#152: Links for the Link God

Chorus: Links for the link god!

I. Dear Reader,

Travelling so just a quick announcement that the Bundle of Holding has renewed its sponsorship and I’m very thankful that our relationship continues!

I’ve got some exciting interviews lined up with the Yes Indie’d podcast as well, looking forward to sharing them soon!

Yours in a rush,

Thomas

II. Media of the Week

• Daydreaming about Dragons is back with tips about scheduling and some miscellaneous inspiration from the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

• On Dice Exploder, some fun conversation about specific mechanics like Whispers in the Wildsea and Divine Favor in Agon 2e.

• Take Flight is a new RPG stream where newer designers are paired with more experienced designers to discuss their games, ask questions, and talk through design issues. Created and hosted by Cat McDonald of Peach Garden Games. The first stream features Kendo and Rae Nedjadi talking about Kendo’s cool sounding, anti-war, mecha game.

• Please consider joining 50+ other patrons and support the newsletter on patreon to help keep me going.

• 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

• The Ennies announced the nominees for their various awards. A nice list this year, lots of interesting picks, with an inspired choice of Pasion de la Pasiones for Best Game.

• jay dragon talks about writing with a voice and the Storyteller Technique: “One of the first pieces of advice I give for anyone when I’ve been brought on to consult on a project is to imagine the game as an artifact of the world which itself creates.”

• On cohost, Thursday Garreau live-writes a review of Songbirds 3e

• POCGamer continues his series about diving underwater and ways of gamifying it

• Graham Walmsley, designer of Cthulhu Dark and other games, has a substack.

• Philippa Mort talks about cozy games and the sometimes-uneasy combination of horror and cozy that seems to be common.

• On EnWorld, a review of diceless game Not The End, which is translated from Italian and distributed by Modiphius.

• On the latest Soloist, a write-up of solo and GM-less worldbuilding games.

  • There’s actually a quite a nice collection of worldbuilding games maintained here, which I found through Ben Robbins’ new GMless games subreddit.

• I’ve talked about this before so sharing this Twine game that teaches you how to play PbtA. (It’s Dungeon World though so standard disclaimer about one of the designer’s history.)

• Random resource: giant hi-res map of the city of Paris circa 1730

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.

• Border Ridings is a collaborative history-building game, played by drawing evolving town maps on scraps of paper. Rules printed on a massive fold out map! Coming to Kickstarter July 1st through to July 21st.

• How to Host a God is a two player narrative horror game about a Mushroom God and its Human Host. This won’t end well…

• Join a Wyld Coven in Witches of Midnight, a hopeful horror Forged in the Dark TTRPG & tarot deck! Choose from 22 magical playbooks & 9 immortal bloodlines including Medusae, Satyr & Lilitu. Unleash your inner witch!

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

• 21 ebooks from Glen Cook, probably best known for the Black Company series

• Worldographer, the map making software that can do cities, dungeons, & more

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!