I. Dear Reader,

It’s a media-heavy issue this time as I catch up on weeks of people releasing stuff to watch and listen to. There’s actually so much media that I’ve decided to save some reading links for next week.

I hope you’re all doing well and thanks for reading!

Unreasonably confident that next week will actually arrive,

Thomas

II. Media of the Week

• Weird Place continues to do great work making videos about RPG culture. This one about play-by-mail games is a fun introduction and taught me about the large-scale “net games” in Japan that had up to ten thousand players and had some campaigns spin off into their own systems or manga. Very cool stuff.

• Reading D&D Aloud is a podcast by Ben Riggs (Slaying the Dragon) that doesn’t seem to involve any reading of D&D out loud anymore. Instead, it’s a facilitated conversation — not exactly an interview, more just getting people on the call that have something to say to each other. There’s a couple of good ones recently, including this one with Vincent Baker, Meguey Baker, and John Harper. If you haven’t heard about the creation of Apocalypse World, definitely check it out. Here’s the Youtube link but you can find it on your podcatcher of choice as well.

• Dice Exploder wrapped up their mini-series looking at actual play. My favourite episode was with Linnie Schnell about Last Train To Brooklyn, a play of Last Train To Bremen. It’s pretty much a traditional interview but it’s a really good one both because of Sam Dunnewold’s clear passion for the media and Linnie’s excellent answers. I’ve played *Bremen *multiple times this year (great game) but I haven’t watched this show and it was still a great listen.

• Another one I missed sharing was this round table conversation between powerhouses Emily Friedman, Quinns, Brennan Lee Mulligan and the hosts of Talk of the Table, Elliot Davis and Brian Flaherty. They talk about actual play and its relationship to learning how to play RPGs. I have only listened to the one hour of the conversation that’s outside of the patreon pay wall but that was plenty insightful already.

• I more or less believe that the “Matthew Mercer effect” was just regrettable paranoia on our parts — at least in its extreme version of “this has a negative effect on new players”. There is probably an effect of some kind but it’s a nuanced one. Listening to this episode might not resolve the debate but it is a good way to at least get on the same page of how to have that conversation.

• Also, Em Friedman and Quinns will be on the next season of Adventuring Academy, Brennan Lee Mulligan’s interview show on Dropout so watch out for that.

• Okay, last one. I was on the wonderful Smiling Fox podcast which is devoted to exploring Mythic Bastionland. I went on to talk about the 7-ish sessions that I played with Judd and Jay on the actual play channel. It was a really nice conversation and I think I spent an appropriate amount of time joyfully explaining how Judd showed me how to run this game as a character drama.

• 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

• I’ve really enjoyed discovering monkeyx’s blog this week. Some of them are pretty funny like the latest one about selling off a Doctor Whogame: “There are books on my shelf that say something noble about my taste and discernment. Then there are the others. Doctors & Daleks belongs to the latter category: the sort of purchase that clearly involved a momentary lapse of judgment, a credit card, and the words “5E” and “Doctor Who” in unwise proximity.”

• There’s also reviews for games like Cold City 2e and After the War. On the latter, they write: “For me, After the War scratches the “hopeful community on the edge of horror” itch. It feels like a mashup of The Expanse’s Belt politics, Firefly’s “the war is over, the good guys lost” energy, and Mass Effect-style memetic/cosmic horror. All filtered through a lens of trauma, diaspora, and rebuilding.”

• On his blog, Alex Rinehart has a lovely review with Marx Shepherd who started the podcast I now run talking about their game design as well as their work with the Far Horizons Co-op.

• Erika Chappell (Flying Circus) wrote a Warhammer space marine game and just released it for free via google docs. In her own words, it’s “both a shitpost and a dead serious game. And it’s, uh… 34,000 words long?”. For a certain kind of person, it’s a Christmas-come-early moment.

• There’s a TTRPG For That, run by internet friendo Mint, has some new game lists. Someone asked her for games with a new take on violence and action (which is a GREAT prompt) and and somebody else asked about games that do large scale battles.

• Deeper in the Game talks about the work of preparing reference documents for players to teach them the rules and get everyone on the same page. It’s very much extra workload that falls on GMs and I’m not thrilled about that. But you’ve got to respect the act of love it is to take care of your people.

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.

• Play scrappy working class exterminators protecting the planet from a secret alien invasion in the 90s!

This newsletter is sponsored by the wonderful Bundle of Holding. Check out the latest bundles below:

• Over the Edge 3rd Ed, Jonathan Tweet’s highly influential game of weird science and conspiracy is in a bundle.
• Monarchies of Mau is a cat-and-rat science fantasy game based on Pugmire.

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.