Going into last year, I had only ever really played D&D 5e and maybe a bit of Call of Cthulhu years ago. Going into 2026, I have played well over 20 different systems. Still a small number in total, but if you look at it in terms of percentage gained, it – like many things viewed through that lens – becomes a lot! I wish I had kept some notes, thoughts, and initial impressions on all of them, so this year I'll do that. This is one of those posts.

Disclaimer: I encounter many of these systems for one-shots at meetups, where I sometimes won't even know what I'll be playing going in. Because of this, I'll often only have taken a deeper look at parts of the book that relate to character creation, and flipped through the rest. But I'll always have played them!

Played/Mastered on 18.01.2026 with 3 other players and 1 GM.

On paper, Brindlewood Bay seems like it was custom-made for me. As a kid, I loved watching "Murder, She Wrote". One of my formative memories is of my mother asking me why I would watch such an "extremely boring" show, and if it was because of some kind of weird grandmother complex I had (don't worry–it was in her own loving way. But yeah, my parents definitely never knew what an appropriate level of conversation was when it came to their only child). I also watched almost every other detective procedural explicitly mentioned somewhere in Brindlewood Bay's text. Many of them with my grandmother, no less. And as a millennial nerdish type, I feel a certain affection towards the works of Lovecraft, of course. Though never not with the caveat spoken that I am fully aware that he was a racist piece of shit. And would you have guessed that I like books, like, a lot?

So it's with great joy that I can report that I indeed loved Brindlewood Bay. What a surprise!

The big thing about how Brindlewood Bay works that polarises people who play it is the way it does mysteries. Because by design, there is no one solution to what has truly happened in a case. There are only clues that you can use to spin a convincing yarn together. It's not about being one of the great detectives, it's about acting like them, and the fate of the dice deciding whether you succeed.

Depending on your mindset, this can feel a bit unsatisfying. Especially if you don't know that this is how the game works going in, and we had people who didn't at the table. But even if you do know, I think this is something you will have to get a feeling for over multiple sessions to truly make the best use of.

This was a surprise to me as well: how much this felt like a game that would benefit from being used for a small campaign. We didn't even use the device of the overarching "season-long mystery" of a Cthulhuesque cult pulling the strings in the background, and it still felt like the game was very good at building a place to inhabit over time step by step.

Well, you see how this works, don't you?

It's also a game and setting that supports silliness very well without breaking apart. For this one-shot, I took inspiration from the infamous Murder, She Wrote VR episode and played what was basically a merge of this version of Jessica Fletcher and the 30 Rock "How do you do, fellow kids?" Steve Buscemi GIF. Another character was basically a version of Spider-Woman if she wore Gore-Tex instead of... whatever Spider-Woman's suit is made out of.

Apparently, it's "most likely Spandex or something similar".

But even with such goofy conceits, it felt very clear where the feelings and vulnerabilities could come in and have a place if you let them.

So while it doesn't feel like we will be returning to this particular version of Brindlewood, I'm hoping that I will get the chance to spend a season in a future one.

Loved it. | Liked it. | Didn't care for it.