Rascal's Community-Sourced Best of 2025

“Best of” articles are a tradition that feel as engrained into modern culture as watching news anchors get drunk on national television on New Year’s Eve. But in all honesty, that’s not what we made Rascal for. We made Rascal for the hard hitting investigations, the cultural criticism, and the industry news you’ve all come to know and love us for. 

So, in a more rascally fashion, we decided to ask our community of reader-supporters to give us their Best Of’s this year.(By the way, did we mention we’re currently running an end-of-year sale, so you can join our Discord and support us in keeping this site alive for only $1?) 

However, seeing as everyone else is doing a Wrapped this year, we also wanted to share some stats from our 2025:

• 1 New Rascal
• 22 Contributors
• 315 Articles Published
• 167 Community Announcement Submitters
• 593 Free Community Announcements Published

Without further ado, this is the best of 2025 according to Rascal readers like you.

The Wildsea

What if you crewed a ship that navigated through post-apocalyptic treetops, with unspeakable horrors lurking below? What if your characters were cactus people, swarms of sentient insects in clothing, the returned dead, or even stranger things? What if languages were some of the more potentially powerful skills in a setting? What if the mechanics were easy to pick up and run cackling away with?

That's The Wildsea, my top game of the year for 2025.

Internet Weirdo #137

Hearts of Wulin

The best moment of the year for me was the Hearts of Wulin game I played earlier this year. The game itself was both my high and my low for the year. High because of all the amazing characters and great character interaction. Low because a major story arc ended feeling like it might have been dictated by a framing question asked out of character having more weight than 10 or so sessions of play.

There was a very memorable a sequence where My character, Haoran, had a fight with his, alleged best friend, Jade because they informed him that they were pursuing his mother; had the person he loved, Li Min, end their relationship; and stood up to his manipulative & villainous mom, Xun, which was also the first time. Haoran experienced so much growth as a character, but he was very alone at the end. Things had improved for him in the epilogue, he never pursued another close relationship, but he did become a teacher at a former betrothed detective school.

Haoran is still waiting to see the Eight Step, Thomas!

Jonn aka sleypy (pronounced sleepy)

Void 1680 AM

I've been playing a different solo RPG every week of 2025, and while the year's not quite done yet, it'll take something very special to dethrone VOID 1680AM as the best of the bunch. It's a game about being a radio DJ, and building a playlist of 12 songs that mean something to you and your fictional callers.

But that only tells part of the story, because it's really about the experience of listening to and thinking about music as a way of communicating with both others and yourself. The game gives really strong prompts for asking you pick songs, not based on meaning or vibes or lyrics or memories but all of the above, and tells you to sit and listen to them while you create the callers that, ideally, give you fodder for thinking/talking about your choices and why they matter to you. It's lovely, smart, emotional stuff, you should get it and play it.

Patrick O'Duffy

Daggerheart

Daggerheart is a game of compromises: between pointlessly crunchy trad games and purely vibes-based indie games. On the surface it's a fiddly card-based tactical game, but once you read the play advice, learn that PC's can't die unless the players want them to, and remember most 5e players don't care about the rules anyway, it's a beautiful elfgame the whole squad can enjoy. Finally, Rascal subscribers and Beacon subscribers can hold hands and pretend to have elaborate melodramatic relationships (with explosions).

And like all elfgames, it's more fun when you DIY. If you're not jamming a special interest into it already, and you don't like the situations in the book, check out the Return to Daggerworld campaign frame for a mysteriously revived MMO that holds the answers to your table's questions.

Window Dump, Discord Poster

Divination RPG

Divination is a Tarot driven roleplaying game. Players choose from the Major Arcana to decide what aspect of the shared Hero they will embody. There are no dice (*gasps in goblin*!) and all key story moments are driven by a card pull. Players collaborate, conspire, and navigate conflict as their shared Hero discovers a world full of magic and symbolism based in the rich tradition of tarot.

It is one of the most fun, unique, and deeply personal games that I have ever played. Hells, the character creation portion of the game is engaging and satisfying in its own right! Having played with both strangers and friends with varying degrees of knowledge, ranging from zero experience with tarot to practicing hedge witches, I can safely say that anyone can enjoy this game.

Anna Fitzgerald, Co-Creator of The Adventures of Bud & Herb

Get Your Ship Together

This was a game jam tie-in for STATIONS’ Infinity of Ships book. A simple format sparked creativity easily and who doesn’t love spaceships?

Adam Schwaninger

I Don’t Belong Here

I Don’t Belong Here is an art-first RPG supplement for creative inspiration of weird, reality-bending horror. The words are (almost) entirely sampled lyrics from Radiohead songs, and the art is stark and evocative.

It consists mostly of 1d6 or 6d6 spark tables for generating bizarre and disturbing scenes or antagonists. But its real beauty is in the construction of its prompts, which are always jarring, unexpected, and inspirational. They give you a jolt in a direction you would never have dreamed yourself and they raise more questions than the answer. It is a work of pure art and creative fuel. Truly a testament to what TTRPG products could and should be.

Nik Renshaw, RPG Freak Boy

My Xenomorph figures from the new edition of the Alien RPG

These cute little critters are the best, I've been admiring and turning them over looking at all their little details. Perfect for when you have nothing unpacked in a new apartment.

Eve Smith

Expressionist Games Manifesto

Jay Dragon masterfully lays out a manifesto describing the thoughts and forms that surround an expressionist movement in game design. Through her insights, new frontiers of innovation and expression can be found to fit this description and new light is cast on those at the cutting edge of avant garde art.

Unsung Busker

Sprigs and Kindling

Sprigs and Kindling is a free, from fans-for fans zine celebrating Carved from Brindlewood and Rooted in Trophy games. This year the zine released five volumes across six issues and they are jam packed: each one is at least 200 pages. The zine hosts game running advice, adventure supplements, character options, prose fiction, art, and more tables than you could possibly need. As a designer, it’s incredible to see the breadth of art being put out by the community there’s no end in sight yet!

Arthur Wells, game designer

My best of is the entire Sprigs & Kindling crew: everyone who has submitted something for it, everyone who has hyped it, everyone who has read it. It's been such a highlight of my year AND my TTRPG experience as a whole. Sprigs & Kindling is a free, volunteer-driven anthology of creative works collected from the Carved from Brindlewood community and it is an absolute joy to work on. The breadth of talent and the quality of the art and writing is incredible. It's been amazing to see these creators get further work from their talent being on display, as well!

Amanda Mullins, Editor-in-Chief of S&K

I want to fight my friends in the back of a moving truck

The article by Seraphina Garcia Ramirez is a deep breakdown of a queer larp/art piece/philosophical musing called 'fight truck' by crows danger. it goes into depth not just about the writer's own life as a queer creator, and what moving has meant for her(?), but also the creator, and in general, the relationship between risk, and being queer. nothing worth doing is safe.

Hope, idealistic autistic tgirl

Fight your friends in the back of a moving truck. Think about what that would mean and why you don't. Nothing worth doing is safe.

Emily Zhu, Designer

A really beautiful article about a very specific kind of 'existing'

R.A. Lycaon

Look. I'm biased as hell. But this essay made me cry about six times. I've said it before and I will say it again, Sera captured so much meaning and connection with the words I put out there that I still can't quite believe it. On an emotional level, its an incredibly vulnerable piece that speaks to so much of the past decade as we all know it, that conveys the intimate feeling of precarity, risk, and desperate action. As a commentary on safety, it drives forward one of the most important ongoing conversations in game design today. I am really, profoundly honored that my work inspired such heartfelt and sincere message to the world.

crows danger

The Pod Universe

The Pod Universe is the follow up to Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe, a serialized creative writing podcast where the hosts take turns "pitching" a new film in their cinematic universe. Pitches involve a nearly full screenplay and dramatic reading, orchestration, and more. Ultimately the podcast is a celebration of creative writing and film.

J Evan Parks, Writer

BreakoutCon

With BigBadCon not happening in 2025 it felt like a lot of the designers who had been there in 2024 instead made the trek to Toronto for BreakoutCon 2025. I ran and played in a few games and every table had at least one other TTRPG maker sitting at it. There was also a well attended mixer for designers, and you couldn't walk the halls without tripping over a group of them chatting. The convention has a heavy focus on TTRPG play with surprisingly little D&D involved. There's also a huge library of board games for guests to use and with only about a dozen vendors it really puts the focus on play.

Avalyn Ramsay, TTRPG designer & podcaster

Progress

"I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

My best of 2025 is watching the TTRPG hobby grow and broaden. We now have more games, and more types of gamers. This isn't a new phenomenon, but it could have been fragile. It's not. In the current season, we should celebrate progress. Over the past couple of years, I've been lucky to make it to some bigger game conventions, like Gamehole and Pax-U. This old dude walked around with tears in his eyes marveling at all the awesome humans doing the hobby that I fell in love with in 1979. Back in those days, we TTRPG gamers were uncool, few in number, and pretty damn similar. Our hobby is better, broader and more vibrant. Walt Whitman may never have been a gamer, but I think he would be proud of us. Thanks, everyone!

Wayne Peacock, Kismet Games

Rascal News!

I've never loved actual plays or a lot of amateur RPG content. I've wanted a place that treats the TTRPG industry with a level of professionalism that is hard to find among the TTRPG content industry. I like podcasts and blogs that talk about TTRPGs like a craft but something industry-focused has been lacking.

Then I found Rascal! You'd been there for a little bit, but it took me a little bit to find you. This is exactly what I've wanted. Somewhere to keep track of changes in the industry, trends, new games, etc. Your content makes me feel smarter and sound much more well-informed than I am.

Adam Schwaninger