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.)
What are your favorite little known games?
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
Even though I’ve not played either for far too long I absolutely love Hell 4 Leather and Remember Tomorrow. Two great and compact games that hit the nail on the head in terms of getting the genre feels they’re aiming for. With Remember Tomorrow I especially love how you can build an expanding setting through serialised stories that loosely overlap without necessarily following on from one another. Very much in keeping with Gibson’s original Sprawl novels.
4 Likes
I don’t think it ever saw print, so The Unofficial HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING Roleplaying Game deserves more love. The players are screenwriters, locked in a room and told they have to come up with a three act screenplay for a Highlander sequel. Never saw Highlander? Saw it, but only have vague memories of the film? Doesn’t matter… the clock’s ticking.
The GM plays a studio exec who keeps interrupting with more script demands and notes and anything said aloud becomes canon and enters the screenplay immediately. Once time is up, players take turn acting out/improving scenes from their screenplay. And finally, everyone is asked if their screenplay is more or less stupid than the actual Highlander sequel.
Then the Wikipedia summary of Highlander II is read aloud, and we see if anyone’s answers change.
Playing this game at New Mexicon was a laughing-'til-you’re-crying revelation for me.
10 Likes
Dawn of Worlds - cross between a game and worldbuilding toolkit. Designed for groups of players to collaborate on creating a fantasy world for RPGs or other fiction.
My D&D 5e group used it to make our campaign world and it’s been terrific. I think having played buy-in to the campaign world as well as the characters really enhances the overall experience.
3 Likes
There’s a game, famous in indie design circles circa 2009-10, called Ghost/Echo. It’s not much talked about anymore because the author, John Harper, went on to create the new hotness, BitD. I wish more people played Ghost/Echo, and took design cues from it. It’s my favourite game, my favourite desgn. I love it because of the simplicity of Otherkind dice, the oracle lists, the story-gaminess, the visual aesthetic, and the setting possibilities. I think it’s a masterpiece of minimalist game design.
9 Likes
I’m going to rhapsodise a little more about G/E. I really think it was a missed opportunities in the history of indie game design. Not much came out of it at the time except a few enthusiastic hacks. But nothing lasting has happened because of it in the design space, which I think is a shame. It’s the game I always want to play, and the one I am trying to design around.
2 Likes
My favourite little-known game is Svart av kval vit av lust by Simon Pettersson, which is, unfortunately, not published in English except in a thread on Story Games. (I’m leaning in to the game hipster vibe 
) It’s about vampire politics and has been responsible for some of the most intense roleplaying experiences I’ve ever had!
At my gaming group we play Ghost/Echo fairly regularly, as it’s an excellent one shot and works well with brand-new players!
We also did a game design jam recently at which three out four games notably borrowed from it… So there’s hope for it still…
2 Likes
Yeah, Svart av kval is supposed to be really cool. Maybe I should see if Simon would let me do an English version of that one too
4 Likes
I strongly support this idea, especially as Story Games will go offline soon!
I’ve been running the game from some scribbled notes I took on the rules after playing it once with a visiting Swede, which is rather in the spirit of the game, but not very practical…
What are some of those mechanics?