PAX Unplugged 2024 Game Recap

PAX Unplugged was, once again, an absolutely wonderful experience! The indie RPG scene was especially vibrant this year and I walked away with many delightful games that I look forward to reading and running.

A pile of games and ephemera. Two DIE RPG Scenario Books, Inside Out, VOID 1680AM, Old Morris Cave, For the Queen, Sleepaway, Deathmatch Island, and My Body is a Cage

Here’s an overview of what I purchased, my first impressions, and why they jumped out at me.

My Body is a Cage

I picked this game up from the Indie Press Revolution booth on the expo hall floor. In My Body is a Cage, you play a regular full time student and full time worker with student loans and barely enough to get by who leads a double life exploring an expansive dungeon that can only be accessed in their dreams. The dungeon is surreal, evocative, and dangerous, but any recovered loot can be taken back to the waking world. I love how it pairs the classic fantasy call to adventure with an extremely relatable modern premise. But more than the premise, I was taken by the mindblowingly cool game layout! Each spread is a work of art, and it isn’t just for the sake of looking unique. Each page represents the surrealist vibe of the game and many pages serve a mechanical purpose. From a word search for starting inventory, to a foldable origami “fortune teller” to determine loot, to a random die-drop table of possible NPC emotions.

A simple system like this is perfect to insert into an existing campaign. Since it takes place in a dream world, it can be perfect for a mini-arc separate from the plot, or a session break for someone else to run and give the GM a break. I plan to use this system in my current DIE RPG campaign as filler for when a player gets sick, or I’m looking to stall the plot for some reason. I’ll let the characters fall asleep and take them on a dream journey with real campaign consequences. There’s multisession leveling up options in the book as well as seven starter dungeon designs written by various contributors including: Nevyn Holmes, Jim Geis, Ema Acosta, and Josh Domanski. The dungeon titled THE SEVEN ORIFICES OF OMNISCIENCE created by Maria of Sword Prince Games was what sold me on this system.

Sleepaway

I already own the game and my obsession with Sleepaway and other Jay Dragon/Possum Creek games runs deep. So deep that the new cover design (which I found out was actually an older print of the game) was so gorgeous that I bought it immediately. Sleepaway is a brilliant system and I hope to write about it in more detail sometime soon. But in the meantime, I hope this cover is enough to make you desperate to hold it in your hands like me.

Inside Out

Inside Out is a body horror zine from Calgary Games, the same publisher as 10 Candles. I haven’t gotten a super close look at it yet, but since I own their two other games: 10 Candles and To Serve Her Wintry Hunger (highly recommend), I thought I should snag this con-exclusive zine that I saw at PAX East last year but sold out before I could get it. It’s system agnostic and contains lots of writing on body horror. I’ll write more about it when I give it a read, but if Calgary Games’ other two books show any indication, it should be wild.

For the Queen

A classic. I bought the original printing at GenCon 2019 and that copy has seen a lot of love since then. If you don’t know, For the Queen is a GMless prompt-based system that tells the story of a Queen’s retinue who accompanies her on a journey to a distant land. Every member of the retinue is in love with the Queen and the game’s prompts help players tell the story of the journey as well as explore their pasts with the Queen, and why their feelings might be fraught or complicated. This is the Darrington Press reprinting and while the game is unchanged, the art is supercharged! Every card has been elegantly redesigned. Highlights include brand new artwork of possible queens with new modern, sci-fi, and cyberpunk options, and also a redesigned box! This is huge for me. The old box was designed with the opening at the bottom so if the box was lifted off a table, all the cards would fall out if you didn’t squeeze it properly, and if you tossed the game in your bag, it was guaranteed to spill. Now the box opens from the side with magnets keeping it closed. Absolutely brilliant! The only issue I have with the reprinting is the “The Queen is Under Attack, Do You Defend Her?” card is not visually different than the rest of the prompt cards. But if the only drawback is a moderate annoyance in finding the climactic prompt, then I am satisfied.

Deathmatch Island

This was another pull from Indie Press Revolution. It was a last minute and impulsive purchase on Sunday when I felt I hadn’t bought enough games. At a glance it’s a Battle Royale inspired RPG where players try to kill each other for a grand prize. With Squid Games and Fortnites popularizing the Battle Royale genre beyond movies, it was only a matter of time before it appeared for tabletop. I’m curious how the design will take pacing into account with separate perspectives, but I’m already delighted with the design detail. The introduction sets the mood perfectly, and much of the rules contains redacted information which further piqued my curiosity. I have yet to read it, but I’ll report back when I do.

Old Morris Cave: A Continuous Use Campsite to Mammoth Cave National Park

I’m not normally a solo RPG gal, but this one got me. I’m a huge fan of Tim Hutchinson’s other work: 1000 Year Old Vampire and A Series of Improving Exercises vol II. I’ve played through neither, but reading through them delighted me. Maybe one day I’ll journal. Old Morris Cave is a solo game where you complete a cave survey using oddly drawn flowcharts. That’s all I know, but I was charmed by the chance to draw and that the book seems dead-set on being disguised as a regular book. I love RPGs that swear they’re not RPGs.

VOID 1680 AM

Another solo RPG! I’ve had my eye on this one for a few months and when I saw it at Indie Press Revolution, I knew I needed it. It’s a solo playlist-building game where you create your own radio show complete with recorded intros and outros and even fake callers! The coolest part is the author Ken Lowery actually broadcasts at 1680AM and will broadcast and post your show if you send it in. It’s a beautiful little detail that makes the game more real. Once again, an RPG that insists on being more!

DIE RPG Scenarios 1 & 2

So I’m uselessly obsessed with DIE RPG, and I’ve been running my own homebrew campaign for a year and a half. I’m normally not a huge fan of prewritten scenarios, but my desperate need for more DIE content overrode any preferences I pretend to have. Each book contains three scenarios; one written by the game book’s author Kieron Gillen and two more by guest authors. They’re each meant to cover a different theme and despite my hesitance around scenarios, they seem complete and well formulated. Maybe it’s the one’s I read, but they seem to lean into nostalgic 80s “boy games” like Warhammer and Magic the Gathering (I’m aware of the gender spectrum of players for these games but I’m referring to the folks who played in the 80s and are a little too obsessed with that fact, if you don’t understand consider yourself lucky). This isn’t surprising as Kieron has the same nostalgia in his writing. I’d love to see more scenarios with gaming nostalgia that exists outside of the Stranger Things. That being said, many of the scenarios did delight me, especially the first one in the first volume “Bizarre Love Triangles”. That scenario inspired me to see if I can make DIE playable as a oneshot for Games on Demand next year…

I don’t remember much about where I got the non-rpg ephemera. If I was struck by something at a booth, I’d snag it. However, the long box with “The Glowing City” on it was another purchase from Calgary Games in collaboration with Cantrip Candles. Scented tea candles for 10 Candles! I cannot overstate my delight! There were four flavors, but I got The Glowing City because it smelled like citrus and ash. I have a game lined up for January and I hope to use them then!

Overall PAX Unplugged 2024 was an exhausting success and a spark of creative joy in the dark winter months. I hope I can tend the spark into a small flame to give myself a little heat as things get darker here. Be sure to tend to your flames 🔥

-Paula