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Showing posts from March, 2025

Actual Play: 10 Days in Hospital, a journaling game

Welcome to 10 Days in Hospital , a one page journaling game about being stuck in the hospital over ten days after an emergency operation. This game in particular stands out to me because when my mom was in the hospital after her stroke, she was still alive for 10 days before we finally pulled her off life support. This game is emotional, and deals with themes of the hospital , surgery , loneliness , pain , medication , and helplessness .  For the purposes of journaling I have played this game in one sitting, completing all 10 days and the final check and written it all down for you here. Please check out the game and support the creator! The game is pay what you want, with all proceeds going to Doctors without Borders, though you can pick it up for free as well. Premise After an examination, you've been referred to the hospital for an operation.  1. How do you feel about going to the hospital? Honestly, I'm nervous going. I don't like staying in the hospital long term, even...

Monster of the Week - One Shot

You can find the system here . The game ran on March 1, 2025. For starters, here is the pitch I sent my players:  Welcome to Slade Corp, a monster hunting division out of Central Texas. Your jobs, as you understand them, is to track monsters and relocate them back to their natural habitats or a wildlife preserve suited for their care. This case however, is a doozy. A large radius of people have reported hauntings on a scale you've never seen before, and you're worried this is beyond your scope. I thought the idea of a monster relocation service was interested and decided to expand from there. This storyline was constructed almost completely off the cuff. I decided on the monsters of the drekavac and La Llorona because of the German and Mexican populations in Central Texas. Yes, the drekavac is Slavic, but I couldn't find a good German ghost story in short notice, so we had to pivot slightly. The story ended up moving away from what I initially planned, but that w...

Thirsty Sword Lesbians - One Shot

You can find the system here . This game ran on February 28, 2025. So for starters, here is the premise I pitched to my players: You have come to the Grand Duke's ball in search of answers - for your hometown, your scorned love, your estranged fiance, who knows - and you're certain that this night will come to blows. Design a cool sword and a feisty character and get ready to flirt and cross swords. This was a more open ended plot line inspired by the Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts quest from Dragon Age: Inquisition. We ended up playing with three players instead of four due to a last minute cancellation, but it worked out better that way in the end. Thirsty Sword Lesbians is an interesting system to me because it is both heavily up for interpretation and also provides ideas and ways of interpreting the system that make it very narrow. I think the big one for me is how confusing the Strings system is for me; I understand it in theory but my long-running game also runs in t...