Tavern Watch Podcast: Looking back and looking forward to a year of great TTRPGs

It’s the beginning of one year and the end of the next here on Tavern Watch, and so we’re both looking back with fond remembrance on the games we played this year (including the ones we played on Tavern Watch Plays, which you should check out!) and the ones due to come out next year. Liz was particularly pleased and surprised by Legend in the Mist, a statless rustic fantasy RPG. Matt played a lot of solo mythical create-your-own-god game Deify this year, but also is still thinking about that game of Masks we played (me too, Matt, me too). Joe had a great time with Rebel Scum, which is part of a lineage of games that really lower the barrier of entry on the rules and let you get straight into telling cool stories with your friends, and is hoping to get to play Cohors Cthulhu — the Roman Empire meets cosmic horror, sounds good to me! And as for me, a lot of games crossed my table this year, including the phenomenally weird Triangle Agency and the tactical crunchy cinematic action of Draw Steel, but it’s really Fabula Ultima that lives in my head rent-free.

But it’s not all nostalgia — 2026 has plenty of games coming out too (including one that came out early in the form of the Phantasy Star Roleplaying Game), though for the largest game in the industry, we’re hard-pressed to figure out exactly what Wizards of the Coast has up its sleeves. You can expect some speculation about what might be coming soon for D&D, as well as maybe more than a little wishing — Dark Sun, please — but in the end, we only really know what they’re doing for Magic: the Gathering, which is “a lot of exciting things.”

We also discuss some industry news, including James Ohlen leaving Archetype to become a tabletop game consultant for WotC directly, authors who used to work for TSR or Wizards striking out on their own to fill out their settings like Ed Greenwood is doing for the Forgotten Realms, a general sci-fi toolkit coming to 5th Edition in the form of Dark Matter, and whether or not a video game about a single class (and from a studio with a shaky reputation) can be a satisfying experience. I guess we’ll see! Kickstarters are still going strong into 2026, too; a whole passel of them have funded here at the end of the year (including Thundercats, which funded fully in one minute), while MCDM has funded an entire year’s worth of content with its Crack the Sun crowdfunding campaign, and we’re all mesmerized by Fomoria, which is funding in the near future and really needs to be seen for its striking art style and dark fantasy story.

Last but definitely not least, we pay brief tribute to the passing of Tim Kask, TSR’s first employee back in the 80s. Tim was not just part of this burgeoning industry we love in its infancy, but also a person who continued to be funny, opinionated, and inclusive right up until the end — who could ask for anything more?

You can listen to the podcast directly from this post or click on download icon in the upper right corner of the player below to listen on your own device.

Music from this episode is “Midnight Tale” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

For more Tavern Watch, check out all of our recent episodes! We do actual plays of a wide range of games as well as a monthly episode on tabletop news, just like this one. Listen to our latest games in the playlist below, and subscribe if you want to keep up with our gaming exploits.

If you want to subscribe, click the plus icon in the player above or search for Tavern Watch on your podcast platform of choice, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. You can also catch up on our other podcasts on our podcast page. And if you subscribe to our Patreon Tier 2 or above you can listen to our podcasts early and ad-free, as well as get the uncut Blizzard Watch Podcast with bonus pre-show content.

Thanks for your support and enjoy the show!