My RPG group mercy killed our last campaign
Sometimes you gotta put a game out of its misery.
Misreading rules is an indelible part of tabletop games. My weekly board game group would fill the group chat with post-game realizations, in the vein of “so, I double-checked that ruling” and “okay so my winning strategy shouldn’t have worked like that.” But board games are machines of tight clockwork, whereas an RPG’s rules can feel more like suggestions or guardrails. They suggest a framework of play that participants accept or ignore to fit the table’s expectations (unless we’re talking about the crunchy simulation of combat-focused games). Who cares if you misread a rule if everyone is enjoying the collaborative story?
Yeah, well, that’s what I thought before my group FUBAR’d our game of Wickedness.
Designed by M Veselak, Wickedness is a game about a triad of witches and their attempts to navigate the politics of the outside world and the interpersonal angles of their coven. I played with my spouse and a mutual friend, and we spun up our own unintentional take on the mother, maiden, and crone — a naive but hopeful boy whose magic draws from herbs, the quintessential mom of the friend group with a nose ever in books, and a vulture of a woman who collects bones and curses in equal measure.
