This is part three of my posts about LinCon 2026, a gaming convention in Linköping that I attended with my kids. In this post I deep dive into running Death of Rapacus, Mars to Stay and Zhenya’s Wonder Tales. The two first are story games that I have designed and published while the third is a story game by Jason Morningstar.
Death of Rapacus
Death of Rapacus is my dark comedy love letter to Ars Magica. Players take on the roles of ambitious and petty duelling wizards in a GM-less story game for 4-6 players in 4 hours. The game is PvP and dice determine the outcome of duels — but before each duel, the other players give dice to help one of the two duelling wizards which means everyone is invested. Narrate a cool scene twist or find a common cause to sway other players to help you win.
Last year four groups played Death of Rapacus, this year eleven players chose to spend 4 hours bickering about demons and dead wizards over eating dinner at six as normal people would do. I know the game works and I had prepared dice, handouts and booklets so it is easy to host and fun to see the players enjoying themselves. New this year was that I had made pins as trophies. One for the player of the wizard that killed Rapacus, one for the player of the Last Wizard Standing.
I did not brand Death of Rapacus as an Ars Magica spin off when I released it in 2023. Now when Ars Magica is open source, I’m contemplating to re-release the game. On the other hand, none of the players at LinCon this year or last year knew Ars Magica and it’s nice with a stand alone game that is easily accessible to newcomers. There are a few things I could streamline but nothing that really stop players from having a blast of a time.
This year it’s 10 years since I ran the first version of Death of Rapacus at Grand Tribunal and Viking Con. I’m contemplating at least going down to Copenhagen in October for a fun rerun.
In one group Ultor killed Rapacus while Pestilentia Tremor was Last Wizard Standing. The other group learned that Avarious killed Rapacus while Mirabella was Last Wizard Standing. Congratulations to the players for these amazing achievements. Will there be another opportunity to kill Rapacus at LinCon next year? Time will tell.
Mars to Stay
Mars to Stay is my story game about a group of people who leaves Earth for good to build humanity’s first colony on Mars. The first version of the game premiered at Fastaval 2017 and had a game master. This is the GM-less version that I published in 2023 which is also much more focused and fits in a four hour convention slot. It’s a while since I ran it last time and this is the first year I present it at LinCon. 9 players showed up which was enough for two crews to go on a mission to Mars.
New this year was that I had made puzzles in plywood for the two tracks. As you roll dice to see if you succeed improving the colony, you add pieces of a puzzle. How far you progress before the end of the story decides you odds for surviving the option you choose: To stay on Mars or to return to Earth.
I moved between the two rooms to make sure they got started but pretty soon they both caught on with the game. In both groups, Shane the Visionary delivered truly inspiring speeches on what should be done and why.
I made sure to join the groups when they hit that curve ball moment when reality strikes with a gut punch. The more invested the players are in their project, the harder the twist strikes and you can see when it dawns on the players.
A second thing I noticed that also often happens is in the chapter First Blood. Here the twist is that a supporting character dies. One player rolls a die to see who dies. The players have all just brought these extras into their story so they can relate to each of them. One player gets to decide where and how it happened. The players then do a montage scene of how the body is discovered, retrieved and disposed of.
This typically brings up the question of recycling human remains. This then triggers a lot of jokes. People laugh to disperse the uncomfortable thoughts of breaking tabus. After a while the laughter dies out. The tone in the room then becomes dead serious. This is the reality of the new world they are building. This is no longer the dream they had when they left Earth.
The game then asks the players if they want to stay on Mars or return to Earth.
In most games of Mars to Stay I have played or watched, almost everyone choose to stay on Mars. Many of those who do, also survive. When I designed the game, I wanted the choice to be open, a hard choice. To stay or to reach for the one final chance to return to Earth. However, the game already paints a harsh picture of how a life on Mars will be. So maybe it’s ok — and maybe even a reflection of how we humans make decisions — that players tend to double down on the choice already made when they boarded that rocket that lifted them off from Earth.
And while the player characters may have succeeded in surviving on Mars, their bleak epilog may be far from the rosy dream they had when they set out on their journey. And that staying on Earth and fighting for this world to become a better place is perhaps as noble a mission as building a new world on Mars.
Zhenya’s Wonder Tales
Jason Morningstar’s latest game is Zhenya’s Wonder Tales. It crowd funded last year and I have been waiting for the game to reach my FLGS here in Sweden to pick up a copy. Just before LinCon, I reached out to Jason to get an update on the availability in EU. He was kind enough to share a print-and-play copy of the game while I’m waiting for the physical copy to arrive. I printed and assembled two stories just before heading out to LinCon and late Saturday afternoon I found three volunteers with whom to try out the game.
In Zhenya’s Wonder Tales four players create and tell a story together in 1-2 hours. The stories that Zhenya helps you tell are inspired by Slavic folk lore so expect cold winters, dark forests, evil spirits, and characters with tongue twisting names for those of us not having a Slavic language as our mother tongue. We played the story called Bear Lovers.
The game gives you the structure and tools you need in the form of a (short) rule book and 22 cards. Four of the cards are characters, one for each player. Each character has three ‘move cards’ while four cards are move cards that can be triggered by any character. One side of the move card is a trigger. We had two pregnant women and two of the shared cards had the trigger When you give birth. When this happens in the story, the player of the character that triggers the move, picks up the card and read the other side. Moves typically give you or another character a hard choice between two mutual exclusive outcomes but there are other typs of moves as well.
The game shines when everyone brings out their awesome. If you wishy-washy and shy away from conflict, the story becomes less interesting. And in a one hour game, you want things to get messy and juicy fast. But you also need to stay a little on the meta layer and pay attention to where we are in the story and what prompts the game gives you to work with for pacing. The game and the story both get better when players have some experience with improvisational story telling. We had a little sand in the machinery from the order we triggered the moves and perhaps from playing not in our native language and in a noisy space.
I played Janusz and loved what the game gave me to work with. Looking forward to pick up my copy in my FLGS when it arrives.
Outro
This concludes my posts about LinCon 2026. Read also Part One and Part Two. If you like what you read, you can subscribe to the blog be notified about new posts, you can visit my shop, and — if you find me at a game convention near you — swing by and say hello.