#10: Kids on Bikes (1st or 2nd ed.) is a fun system for what is (in /my/ head) the Encyclopedia Brown genre. i.e. teens (usually) solving mysteries in weird small towns. It's certainly a lot more flexible than that, adaptable to space, magic schools, the mind itself (cf. Dimension20). It's agile.

Hard Wired Island is the freshest take on cyberpunk I've read in a long time. The system does some interesting things: I think the mechanics around stealth & around social scenes are particularly interesting. How the game handles money is neat, keeping the -punk front & center. Table goal for 2026.

Committing to esoteric games... GURPS: The Prisoner. Each GURPS sourcebook is generally a fantastic precis of the particular genre, or in this case, the particular show. Not sure if I'd use GURPS to run The Prisoner now (something like Don't Rest Your Head maybe), but I'll damn sure use this book.

Band of Blades is what happens when FTL and Blades in the Dark and Glen Cook's Black Company all collide. There is an implacable foe pushing the PCs to keep moving, with branching objectives/opportunities a la FTL, and great military fantasy tropes. In my head, it's always winter.

Agon grabbed me with an idea I hadn't come across: PCs that are in competition while cooperating. Yes, everyone is working toward defeating the bad guys, but here there is value in reaping the most glory in doing so. The basic premise is mythological, but there are great hacks like Deathmatch Island

Because more people should be playing it: Swords of the Serpentine. The coreof Gums hoe--empowering PCs to solve mysteries--might seem out of place on the surface, but "Why are goblins attacking this village" is a mystery. "What is Strahd's fucking problem?" is a mystery. It works so well.

Sticking with Fate (I have a brand), there's iHunt, which answers the question 'what if supernatural predators also had to confront the existential horror of late-stage capitalism?' and where hunting monsters is just another gig-economy job, even if it does pay substantially better than DoorDash.

I think a lot of the popular games are going to get mentioned elsewhere, so I'll focus on the esoteric:
starting with War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus. Based on Fate Accelerated with an elevator pitch like "What if Game of Thrones, but everyone is Muppets." Interesting setting & cool mechanics.

"In fact, if the GM is good enough, no rules at all are *necessary*, and we can imagine Universes!"

A rulebook should help a GM (at whatever metric of 'Good') facilitate the stories it is designed to tell, and how well it does that is one of the ways I measure the quality of the game.

Experimenting with homemade bread again. Living my 2020 life.

"Deep Cuts," a juicy 100+ pages of systems and setting for Blades in the Dark from @johnharper.bsky.social is simply fantastic & destined to be indispensable.The last few pages, where the -reasoning- behind new systems is discussed are amazing. An embarrassment of riches you shouldn't do without.

Do a neurodivergent co-work with me while I Deconstruct Saltmarsh for a homebrewed D&D game! I'll be reorganizing & reworking things so they fit my style, and you can do the same! Day 1 of Streamvember at twitch.tv/commanderpulsar