With just a few weeks of the year left I think I can safely proclaim that my game of the year is “Station S” from Stygian Fox. I have had some amazing fun this year playing 23 games on the ‘RPG Nook’ as well as at the “A Weekend with Good Friends” online convention. So many games with so many Keepers in so many Genres! To make a game great for me it needs to have a mystery, good clues to help you figure out what is going on and then some hope of escape. “Station S” ticks all these boxes and more. I will say the Keeper is the key ingredient to making a good game into a great game so thank you 4acrossisEmu for putting so much life into the “Station S” Game – it was a night to remember!

No Plot Spoilers here!

“Station S” is set in World War Two so not your usual 1920’s classic era but also not the World War Cthulhu or Actung! Cthulhu either. I must admit I was unsure about jumping into the game as I expected to be a soldier where we look for something weird, track something weird and shoot something weird! But one thing I have learned this year is to give games a try even if they are not immediately the usual type of game you prefer.

The adventure comes with some pre-generated characters for you to play, some military types and some not so military focussed. The character I chose to play was Enda Olson who in the written game is more of a historian type, but Emu cleverly attached her to the Women’s Royal Naval Service (referred to as “Wrens”) part of the Western Approaches Tactical Unit (WATU) who were experts in the use of U-Boats. This turned my character into “One of the Allies foremost experts on the U-Boat threat” giving me a huge boost to how I was going to play the investigator. Edna could be full of confidence, not taking any lip from anyone as she had worked for her position on the investigative team. Oh, and she was born in Liverpool giving me some extra fun by putting on a heavy local accent for her.

As with most games there was a briefing to outline the mystery and for us all to come together as a party although we each ended up taking away our own objectives! We were then dispatched to the scene to investigate and from the get-go, things didn’t really add up with little signs of life, an impossible object and all manner of weird occurrences to keep you on your toes! Edna was quite cautious and probably one of the last to give into the mythos element we found. Roleplaying her part of the discovery was amazing fun as it personally related to her and was both impossible as well as believable at the same time! As we progressed, we thought we had a handle on things only for this to be literally blown out of the water and we found ourselves back to square one! By the end of the game I was buzzing as it was mysterious, rewarding, fun to play and had that wow factor. What more could you want!

Did Edna survive? Yes! Despite her referring to the sniper on the team as “Killer” and asking them not to shoot people before she could talk to them, she didn’t get shot in the back! Always nice to make it out relatively unscathed from an adventure although I can’t say the rest of the country was okay afterwards as Edna and Co. might have unleashed the end of the world but hey! Not the first time and certainly not the last that a character of mine will have a part in some kind of Apocalypse. I’ll add “Station S” to the list!

Thanks to Stygian Fox for writing the Scenario and to 4acrossisEmu on the RPG Nook for bringing it to life! Edna Olson and her time at “Station S” is my game of the year 2021 and will be one of my favourite sessions of all time.