Hello hello, Jordan here, with a little synopsis of what we accomplished this year with Sortilege.
The first part of 2024 was quiet; between illness and a new baby, I took a few months off and kept things quiet.
But beginning in May, we started ramping up local events again. We started with the now twice-annual GM Academy, hosted by Tower Games, where I presented a workshop on consent, boundaries, and how to respect your players when exploring intense themes in RPGs, using my past work with games like Bluebeard's Bride, Monsterhearts, and Vampire: the Masquerade as example.
Then, over the summer we resumed Interested Parties, a series of one-shot events at establishments around Minneapolis. A huge thank you to Volstead's Emporium, The Wilderness, and Oddmart for being willing to host games of Call of Cthulhu, Vampire: the Masquerade, Hunter: the Reckoning, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and Alien, and to Renegade Game Studios for the partnership with Sortilege as part of their Play Renegade program.
We also offered games of Paranoia, Xenolanguage, TEETH, and Legend of the Five Rings at Free RPG Day, hosted by Tower Games. This is always a great event to try out new games and experiment with the hobby, and 2024 was no different.
We brought a playtest version of the Spider's Game to ProtoSpiel, and received incredibly useful feedback from our playtesters; look forward to seeing this released in 2025.
Summer ended with us tabling at both Open Streets Lyndale & Nicollet, a great way to meet the broader community and highlight proposed campaigns for the fall.
We also opened up our Quorum tool for public testing, over at quorum.sortilege.online. This allowed us to solicit feedback as to what games to offer in the fall, and on what days and times, and in which locations. More recently, we began a collaboration with Gametime Hero, another local startup. Nothing to report on that yet, but we hope to have something to share soon!
Twin Cities Startup Week was in September, and we hosted a workshop on creativity using the game Microscope to encourage people to take chances on their ideas in a collaborative environment.
This was followed in October by Dreadfest IV, the annual horror RPG one-shot festival at The Source Games & Comics. The previous organizer moved out of state, so we took over and co-organized it with The Source. We had a bunch of great gamemasters, and I ran games of Werewolf and Cy_Borg.
We proposed ongoing campaigns and one-shot events at several locations, with mixed success. A huge thank you to Sencha Tea Bar and Leder Games, who supported a West Marches-style campaign of Root in St. Paul. Unfortunately, it didn't get enough traction to be maintained, but we're hoping to bring it back sometime in 2025.
Likewise, we were excited to run the Angmar Awakened campaign using The One Ring 2e at The Wilderness, and Beware the Jabberwock using TEETH at Volstead's Emporium, and Descent into Avernus using Daggerheart at Bad Wolf Adventure Studios, but couldn't quite line up the right combination of people and times.
Speaking of Bad Wolf, in November we hosted at table in their room at Twin Cities Con, with games of The One Ring and Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok all weekend. We'll be back early next year for Con of the North; stay tuned.
Next Monday will bring 2024's one-shot series at The Coven on Nicollet to a close, but we are planning to bring a version of it back in 2025, details pending. We enjoyed running games of CBR+PNK Augmented, Haunted West, Marvel Multiverse RPG, and Beecher's Bibles to Minneapolis.
2024 also saw our initial forays into the digital space with startplaying.games, beginning with a game of Vampire: the Masquerade to test out the Alchemy virtual tabletop, followed by an initial play of the forthcoming Discworld RPG.
Beginning in November, I took over some after-school D&D programs at an elementary and middle school; quite a different environment than the typical games I've run, but it's been a positive experience thus far.
Finally, I was able to participate in a playtest of Bottomline Business Simulation, a board game designed to illuminate risk analysis strategies and collaboration, from Bottomline. A fantastic game and team, and I look forward to running workshops with it in the future.
On a personal level, a number of campaigns I had been a player in wrapped up or are coming to a close, including Kerberos Club FATE, Feng Shui, Shadow Dark, The One Ring, and Vaesen.
My home campaign of Vampire: the Masquerade ended, and I ran a mini-campaign of DIE, followed by a Root campaign and Daggerheart campaign which are ongoing.
Through all these events, we've been able to collaborate with others in the Twin Cities who are running similar events. Shout out to Dungeons & Dragons & Drinks, who run monthly D&D games and fantastic social events; Local Legends, who run a variety of games down at the Fox Den in Burnsville, and Mercury Adventure Club.
Looking ahead to 2025
As mentioned, we already are scheduled with games every day for Con of the North 2025.
We have several campaigns proposed over at startplaying.games, some of which just need a couple players to start. Take a look here:
We just announced a D&D campaign set in the Greek mythology-inspired setting of Theros, hosted by Bad Wolf:
There are a bunch of other things in the works, which we'll announce in the coming weeks. As always, the linktree will have everything currently available.
We hope your 2024 ends on a high, and we'll see you next year!
