curious if there's any interest to put together a group for any of those, initially as a one shot to test the waters at least.

Oof, reading a system a day and making a character in it sounds like a huge task 😄

I heard good things about Heart and would be curious to check it out because of that. I have no idea what it actually even is, though

That sounds like a massive undertaking but good for you for attempting it. I have a physical copy of Mork Borg and would be interested in a game using that system if that ends up happening.

It is a huge task indeed, worthy of its name as a challenge. Though to be fair, sometimes I tend to skip the pages about the setting, maybe the combat and dice rolling parts too if I'm in a rush.

Heart kinda goes hand in hand with Spire, since it's from the same company in the same world. There's this miles-long Spire that used to be a dark elf city but is now conquered by high elves and PCs portray the drow resistance. Lots of grim stuff, espionage, tough choices etc. Heart is about crawling into the tight spaces underneath the Spire (as human, high elf, drow or gnoll) in search of the eponymous Heart, a mysterious and likely eldritch thing. Both have some great artwork if you want to look it up and Heart especially, looks and feels a lot like Darkest Dungeon.

Mork Borg really has me puzzled if it actually plays ok or if it's all flash and aesthetics without much substance to it. Would be interested to give it a spin, thanks for stopping by and I'll keep you in mind if it does come up.

I love gnoll (as the players in my Death of the Old World game might know since I made them one of the "main" races alongside the more traditional ones xD)

I really need to check into Heart one of these days

There are a few games that have been played in RL on Youtube if you are curious for Mork Borg.

Oh I'm aware, I've watched such videos for pretty much every game I mentioned. My brain works in such a way it needs to see a sample/pregen character to understand a game's character creation process and a sample adventure or gameplay video to understand game mechanics and what players might typically do in this game :D

I meant personal, hands on experience

I would love to play in a Spire or Heart game.

And I heard many good things about Stars Without Number and Mörk Borg, so I'm quite curious.

I like the settings of RuneQuest, Eclipse Phase but I fear the systems would be way too heavy for my tastes.

(also Forged in the Dark games but they are not in the OP and I think it would be harder to frame position & effect effectively in a PbF game)

Regarding Stars Without Number: Worlds Without Number (the fantasy version) will be coming out later this year. Kevin Crawford (game's author) is hoping to have the copy finalized by March 1st.