introducing the summer 'tournament of TTRPG books'

last year, just for fun during my summer break, I watched almost 30 Matthew McConaughey movies (even more of them than I initially planned). I never did post a full account of that whole journey and my resultant novice-movie-reviewer verdicts, but maybe I still will someday. for now I will say that the key results of that project were: 

1. I now have a pretty detailed range of opinions about most of Mr. McConaughey's movies and
2. I can confidently spell the actor's surname.

I also read his recent-ish memoir, Greenlights, which was an interesting package of retrospective optimism. last summer was a very good summer.

and now summer break 2023 has barely even blinked itself into existence, and I have begun organizing a similarly arbitrary project:

it shall be a one-woman tournament of table-top roleplaying game systems. this was, in part, my dearest Jeremiah's idea, to creatively remix a thing he is very into and a thing I am very into. I latched onto it almost immediately and started listing out the role-playing books-- core rulebooks for unique game systems-- that we already owned, calculating how many more I'd need to add in for an even 16.

surprisingly, we had a whole 15 separate books already, not counting different editions or sequels or expansion books or any of that. 15!

for the sixteenth? by complete coincidence, a friend in our gaming group suggested a one-shot of Wrath & Glory practically the same time we were thinking up this tournament plan. so... even if Warhammer 40,000 may not be the genre or tone or universe that I would've picked all of my own accord to round out the existing 15... still, it was convenient timing. we played a short session last weekend.

here are the match-ups we've designed thus far, presented in a kinda-sorta rough chronological order of maybe how I'll proceed through my judgement process:

World of Darkness vs Wrath & Glory (yes, that's an edited-in jpg of the cover. all the others we own in physical form, but not that one).

Mage: the Awakening vs Pathfinder 2e.

Changeling: the Lost vs Star Wars: Force and Destiny.

The One Ring vs Scion: Hero.

Exalted vs. Vampire: the Masquerade 5e.

Cyberpunk RED vs. 7th Sea.

Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs. Werewolf: the Forsaken.

Shadowrun 5e vs A Song of Ice and Fire.

my approach to this series will mirror the wholehearted subjectivity of the annual Tournament of Books, with the main difference being I shall serve as the one and only judge. 

most (10) of these are games I have played at least one session of at one point or another. the other 6, either barely or not at all. D&D and Vampire I've played the most, with Star Wars, 7th Sea, and Shadowrun taking up third, fourth, and fifth places. our current long-running campaign is set in the base World of Darkness system (with added zombies). Mage, Changeling, and Pathfinder have been small 1- or 2-session experiments. 

so judging all of these against each other will be an interesting task. as set-up, I've fashioned a big fat spreadsheet of metadata and notes about each book. for some of them, I know a fair bit already, or at least have a wealth of relevant pop-cultural knowledge to apply. 

my plan, at the moment, is to follow a roughly similar process for each book, take detailed notes all along the way, and then write up reviews for each match accordingly.

the process:

1. read/skim each core book in full
2. create at least 1 new character (to add up to at least 2 total characters created) using each system
3. assess each game's mechanics, aesthetics, and general user-friendliness
4. summarize my past gameplay experience or, for the 6 I haven't fully played yet, arrange at least one session of play

I'll go through this for all 8 pairs before choosing which 8 advance to the next round. then we'll match those 8 and start again, more or less.

who knows what will happen. it'll be fun and interesting in any case.