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The heavens have opened above the valley of Barovia, skies torn asunder by a literal nightmare. My fellow adventurers and I gaze up in horror, not just at the flaming black stallion overhead, but the vampire sitting astride it. Our latest campaign session ended on these chilling words: Strahd von Zarovich has come to Vallaki.
It had been a very successful evening up until that point. We'd tracked down some mystical old bones mouldering away in a leaden box, killed one of Strahd's beloved brides (praise be the holy combination of my cleric's Radiance of the Dawn ability and a mighty wooden stake), and finally leveled up to mark our victory. But nothing is predictable about Dungeons & Dragons, despite the huge Curse of Strahd sourcebook no doubt balanced on our DM's knees somewhere off-camera.
It's a thrilling game of chance and consequence I've become spellbound by in 2025. Even when I'm not gathering with my party for our fortnightly adventures, I manage to get my tabletop RPG fix elsewhere. It's something I hadn't noticed until I looked back on all the new games I've enjoyed most this year. Now that I have, I must come clean. I think I'm obsessed with finding a bit of D&D in everything – but it's not my fault when 2025 has delivered enough fantastical fodder to feed my cravings tenfold.
Wandering eye
I'd dabbled in D&D before, but my love for the hobby took off with Baldur's Gate 3. I chalk it up to how few people I knew who actually played it growing up – if I knew any at all.
The idea of it felt extremely my kind of thing; high-fantasy adventures, unique creatures, roleplaying narratives hinged on imagination and reaction, all governed by the simple roll of a dice. But aside from one-shot nights with university friends and a monthly team building session with ex-colleagues, I simply didn't have consistent enough exposure to the shape and flow of D&D for any of it to stick.
2023 sought to change that. I've written in the past about how playing Baldur's Gate 3 like a chaos goblin made me better at both it and D&D, but I didn't expect it to make me better at a whole lot of other games and reshape my tastes permanently.
Again, it's not something I can say I think about ad nauseum. But if I look at the plethora of games I've enjoyed the most this year – Citizen Sleeper 2, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, and Tavern Keeper being three – my D&D knowledge has made each one that much more approachable.
Guarding the spirit
Larian Studios managed to demystify the intimidating world of tabletop RPGs in a way I've never seen before or since...
It's a feedback loop of my own making. Citizen Sleeper 2, itself based on the pen and paper tabletop RPGs so beloved by creator Gareth Damian Martin, is all about resource management, dice rolls, and chance. I've always adored Heroes of Might and Magic's strategy-RPG combo, and Olden Era's gargantuan demo leans into the infinite exploration, tactical combat, and character leveling synergies I've come to expect from D&D. Meanwhile, Tavern Keeper has finally launched into Early Access and still feels blissfully like being a fly on the wall in a fantasy pub. My one-track mind couldn't be more obvious to me if I shouted it at everyone I've ever met, so consider this me doing precisely that.
I even see flavors of it peppered through less obvious examples. My favorite parts of Split Fiction took place in Zoe's fantasy-tinged imagination (though Mio's Mass Effect vibes were good fun as well). Even The Outer Worlds, which I played for the first time about two months ago, had me using my D&D brain to think more deeply about my character's skill and perk points, while naturally this year's Avowed features a player-guided backstory that feels a lot like carving out your D&D character's background before a new campaign.
It might be obvious when I say it out loud, but I don't think I ever knew how to craft an RPG build properly until I had more experience with how it all works in tabletop.
The most glaring proof of this is in how I was unable to defeat the final boss of The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine until February last year. I didn't just neglect the whole mutagen system. I clearly had no idea how it worked in the first place and fully gave up at some point, something I only noticed in hindsight when I went back to face Detlaff once and for all.
In a sense, I owe it all – including my determination to finally seek out a proper D&D group – to Baldur's Gate 3. Larian Studios managed to demystify the intimidating world of tabletop RPGs in a way I've never seen before or since, and I've taken those lessons with me despite not realizing it. Funny as it is to reflect on this subliminal hyperfixation of mine, it's also kind of comforting, knowing that practice truly does make perfect and that I can somehow practice even without physical dice in hand.
Looking ahead to the slate of upcoming RPGs of 2026, I'm feeling more ready than ever to take them on – but first, I have to save Barovia from a vampire on a comically large horse.
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