Weave is my favorite because I love the idea of clothing based magic. Also, it includes a lot of complexity in such a little game. Multiple factions! Exploring different cultures! Examining what it means to be a tourist!
What are your favorite little known games?
8 Likes
Forsooth! Even though it was a Game Chef winner, I’ve only ever heard of one other person play it. I’ve run it a whole bunch of times (even a live action version) and it has my favourite way of representing characters ever.
5 Likes
By Hook or By Crook is, more or less, playing The Prisoner by way of Cthulhu Dark. I’ve never seen anyone online talk about this game, but that’s a pairing of two things that I love, that go great together.
Vermin Gods by Jay Iles does some really cool things with apportioning out authority over a scene, and seems like an interesting game in play.
I’ve not played either of those games, but they’re on my list of things to try.
9 Likes
Alienor by Maracanda - about life as one of Eleanor of Acquitaine’s waiting ladies. It is lovely game, with beautiful art and foregrounds interesting friendships and relationships between women. In fact I should get around to playing it again sometime!
16 Likes
I’m a fan of two two-player games: Cold Soldier (oop as far as I know) and Showdown (criminally under-loved, but still in print).
4 Likes
I love Spindlewheel! It uses the same format as a tarot reading, in that gameplay is pretty much focused on free-associating a story out of the themes of the cards and their placement in the spread. It has a unique rhythm to it that’s really refreshing.
9 Likes
SkipJack by Leo Marshall. A game about character creation. You discover new things about your protagonist as you play out scenes.
6 Likes
I love Immortal: the Invisible War. It’s a mess of nineties-style trenchcoats, terrible mechanics and pretentious setting material. It’s probably essentially unplayable (though I have played it a few times). I just really love the ideas in that game, and want to write a tribute to it one day.
(In fact I’ve already run a hack of Exalted - a game I do not like - reskinned as Immortal, because I love it so much.)
9 Likes
I’m unbelievably excited about @Nickwedig’s game Rusalka, which is really clever and good. You play both murderous mermaids and the poor, doomed villagers who have to deal with them. Elegiac and sad and oh so good.
Matthijs Holter’s game Draug II is also amazing. You play rural Norwegians in 1800, on the cusp of modernity but not … quite … there yet. It’s a fascinating lateral expansion of the core concepts behind Archipelago.
Mark Vallianatos’ Heads of State: Nine Short Games About Tyrants is brilliant and epic, hitting a sweet spot for me between historicity and genuine innovation in form.
13 Likes
I always thought Black Seven had some clever ideas and solid take on the Splinter Cell, stealth shooter genre.
4 Likes
One of my favourite OSR games is Pits and Perils. (I have a short review on my blog.) Unlike many other OSR games it doesn’t start with D&D and move on from there. Instead, it feels like a game that could have developed instead of Original D&D in 1974. It’s all 2d6 rolls and feels like an RPG coming out of a world of war gaming. Really well done and evocative! A fun simple game to play and teach. (Their other games are cool too.)
12 Likes
Malcom Craig’s Hot War. The setting is bleak and horrible and full of factional and inter-party conflict. The rules drive that.
9 Likes
Rafael Chandler’s gonzo demonhunting gorefest Pandemonio for being a gonzo demonhunting gorefest.
Chad Underkoffler’s Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies was a delight. A nice high fantasy setting with a fun system full of duels, magic and skyships. Good times.
6 Likes
More that have come up as I have been thinking about this.
Punk’s Been Dead Since '79 is a game about discovering yourself in a terrible punk scene in the middle of nowhere Midwest.
7 Likes
WHAT. How does this exist and how has no one told me about it?
I’m not sure if it qualifies as little known, but I just discovered and fell in love with Elizabeth Chaipraditkul’s Familiars of Terra.
It is a mix of fantasy-science fiction type setting where each person has an animal familiar. You are a Seeker, trying to help people and the land recover from a devestating war. The world has advanced tech like cyborgs, but a lot of weapons were locked down after the war so it feels like a mix of tech levels.
The game hits a balance I love and rarely find of idealism/fun mixed in with some serious themes. The world has some twisted, dark elements, but you focus on empathy and compassion and rebuilding.
Also, I mean, you create basically any animalkin familiar you want with special powers, so that’s fun.
5 Likes
This is a true oldie, but I have fond memories of Psi World, an RPG published by Fantasy Games Unlimited back in 1984.
I really like my game Conjure Hagalaz 
Every game i’ve run the players enjoyed, however due to the lack of kickstarter it has successfully flown completely under the radar. Huzzah!
For other games… hmm Witch is Dead by Grant Howitt.
3 Likes
Red Markets by Caleb Stokes, of the RPPR podcast.
It’s a poverty simulator, a game of economic horror where the world ended but the rent is still due. This game gives your characters a reason to go into those ‘dungeons’ (in this case, the infested dangerous regions of the Loss) and bring back the loot, and gives you a reason to keep on doing it till you buy yourself and the ones who depend on you a better life - or until debt, danger and death brings you crashing down.
A wonderful mechanic for finding jobs and negotiating contracts, a crunchy system that abstracts enough to keep it fluid and tracks enough to keep it meaningful, RM provides for excellent tensions that go beyond mere hit points or sanity trackers. When the job goes wrong, do you cut your losses or double down? You’re not a party of heroes, you’re co-workers in a hostile environment.
Mainly I love that the gear/resource management is just crunchy enough to be fun and light enough to never get in the way - and that finally, a game where ‘money units’ actually mean something beyond buying sick loot. Got to save for Retirement, as people don’t get old by going over the wall…
My hope is to run a 5 part mini-campaign on the Gauntlet at some point 
My favourite AP of all time is the Fallen Flag campaign I linked above, but for a shorter, funnier listening experience there’s also theOne Shot Podcast run.
6 Likes
Obscure Games I loved reading:
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A Dirty World (really evocative mechanics for noir games and a really different implementation of the ORE - One Roll Engine system)
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Wolf-packs and Wintersnow - OSR meets Ice age setting meets resource management for your tribe
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Comrades - fascinating revolution themed PtbA game
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Perfect, Unrevised - a radical V for Vendetta / Brazil / dystopian alternate reality Victorian age game about fighting fascism after you are labeled a “criminal” meanwhile also playing the law
*Uncanny Echoes looks great! So many unusual but simple mechanics that add up to a pretty unusual game! -
Perfect, Unrevised - looks amazing if you play with the right group!
Obscure Games I loved playing
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Not sure if this is obscure enough for this list but Mekton Zeta was an anime blast in the old days
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Clerics in the San Jenaro Quarterly Game Digest is a blast - you play a team of OSR clerics trying to save the asses of your idiotic NPC party. Tons of fun!
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Mothership - I think this is still considered small time even though it won 2 Ennies… Such an atmospheric OSR. I have really enjoyed running this game for the Aliens feel and carte Blanche allowed to create any sort of weird space effects. The Dead Planet supplement is super creepy and has a fun way to create abandoned ships. It was my vote for best supplemental of the year.
2 Likes