Hello Peril

I. Dear Reader,

It’s been two long posts in a row so I’ll keep it short this week. Over on Patreon, I posted 2000 words on a weird little gem of a game, Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo, an RPG from 1977. It’s an essay that goes to a couple of different places – the “yellow peril” roots of Flash Gordon, the unique conceptual map that the game uses, and maybe most importantly, how the game feels extremely simple and coherent and complete. Which is a real stand-out achievement.

Here’s an excerpt:

… [The game] was co-authored by fantasy author and well-known editor, Lin Carter, who was once upon a time, Scot Bizar’s roommate. From the introduction, it seems that Bizar wanted to make a war game and Carter fought to make it what he describes as “adventure-scenarios”. Whatever Carter meant by that, we ended up with probably the first completely playable-out-of-the-box zero-prep RPG. At a time when games were always half-done, a series of suggestions and lookup tables held together with spit and optimism, the fact that this game was genuinely complete is pretty amazing. Most RPGs at the time were tough to read. They were written by accountants who were scifi nerds, for other accountants who were scifi nerds – and it showed. Flash Gordon, on the other hand, is different.

You can find the whole post here if you’re on the patreon.

Yours weekly,

Thomas

PS. The title for this newsletter is just a reference to the the high watermark for “band names that are jokes” which is Hello Peril, Randall Park’s band in Always Be My Maybe. The songs remain very funny.

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II. Media of the Week

• On the Yes Indie’d Podcast, I speak to designers Hannah Shaffer and Evan Rowland about their wonderful podcast, Design Doc, which I’ve talked about here a lot. It’s an honest, vulnerable, and very funny show about the day-to-day practice of being a creative person trying to make a living. Talking to them about it was a fun experience and I think it makes for good listening.

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• Please consider joining 100+ 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.

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III. Links of the Week

• On the Gem Room Games’ blog, a nice about the “implied adventure” of a monster in the bestiary and how there should be more going on than just a creature to fight.
• Deeper in the Game writes about “motivation mechanics” (XP, bonuses, etc) and what they do in games and why they’re good to have.
• On Play Fearless, writes about how to run great sessions and boils it down to “be a good host” and “play more games”.
• On Gnomestew, Tomás Giménez Rioja reviews Thursday, a game about time loops inspired by Russian Doll.
• Levi Kornelsen writes a series of short posts about how RPGs work – the rules, the game, the conversation. There’s a series of diagrams and by the fourth one, I burst into spontaneous applause at how elegant the whole thing was.
• On Dicebreaker, a spotlight feature on tabletop creators from Aotearoa / New Zealand.
• They also cover La Desbanda 1937, a storygame set during the Spanish Civil War when Malaga fell to fascist forces.
• The ElmCat blog has a nice post about running a white whale for many players: the open sandbox hexcrawl, specifically Dolmenwood.

News

• Lin Codega, Rowan Zeoli and Chase Carter, three RPG journalists, have started their own independent, subscription-driven, tabletop news site called Rascal News.
• Evil Hat are releasing an official Tomb Raider RPG.

From the archive:

• Emily Care-Boss wrote an article in 2014 that basically tried to collect and reference two decades of RPG theory. It’s one of those posts that you can spend hours following the links. (Issue #13, November 2020)
• The designer of Mountain Home, Karl / Turtle Hut, wrote a wonderful post in 2020 about getting started with TTRPGs with sections like “what’s different from other games”, “setting ground rules”, and “your first session”. (Issue #13, November 2020)

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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.

• Warrenguard is a game about the fantasy of being a dragonrider, and the reality of how found families form in adversity and carve out comfort in a dangerous life.
• Outliers, Samantha Leigh’s award-winning solo journaling game about trying not to lose your research job as eldritch forces stymie your research, is crowdfunding now to print a quirky softcover edition!
• Perfect Momentum is a new diceless bossfight TTRPG zine from Slade Stolar and Scablands Press! Four immortal heroes hunt down and destroy giant machine-monsters that haunt a post-apocalyptic world.
• Live on Kickstarter: Blister Critters, a mutant cartoon animal TTRPG from the creators of Stillfleet! Dozens of animals and mutations. Quick to learn, player-empowering rules. Discover your inner cartoon-self!
• Rom Com Drama Bomb is a 3-player RPG about two people who shouldn’t fall in love and the evil villain who will stop at nothing to make sure they do. Ending soon!
• Ending soon! The Magus & The Oracle, a solo ttrpg by momatoes about a lonely wizard’s quest for power, plus an art-filled inspiration deck. Come, Magus, divine your fate on Kickstarter.

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

• A bundle of 5e supplements from Legendary Games all about high level domain play and kingdom management.

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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!