New Itch Games from Feb and March 2024

I. Dear Reader

It’s been a pretty great month for new games. All of these games came from people letting me know through this form.

Rabbit Ronin: A samurai picaresque of wandering adventurers, who also happen to be rabbits or pigs or bears and so forth. (Thomas McGrenery)
Holdfast Station: A zero-prep, mostly one shot, hardscrabble sci-fi RPG about community survival on an isolated mining outpost. (Michael Low and Maurice Poplar)
Otherworldly Flesh: A one page sci-fi scenario, system neutral, about a group of scientists delving into an organic living spacecraft. (Francisco Lemos)
Stirring the Hornet’s Nest at Het Thamsya: A 28-page, one-shot TTRPG adventure module for Cairn and similar games about rescuing a meditating monk from a temple of automatons and wasp monsters. (Munkao)
Dungeons for Shepherds: Dungeons is a 26-pages for preparing and running dungeons in a map-free, montage style. Intended for the PbtA game, Shepherds, but adaptable to a lot of other games. (Airk Seablade)
Denique Aequales: A scenario for Cthulhu Dark about contagion and sacrifice, set in Italy during World War 2. The PCs are anti-fascist partisans in search of a young comrade who has gone missing. (Daniele Di Rubbo & Leonardo Lucci)
La Desbandá 1937: a historically inspired role-playing game where players take on the roles of civilians in the Spanish Civil War as they retreat from Franco’s fascist forces. (Pablo Lopez)
Solstice: A ’90s Folk Horror RPG about small town mentality, shame, and burning someone alive in a wicker man to bring back the sun. (Tanya Floaker)
Lingering: “Lingering is a solo journaling TTRPG about a lingering spirit in an animal form who must convince someone to help resolve their unfinished business so their spirit can move on. (Meghan Cross / Siren’s Song Games)

Yours curatorially,

Thomas

II. Media of the Week

Good stuff happening over on the Yes Indie’d Podcast:
- I spoke to Max Lander and Aaron King of the Read the F**king Manual podcast about what brought them together, how they review games, and why they switched from discussing older games to newer ones.
- I also spoke to the good people behind The Awards, an RPG awards project entering its third year about their vision and why they’re willing to work so hard to achieve it.

Please consider joining 100+ other patrons and support the newsletter on patreon to help keep me going.

III. Links of the Week

Articles, Reviews

An actual play podcast, Firebreathing Kittens, reviews the post-apocalyptic mecha game, Salvage Union, after playing it.
Sean McCoy and Watt sit down and discuss the future of Mothership as well as Cloud Empress.
In their Daily Blades series, Sidney Icarus writes, “Look at Ghost Lines and Ghost/Echo. John has been making Blades for almost 15 years.”
On Prismatic Wasteland, how to use one 3d6 roll to decide the encounter, reaction, distance, and surprise. Then, Sandro of the Fail Forward blog made a worksheet so you can design your encounter table to fit the process.
On Deeper in the Game, Chris sits down and makes a chart to decide if his sessions are still fun to run.

News

Larian Studios has broken away from Hasbro/WOTC and will not be making a sequel to the hit videogame, Baldur’s Gate 3.
Big Bad Con Online is happening next weekend (April 5/6). It looks great and I’ll be on a panel called Not Everyone’s a Critic: The Role of Reviewers & Journalists in TTRPGs with Lin Codega and Samantha Leigh.

Misc

Reddit user JapanEmpireofShadows has translated from Japanese to English the original Record of Lodoss War replays which was the campaign that then became the manga/anime.
Handiwork games has published their risk/reward sheet from a|state as a free download. It’s an interesting bit of design that was something that older versions of Blades in the Dark considered – trying to give the negotiation a tactile or visual aid.

From the archive:

Wired Magazine: D&D’s Racial Reckoning is Long Overdue (Issue #22, January 2021)

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.

Back the Long Road Home on Kickstarter! A story game about friends returning from an epic quest, remembering their adventures and discovering what awaits them at home!
Travel to a spore-covered paradise & ashen wastelands destroyed by a falling city in the next expansion to Cloud Empress, the Nausicaa-inspired Mothership 1E science fantasy setting. Follow on Kickstarter today!
Mystified! is the first expansion to the ENNIE-nominated TTRPG Flabbergasted and is now live on Backerkit and 100% FUNDED! Comedic scenarios and light-hearted adventures are at the heart of this 1920s game. You can pick up both in our campaign!

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

Get lots of Fiasco and other Jason Morningstar games including Skeletons, Winterhorn, and Carolina Deathcrawl.
A bug bundle of everything for Ruins of Symbaroum 5e, the dark fantasy game from Free League.

Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!