...and why haven't you run it yet? :D
So many. And the answer to all "why nots?". Time. It's time. So off the top of my head
Eat the Reich - "The year is 1943. You are a team of crack vampire commandos with one mission: drink all of Hitler's blood"
Conan 2d20
Legend of the Five rings (5e)
Stoneburner - Deep Rock Galactic the TTRPG
Vaesen - Call of Cthulhu but rooted in nordic mythology
Heart the City Beneath - an award-winning complete tabletop roleplaying game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process.
I haven't played Stoneburner yet, but I ran a 10 session campaign of Tales of the Burned Stones (the free fantasy version released as a reward from the Stoneburner Kickstarter), and it was super fun! If you get a chance I highly recommend bumping Stoneburner up in your queue.
Any gumshoe game, probably something shorter than Nights Black Agents: The Dracula Dossier. If I set it in my own setting, I'd like to use Bubblegumshoe to do my own telling of "Tomorrow When the War Began" basically what happens if on the summer camping trip after your last school year, your country is invaded. I can't quite tell how good Gumshoe is for homebrew settings however.
My other want is to run a worldbuilding game such as the quiet year, for the queen or microscope, hacked to set up a concise and thematic noir mystery inspired by fiction like Disco Elysium, The City and the City or The Nice Guys, with a rich and vibrant world that the players are invested in as they built it. I'm tempted to hack the bladerunner RPG by Freeleague for the actual police procedural afterwards.
a worldbuilding game such as the quiet year, for the queen or microscope, hacked to set up a concise and thematic noir mystery inspired by fiction like Disco Elysium, The City and the City or The Nice Guys
That sounds amazing. I love the thought of a Nice Guys-inspired campaign setting.
Seconded! OP, in a similar vein as the world building games you already mentioned, you might find Intrepid interesting. I could see it being used to do world building + history of some of the major players and nations therein.
I could also imagine the relationship map it uses being hacked a bit to allow for some Disco Elysium style personality skills / thought cabinet shenanigans if you were interested in leaning into that in particular.
Thank you, I've realised that my approach seems a little different from other here, where I try to pick an RPG for an idea that's forming in my head, based on the genre and tone, settling on an RPG that's 80% there but people love the ruleset, then I chop and change it to get close enough to 100%.
This is probably detrimental in a few ways too, as some games like Lancer are unchangable until I'm familiar enough to peel apart the interwoven mechanics and lore, and I'm not going to touch it because I almost never run official settings and adventures, particularly in longform games.
I will shout out both Alice is Missing and For the Queen, which both get worse when they get altered, because their strength comes from their simplicity and then probably ridiculous amount of playtesting.
Mage the awakening 2e. I had a game of it for about 20 sessions, but it fell apart. One player never really learned the rules and was easily frustrated, which is a bad combination. She also straight up said she wasn't going to read a 5 sentence paragraph clue. I definitely had some fumbles, but chief among them I think was overestimating how much they were willing to think about clues and text. They wouldn't even taken notes between sessions, and then would forget.
I also want to do Fate, but it's been hard to find a group. I got my old DND group to try it, but I didn't really like playing with them. I have a new group, but someone just dropped so now we're down to 2 players again. It's a nice game though.
Paranoia. I’m afraid I’ve hyped it up too much internally and there’s no way any real play will meet my expectations.
High expectations are considered treason, please consider a more reasonable expectation before attempting Paranoia
Three-way tie. Unfortunately there hasn't been movement on any due to personal stuff, but hopefully soon:
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Pathfinder 2e for a modern D&D-type experience. (Not to yuck anyone's yum, but I have plenty of gripes with 5e.)
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Dolmenwood. Currently awaiting delivery of the Kickstarter. For those old-school D&D vibes.
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Burning Wheel. My favorite game I've never played, even after owning the books for nearly two decades. :P But for real this time!
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Electric Bastionland has been the RPG I most want to run ever since I bought it years ago.
After watching a surreal Acid Western (which started out deceptively straightforward and veered endearingly off the rails by the final act), I'm itching to run In The Light of the Setting Sun: Bonanza Edition. But I'm at the end of my current FIST: Ultra Edition campaign and don't want to rush anything. :D
Anything sci-fi, using the Savage Worlds system.
I can't find players. Locally, I can't find anyone playing anything other than 5e. Online, I've been able to find players for various non-5e systems, but haven't managed to organise a sci-fi SWADE campaign (yet).
Ahhh, loads of them!
D&D adjacent stuff like Pathfinder 2e.
PBTA and kin like Dungeon World, Monster of the Week, Ironsworn. Blades in the Dark.
Delta Green.
I have a whole folder of freeform, GMless stuff like Microscope, Kingdom, Follow, Archipelago, Dawn of Worlds, Dialect, Intrepid, The Quiet Year.
Gonzo one shot stuff like Paranoia, The Sorcerer Supreme, Ten Candles, peace was never an option (think untitled goose game: the rpg).
I recently had a test run or two of Fate Condensed and got completely hooked.
Most of those I'd be content to run or play, but the game I really want to GM myself is a campaign I've been dreaming up for about year now that I call the "sedition sandbox". The scope is focussed to a single city, the capital of a hostile foreign empire. The PCs are an elite team of saboteurs and infiltrators, sent by a nation desperate to turn the tides of a losing war. Their only objective is to bring down the empire from within. Intrigue, plots, rebellions, sabotage, faction politics, assassinations, propaganda, blackmail, anything the players can think of to achieve that goal is fair game. How far will they go to stop the greater evil?
I think it would be a blast (naturally, I guess), and one or two players in my local network have expressed a little interest, but I've yet to rally the kind of commitment I think I'd need to really get off the ground. And the inexorable march of time makes it less likely with every passing day, as my friends either move away or are subjected to all life's little tyrannies of responsibility ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Soooo many. TTRPGs are a hobby I adore despite not playing much of lol.
Books I own that I haven't played yet include most of the Chronicles of Darkness series (I'd love to try the new Vampire: the Requiem 2e, Werewolf: the Forsaken 2e, Promethean 2e, Changeling 2e, and Mage: the Awakening 2e especially), Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, the Avatar rpg, and Shadowrun (don't remember).
I've also been interested in a more crunchy D&D than my normal game 5e, so I've been looking into Pathfinder 2E and D&D 4E. I've been actively looking into running and playing in 4e lately and so far, reading into it, I don't think I have it a fair shake the first time around. I also wouldn't turn away Level Up 5e if someone offered to run it for me.
Other games I'd like to play: Vaesen, Mothership, Paranoia, and now Daggerheart.
I'd love a go at Crown and Skull by Runehammer. It looks really interesting. I'd like to play it before I run it and, frankly, just don't have the time.
I was looking through the SRD of 13th age and found it intriguing. Later on I went to the new second edition Kickstarter. It doesn't have a playable preview, but in the one they have is very interesting the sort of changes they are highlighting,
The MCDM RPG, it's not out yet. (Patreon backers have access to playtest documents, but I'm not that dedicated.) Also it has a name, we just don't know it yet. No, I'm not salty about that.
"Bite Marks", a PBTA game about werewolves. Just hasn't been the right time yet.
Savage Worlds variants include Weird War II, Weird Wars Rome, Last Parsec, Legend of Ghost Mountain--in each case, I only have limited game time, so there's just a big old backlog, you know?
I picked up all the Last Parsec books last year. Now they sit sadly on my shelf. Wish I could find some interested players.
I'll do you one better, I have the books (except for Irongate), AND the Action Decks, AND the custom Bennies!
Aww, jelly. I have the Action Decks, but not custom bennies. Didn't even know those were a thing. The sheer tactile pleasure of a good poker chip type disk is second only to a good set of dice. I'm convinced that chips are largely responsible for the success of the board game Splendor.
