i've set a fire in the corner of the 2025 Gloggies Nominations and its burning down around me

Class: Phlox's Barbarian. I am entranced by these sorts of meta-projects. It takes a deft hand to leave just enough room for others to explore while also laying a strong foundation for that exploration. I suppose it speaks to Phlox's famed skill as both a gm and a writer.

Rules: Bad Doctor's the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Perfection.

Dungeon: Loch's Broxon House. & Monsters: Loch's Nasty Customers. & Lore: Loch's Masked Theatre. I fretted over nominating Loch thrice in favor of maximizing the joy I could bring to others, but they're simply built different. Their ability to write 2000 words that feel like 20 speaks to a level of concision and creative horsepower unrivaled in the scene. All of my greatest posts are partial homages to or spiritual descendants of one of theirs. Anyway this is my list so Loch gets 3/7 noms fuck you

Theory: Archon's TBD panic attack. As I hurtle towards 6 years in the blogosphere, I find myself more drawn to posts that feel personal and open, rather than the detached intellectualism I see all over my own work. I don't run games (I write about what it would be like to write them, like an adult) so most theory posts have little relevance to me. This one hit me like a 16 wheeler and left me dead on the pavement. I will certainly continue thinking about it as I run and write in 2026.

Other: Elmcat's Mapping the Blogosphere. The work this project must have taken to assemble astounds me, and the result 1) is beautiful; 2) is really intellectually interesting; 3) makes me treasure the community I am a part of all the more. Thank you all for a great 2025, and here's to another year of hot posts :^)

Helluva Starstuck Railboss

Each player starts with one (1) ticket, as well as anything you can fit in a suitcase in real life. Yes, you need to actually pack a bag in real life. Anything in your house can come with, provided it fits in the suitcase/backpack/etc. Think it over. Consider taking a picture to refer to later.

If you aren't packed by game start, you start with nothing but the ticket and the clothes on your back. 

 

The Setting

You wake up in Hell.

Hell is a 666 billion ton steam locomotive that just punched a hole thru spacetime. It runs on human souls- you can hear the engine screaming no matter where you are.

Hell is also full of demons and sinners. They're all in high spirits after successfully blowing up the Earth with their giant fucking train.

• Demons are lost children transformed by Satan. They are inducted into cruelty by a life in the meat zoo before being assigned as task suited to their new demon physiology. Like Satan himself, they cannot create new things, only corrupt existing ones.
• Sinners are honored guests of the big man himself. Hell is not designed to torment them, only contain them (they torment each other plenty). They lack the strength of demons, but are able to create new things (including offspring).

The train is subdivided into cars, each of which contains miles of megastructure bullshit.

1. Observation Car - Can view all of time and space in the rear view, a retrospective realm full of time-ghosts.
2. Think Tank - 666,666 psionics stapled together generate an impenetrable terror forcefield around the train and also wifi. Occasionally their nightmares manifest physically- three dozen copies of Jeff the Killer live here and brush each others hair
3. House of Lucifer - A big azz gothic church-slash-castle belonging to Lucifer and his favorite sinners. The fallen angels hang out here too (some of them are maids). It's very, very cold (not as a punishment, but to cool his massive gaming rig).
4. Sin City - Lost treasures, cities, labubus, etc. It's Vegas baby. The plot of Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 is playing out here for eternity- heists, yknow. The stock market here determines the strikingly volatile worth of a human soul.
5. Baggage Car - An unsorted pile of things demons stole from humanity during the apocalypse. Sin City is built from pieces of the Baggage Car.
• Only the strongest, densest demons can survive the gravitational pressures of this car.
6. Limbo - A grand entrance hall: a train station inside of a train. Visitors and contract workers appear here. Lorded over by wizard-demons who maintain the summoning circles. The apocalypse was terrible for the local wizard economy.
7. Troop Sleeper - The zombie armies of Hell (every soldier from all of history) are piled up like cordwood in a dank tomb. Some of them are awake- they're all intelligent ghouls. They sometimes sneak out of this car in search of human flesh.
• Also, a giant gun turret for shooting extradimensional squid that get too close to the train
8. Meat Zoo - The hunting grounds-slash-demon nursery. The animals here are deformed monsters that crawl out of protein bogs and prowl thru alien jungles.
• Also, a child colosseum where young demons lord-of-the-flies each other for sport and glory
9. Dream Car - The dream-made-manifest of a very large, very evil psychic whale (from the Think Tank). Births horrors beyond human comprehension. Because it's a dream and not a physical car, it can move up and down the train freely. Demons use it as an elevator.
10. Space Farm - An infinite corporate backrooms being harvested and processed with heavy machinery. Time and space are stitched into strange shapes on an industrial scale by needle demons.
11. Locomotive - Fire, steel, coal, fumes. It's hot and horrible, staffed by the lowest caste of flame retardant demons. Upstart demons get dragged to a giant fridge and frozen. Giant rusty slag pits fueled by souls.
12. Prow - A guy with a really sharp sword stands here, exposed to the outer dimensions, and cuts thru anything that would stop the train.

(You start in Limbo.)

The Rules

There are four parallel rails, upon which thunder the four trains of the apocalypse, which break the four dimensions of spacetime on their wheels. You can move from one train to another by sleeping or dying; you can only die once per train.

Each train plays by different rules:

• Conquest - Buckets of Blood!!!!!!!!
• War - D&D 3.5e with no reaction rolls and every splat book. All monsters attack on sight. Level up after each session.
• Famine - Any retroclone with dehydration rules. Track everything. Add sanity checks to taste.
• Death - No class, no to-hit roll, no saves.

Death is also the train that breaks time. If there is any chance at retroactively averting the apocalypse, it is there.

if KoG has no fans that means i am no more on the earth

I saw this video about Perfect Draw! and it made me think of King of Games (my beloved). Below is mostly stealing from the former and simping for the latter. (obv I'm not FifthDragon so consider none of this as canon)

Each turn, you may do each of the following, in any order:

• Draw from the Kingdom of Duelists. (see below)
• Summon a monster from hand. (Higher level monsters require sacrifices.)
• Attack with a monster or relic weapon you wield.
• Make a Maneuver. Anything that isn't a draw, summon, or attack, including movement, complex tactics, laying traps and casting spells.
• Certain classes get special maneuvers: the Duelist can attack a second time; the Cheat can draw a second card; and the Storyteller can summon a warrior spirit directly from the KoD.

The Kingdom of Duelists (omeyocan, lit. duality place) is the very same realm which the gods drew from to play the first game. Drawing from the KoD produces a random card from thin air. There are four ways to shape one's draw:

• The gods, being divine, always draw the exact cards they need. Those who approach divinity are those who draw favorably, and vice versa.
• One's fate can guide one's hand to draw. When you draw, you may choose to draw from a smaller list defined by your birth sign. The list differs if you are right- or left-handed. (column/row on the big table)
• All cards have two faces, the separation of which allows one to draw from the KoD. Most duelists can only draw either chthonic faces or celestial faces (short kings are the former, lanky lords are the latter). Mirror-breakers draw both faces at once, such that the card can be played as either face.
• All great duelists have a place in the KoD. This is your palace, and it holds the four cards which make up your soul. These are designed in conversation with the gm, are unique to you, and share a common theme. You can draw a random card from your palace, but it costs 2000LP (you've just removed a quarter of your soul).

(I can't replicate the prose of the other KoG classes so i wont even tryyyyy)

THE CHEAT
+1 SKILL and +1 Free Maneuver per Template
A: Pot of Greed, Hungry Grave, Cheat
B: Ante, Hands Full of Fangs
C: Narrow Escape
D: Devour

A: Pot of Greed
You may draw an additional card as a maneuver.

A: Hungry Grave
Whenever you sacrifice or discard a monster, note its name. Each monster you summon has +100ATK and +100DEF for each time you've noted its name this way.

A: Cheat
As long as you are unseen to opponents, spectators, and gods alike, you can get away with up to [templates] free maneuvers per round. You can take these on other players' turns, and you can't be challenged or punished for it.

You can't cheat if your opponent is a Storyteller.

B: Ante
As one of your free actions, you may pay 2000LP to replace an opponent's draw with a random card from your palace. If they win the duel, they get to keep the card. If you win the duel, the card returns, and you may ask [templates] questions about that opponent and/or their fate.

B: Hands Full of Fangs
You may treat your bare hands as relic weapons with ATK equal to the number of cards in your hand times 500.

C: Narrow Escape
Once per Season, if you would lose a duel and/or die, you may choose to barely survive instead. Whatever story you come up with to explain how you survived is 100% valid, even if it's complete horseshit.

You can't cheat death if your opponent is a Storyteller.

D: Devour
You can eat a card in your hand to permanently remove it from the game. It disappears from all spell lists, never to return.

 

booster pack :^0

Card Name (Card Type) Effect

1. Auto-Atlatl (Relic Weapon) Rains spears on foes. Can attack all opponents at once without taking damage back.
2. Frozen Warrior (Monster - Warrior) A colossal eagle warrior with stone skin. Shackled by ice, it can neither attack nor defend.
3. Tlatlatepetl (World Transposition) The battle now takes place at the foot of an ever-erupting volcano. Hazards: Choking ash and lava flows. Treasures: The Old Man's Pipe. (Shapes smoke into dreams.)
4. Change Tactics (Battle Magic) All monsters change from attack mode to defense mode, from defense mode to craft mode, and so on in order. (attack → defense → craft → secret → attack)
5. Great Migration (Ritual) Banish a dinosaur for 1 round. When it returns, draw and play a world transposition card.
6. Pale Invader (Monster - Alien) Its powerful ray gun hijacks simple machines to nefarious ends.
7. Flood (Ritual) Summon all water-aligned monsters from each player's hand.
8. Many Color Venom (Blessing) Poison a relic weapon.
9. Guardian of the Pearl Manor (Monster - Cat) Demands sacrifice. When Guardian of the Pearl House is defeated, draw a card of your choice from your palace without paying LP.
10. Black Earth's Jaws (Trap) Destroy all flightless monsters.
11. Calendar King (Monster - Wizard) A weak monster who sends monsters of the future to the past, and vice versa.
12. House of Darts (Trap) Summon two warrior spirits to intercept an attack.

Dueling is a sacred act, echoing the motions of the first game and the forms of the oldest gods. Thus, a duelist has religious and spiritual obligations in addition to sponsorial ones.

1. To never duel without wager. The Kingdom of Duelists opens only for the promise of sacrifice.
• ...and opens wider for greater sacrifice. The higher your wager, the more cards you start with in hand and the stronger cards you have access to. You can also raise your wager mid-duel to draw more cards.
• The lowest wager is a season of worship-labor (or monetary equivalent: hiring out one's temple duties is common practice amongst the lordships).
• The highest wager is one or more pieces of yourself: a card from your palace, body part, or member of your family.
• Part of each wager is sacrificed to the gods. The rest belongs to the victor.
2. To duel on holy days. These are public affairs necessary to the maintenance of the natural order.
• It is considered best practice for duels to be very personal, which is why every temple encourages aggression, abrasive personalities, and homoerotic rivalries among their duelists.
3. To be visible. Duelists are forbidden from dressing subtly, and must be recognizable on sight from their costumes and headdresses.
4. To maintain (and improve) one's palace.

You can add cards to, improve, and otherwise bling out your soul-palace in a variety of ways. (It's a prerequisite to join certain dueling societies.) Here's four:

• Win cards wagered by other players and graft them onto your soul.
• Transform cards by fusing, flipping, evolving, time-displacing, transitioning, reflecting, mutating, melting, or otherwise changing a card into another version of itself. When that card returns to your palace at duel's end, you may reject or embrace its new form.
• Refine cards with obscene quantities of gold. The Preceptorate knows the alchemical secrets to gilding the soul (resulting in strictly-albeit-marginally better cards).
• Eat cards from your own palace. They're gone for good, your soul forever diminished.

These methods are considered evil, gay, posh, and inhuman respectively. You can hack most of them together yourself with the right blend of drugs and meditation.

it is said that without a soul to cling to, one may swim freely thru the Kingdom of Duelists.
it is known that those without a soul are burned by the sun, and speak only in savagery.

\o/ \o/ \o/ praise the calendar king \o/ \o/ \o/