I. Dear Reader,
It finally happened. I missed a week of the newsletter. I don’t know if I’ve unintentionally skipped a week ever in the five years I’ve been doing this. Given that, I want to take it seriously. I don’t like admitting I’ve spread myself too thin but that’s basically what happened.
Normally, I go into a kind of hibernation in December where I stop writing this top section up here and just focus on the links — the curation. I think I’m just going to start that a little earlier and just take the pressure off myself to write something new every week. So for the rest of the year, the newsletter will just be the links, maybe with a little more added commentary around them usual.
It’s not a big change, all in all. It’s been harder to write the newsletter’s editoria…
I. Dear Reader,
It finally happened. I missed a week of the newsletter. I don’t know if I’ve unintentionally skipped a week ever in the five years I’ve been doing this. Given that, I want to take it seriously. I don’t like admitting I’ve spread myself too thin but that’s basically what happened.
Normally, I go into a kind of hibernation in December where I stop writing this top section up here and just focus on the links — the curation. I think I’m just going to start that a little earlier and just take the pressure off myself to write something new every week. So for the rest of the year, the newsletter will just be the links, maybe with a little more added commentary around them usual.
It’s not a big change, all in all. It’s been harder to write the newsletter’s editorial section because I’m full-time writing about games on Rascal and that’s led to lots of weeks during the last year where it’s just been the links. This is just making that official and taking some mental pressure of myself as the year winds down a little. What the newsletter looks like in January is something I’ll give myself the next couple months to figure out.
As always, I’m just happy to still be here.
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
- This is a really great video aimed at people trying to build online communities. It’s not necessarily new information but it’s stuff I haven’t internalized personally. A lot of wisdom from Colville’s experience of making games, books, and things for the internet for three decades. Worth the one hour runtime!
(For a similar article focused more on promotion of your work or building an audience, Clayton Notestine has a nice write up on his blog.)
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The Bad Spot channel has a nice video about Blood Cotillion, a really fun one shot about “formidable assassins, disguised as husband-hunting ingenues, who must root out the occult evil that lurks in the manor, destroy it and, ideally, survive.”
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For Yes Indie’d, I published a conversation with Asa Donald about his solo game Spine* *and the general trend of “bookplay”. It’s a fun conversation about using RPG books to do interesting stuff and something that connects to previous conversations with Elizabeth Little, Luke Jordan, Elliot Davis, jay dragon, and more.
- You too can support the newsletter on patreon!
- If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.
III. Links of the Week
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Throne of Salt has finished a series of posts discussing their experience playing the hard-scifi doorstopper 60 Years in Space as a solo game. I particularly like this review because it’s very justifiably mixed: “I had fun. It scratches a particular itch no other game (that I know of) is scratching. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
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This specific reaction is one of my favourite to see in reviews because it’s very real but feels complex and hard to relay to readers without confusing the issue. But Dan makes it look extremely easy here.
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Ben Robbins returns to the problem of “the star pattern” where players are talking to the GM but not to each other. He gives some solid tips to players about how to just to make interaction commonplace as well as to the GM about giving information and then shutting up. Which is personally very hard for me to do, so point taken, Ben.
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Valeria Loves writes an interesting review of Fabula Ultima and says a bunch of smart things about it, labeling it “a storygame in trad drag” but identifying that the trad nature of the game is a big part of its success. Valeria tries to run it in a more OSR style but the game does resist that in many ways. I have no personal connection to JRPGs so I was never pulled in but I’m very happy to see the game have the phenomenal success it has had.
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On Old Men Running the World, there’s a good discussion of The Between. Kieron Gillen and Jim Rossignol talk very positively about the Masks of the Past mechanic and how it spools out character backstory in an exciting way and have a good discussion about hidden benefits of the Unscene. It’s worth reading!
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Unrelated to anything they said, I personally have a lot of discomfort with the colonial content of The Between, especially how it sets up one character to be responsible for mass murder in a British colony. While all the characters are bad people, for me that crosses the line from bad in a fun way to bad in an unfun way. It would be like playing a former Nazi officer as far as I’m concerned and while I can imagine a space for that in games, I think you have to be more careful than this game is.
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There’s a new issue of the Sprigs and Kindling free fanzine which has a lot of stuff for people playing Trophy.
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ElmCat has a fun blog post about using glory as reputation in Mythic Bastionlanḍ. Very natural addition to the game.
Misc
- *Rascal *reported on DriveThruRPG’s new feature that allows people to sell offset print run copies of their games through the site. They don’t fulfill the orders, simply handing the details off to the publisher who must handle everything from there. I’m not sure who this is aimed at, because if a person has the ability to store and ship their own parcels than they probably have their own webstore which is pretty easy to setup. Unlike POD, which was convenient because DriveThruRPG handled everything. I’m sure there will be some adoption but primarily among people who are “all-in” on DriveThru as a platform and rely on it to serve up an audience.
- A crowdsourced spreadsheet of RPG stores in the UK.
IV. Small Ads
All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.
- *SPINE *is a dark solo TTRPG that looks like a book. Piece together the story without losing yourself in it. Now available in print!
- The Wyrd corrupts everything it touches. Only Mavericks ride out to face it. *Huckleberry *is a bespoke, cinematic RPG. Learn in 20 minutes, then play for a lifetime of adventures.
- Death City: a dark occult urban fantasy tabletop RPG is funding now on Kickstarter. (for fans of Buffy, Shin Megami Tensei, Blade, and more)
- In the wilds of Darnascus, survivors rebuild what was lost. Roots of Survival by flamigos miniatures brings cinematic 3D-printable terrain to your tabletop. Live now on Kickstarter!
- You’ve suddenly gained awareness—but not freedom. Play an android fighting for survival and rights in Sentients: the RPG of Artificial Consciousness. Hardcover rulebook available now!
- Historical fantasy adventure toolkit! 101 detailed plot outlines grounded in the history and folklore of Renaissance England. Mystery, intrigue, and magic! Ending this week on Kickstarter!
This newsletter is sponsored by the wonderful Bundle of Holding. Check out the latest bundles below:
- The Nightmares Underneath, Jonathan Metzger’s fantasy game where dungeons are incursions from a nightmare realm.
- Ghastly Affair, a game of gothic and romantic horror of European high society and other monsters.
- Cool bundle of indie Lovecraftian horror games including *Stealing Cthulhu, Lovecraftesque, *and Far Horizon’s Guide to the Cults.
- More than 20 adventures around the Cthulhu mythos set in various historical eras and locations in this Cthulhu Eternal bundle.
Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend. If you’d like to know more about my work, check out the coolest RPG website in the world Rascal News or listen to me talking to other people on the Yes Indie’d Podcast.