SMUGGLING CORPSES FOR FUN

For legal reasons, this is a game. No corpses were harmed in the making of this letter

Dec 13, 2025

Smuggling Corpses for Fun. [An illustration of a bright orange castle surrounded by a wizard hat, a skull, a trash can, and a cryogenically frozen head, all shaded blue. The title opposite reads You Must Sneak Human Remains into Disney Word, By James D’Amato] — Credit: Reagan Caron

Looking Back

Hey friend,

The year is coming to an end, which means that it’s time to look back before rubbernecking towards the future. Since my last letter, I’ve had the opportunity to play in some incredible and unique games, and I’d like to talk a bit about each of them before looking to the new year. So in no particular order:

[An illustration of a bright orange castle surrounded by a wizard hat, a skull, a trash can, and a cryogenically frozen head, all shaded blue. The title opposite reads You Must Sneak Human Remains into Disney Word, By James D’Amato] — Credit: Reagan Caron

You Must Sneak Human Remains into Disney World

This hilarious one-page RPG by James D’Amato — author of the Ultimate RPG series, cofounder of the One Shot Podcast Network, and Chicago native — does exactly what it says on the tin. Inspired by the upsettingly common real-life practice, the game has you and a group of friends attempt to pull off a macabre reverse-heist without being caught. The state of the remains, the reason for smuggling them, and even your characters are all randomly generated, while the Imagineer (Game Master) is tasked with creating obstacles.

In our game, we smuggled the corpse of Walter Knott (of Knott’s Berry Farm) into the Haunted Mansion ride in order to complete “the ritual.” Our party consisted of a lost child, a furry with a keyblade, a high-strung ex-employee, and a ghost. Our obstacles included cancer-sniffing dogs, an wax kill-bot of Jimmy Carter, and the Disney Castle Death Titan™️. Super fun, would highly recommend for a one-shot night.

Metamorphosis Alpha

Released in 1976, Metamorphosis Alpha was one of the earliest sci-fi RPGs on the market. To get a sense of how old that is, the GM who ran this said “there is no test mechanic… we will primarily be using d20, roll equal to or under for skill checks.” No resolution mechanic, but there were tables! “Tables for attacking, for resisting poison, for resisting radiation, for using mutant powers. Tables tables tables!”

He did not exaggerate. Everything that wasn’t a made-up d20 roll required a 3d6 table with seemingly arbitrary numbers. When I asked the GM whether it was better to have a high armor class or a low one, he told me it depended on what you were getting shot with.

All of which sounds horrible on paper — complex tables, no central mechanic to fall back on — but in practice it was a blast! The setting of MA is engaging, as we were all medieval peasants in what was clearly a sci-fi world full of technology we could not understand. The mechanics (or lack thereof) did not slow us down any more than a modern RPG would, and I walked away from that game wanting to visit Warden again.

Triangle Agency

The winner of just about every golden Ennie this year has been on my to-play list for a long time, but I never really knew how it played. All anyone talks about are the meta-elements of the game — the secrets and abilities that you unlock — and the strong writing, to the point I wasn’t sure if there even WAS a game underneath.

I’m glad to say that there is a game here, and a decent one too. You play a team of special non-government agents tasked with taking care of “anomalies,” monsters generated from people’s emotions. Each mission sees you attempt to track down an anomaly and get rid of it.

The adventures written for this system so far are massive, complex things, full of NPCs to talk to, mysteries to solve, and obstacles to overcome. While you can bee-line to the enemy and shoot it dead without much trouble, you are rewarded (mechanically and narratively) by learning about your target beforehand.

We missed out on the greater meta-elements by playing a one-shot, but I was relieved to find out that the game does in fact support short-term play, although I remain curious about the secrets that a full campaign would reveal.

Cover art for Horror Cinema Classics and Weird Frontiers. — Credit: Wayward Studios and Stiff Whiskers Press

Weird Frontiers and Horror Cinema Classics

I got to play two games based on the Dungeon Crawl Classics ruleset at this year’s Feast of the Cyclops Con. Horror Cinema Classics, crowdfunding on Backerkit now, is a pastiche of classic horror cinema. It has all the lethality of DCC with the addition of a corruption mechanic that sees your characters becoming more monstrous as they fight the darkness. The scenario I played involved a killer ghost car and was a thrill to play. HCC was highly talked about at Gamehole Con, and now I can see why.

Weird Frontiers is older, but this was my first time playing. The scenario was a playtest, and not a terribly good one, that saw us playing as all luchadors. This was cool in concept, but fell apart in practice, especially when it became clear that no one in the party knew how to heal. Despite that, the system seemed to make good use of the DCC mechanics, and the setting is definitely one worth exploring again.

My Language is my Awakening, written on a pile of red leaves and flowers colored red. — Credit: Thorny Games

Dialect

This was actually my second time playing Dialect, though this time we were a society of thieves developing our own thieves cant. Ironically, we also specialized in moving dead bodies, this time for a 19th century Oxford college instead of Disney.

Dialect is a game about how languages develop and die. It’s a surprisingly poignant game that makes you engage with language in a critical way. It is a collaborative experience, having no dedicated GM and being completely prompt-based. It’s short, simple and makes for a wonderful one-shot, which is why there is a very good chance that I will be playing this one again.

Looking Ahead

If you’re in the area, I’ll be running a game of Shadowdark at Smugglers Coffee in Dyer, IN on the IL/IN border tomorrow, the 13th. You can see “Chicagoland Events” below for details.

Lastly, you may have noticed that I’ve been working on some rebranding on this newsletter. Going into the new year, I would love for some feedback. What has been working for you, and what has not? If you could take a moment to answer the poll below and/or leave a comment, I’d appreciate it. It would give me a better idea of what you want to see more of. Thanks!

🪦 Game designer and programmer Rebecca Heineman passed away on November 17 at the age of 62. Rebecca co-founded Interplay, publisher of classic RPGs such as Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. She follows in the footsteps of her wife, the legendary tabletop RPG designer Jennell Jaquay, who passed away last year. Rebecca and Jennell were not just luminaries in their chosen fields but, as trans women, also icons in the LGBTQ community. Their talents will be missed.

🐴 There has been a lot of chatter about an indie arthouse game called Horses by Italian studio Santa Ragione. The game was rejected by Steam back in 2023 for ostensibly violating content guidelines, and all attempts to appeal have been ignored. Epic then pulled the game from their storefront a day before launch. The game successfully launched on GOG, itch.io, and Humble Bundle, and the massive media coverage has likely boosted its sales, but it remains a problematic precedent for indie designers everywhere. Having played the game myself, I can only agree with Aftermath’s conclusion that “Horses is Tame.”

Buy me a coffee!

🧑🏽‍🚀 October featured a month-long megagame called Over/Under celebrating Mothership Month. What was supposed to be a low-engagement strategy game turned into an epic LARP with more interpersonal stories than can be recounted. Reading the coverage has been fascinating, including two recaps from Rascal and this wonderful blog by Valerie Loves about how the game fits into the tradition of “Live Text Roleplay (LTRP).”

🇸🇪 If you ever wanted a crash course in the Swedish TTRPG scene, this video by Weird Place has got you covered.

📺 New Quinns Quest review dropped, covering a handful of boxed RPGs that would make great holiday gifts.

🏛 Speaking of Quinns, if you haven’t checked out his actual play podcast, Play to Find Out, you’re missing out. They just wrapped up a campaign of Nobilis, a mind-bending RPG about playing gods, and their last campaign was in the classic RPG Toon, which just announced a new second edition. (Coincidence? Maybe.)

🔫 Game designer Erika Chapelle released a 167-page fan RPG about Space Marines from Warhammer 40K called Oath of Moment. While far from the only game in this setting, what sets Erika's RPG apart is its emphasis on the humanity beneath the chunky power armor of the galaxy’s fiercest warriors, and the tension between the conflicting demands that they adhere to.

👽 Free League released the 2nd edition of their popular Alien RPG: Alien RPG Evolved Edition

👹 Onyx Path Publishing, publishers of the Chronicles of Darkness line, have released a new urban fantasy RPG, Curseborne.

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