The Tom Bloom Phenomenon and Sub-cultures Generally

I. Dear Reader,

For the first time ever (as far as I can tell anyway), there are 5 games in the top 10 of itch.io that are from the same creator.

Tom Bloom is an artist probably best known for his comic, Kill 6 Billion Demons. He’s also one-half of Massif Press and co-creator of the tactical mecha game, Lancer. And recently, he’s been publishing games under his own solo label, Chasm.

So far, under Chasm, he’s put out three products, which are all in the Top 4. Magnagothica: Maleghast is a miniatures war game without the miniatures. The assumption is that you’ll play it online using his stylish art. Cain is a dark investigation game where trained supersoldiers hunt down monsters created by trauma. And then there’s Games for Freaks, which is a little magazine that contains supplementary material for his other games.

As far as lineage goes, my understanding is that Bloom’s primary touchstone for narrative games is Blades in the Dark (oh, look, a new supplement is out). He tends to combine that with various degrees of crunchy combat, stunning art, shonen anime aesthetics, and angst. They sound interesting but I don’t know if I’ll ever get to play them. Lancer was definitely too rules-y for me.

I’m talking about this because I think it’s interesting that more and more, the huge diversity of RPG clusters are becoming apparent to me. This newsletter tries to take a wide view of the gaming scene but because I’m writing it, there’s a focus on storygames. There’s thriving groups and sub-groups that I almost never talk about – those around World of Darkness or GURPS or the 2d20 games from Modiphius or all the new Osprey Games or Jenna K Moran’s work or even solo games or larps or lyric games. And of course, there’s geographies and technologies and on on.

It’s not about the absolute number of the population of these various sub-groups – that’s not where their notability comes from. The point for me is that there is a huge diversity in the breadth of “who is playing tabletop RPGs”. There is a huge variation in what is considered approachable, fun, interesting, life-affirming, comforting, and so on. Anyone still talking about what games are or should be (without the requisite nuance) is just wasting their time.

We don’t all share the same context anymore. The games that you know aren’t the games I know. The way you play isn’t the way other people play. And this is a part of broader cultural trends – globalism, the rise and fall of mass culture, consumerism, monopolization – all of which I’m not smart enough to explain in 600 words. But it was also always the case – maybe it was just a little harder to see.

I think there are a lot of people who, like me, have a curiosity that exceeds their grasp. Thanks to Rascal, I get to do some spelunking into these communities. But I really can’t do them all. And I really shouldn’t. I’m excited for folks from all these groups to speak for themselves to others – to articulate their own contexts and speak passionately about what brings them together. That’s not easy honestly. It’s hard to talk about games without some critical language and some broader sense of the landscape and so on. But at the same time, we can figure that out along the way. I’d definitely like to help.

Yours bloomingly,

Thomas

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II. Media of the Week

• An older episode but I just heard it: On the Asians Represent podcast, Daniel Kwan reviews a Japanese game called Floria: the Verdant Way, which is all about getting magic powers from plants, going on quests, and drawing patterns on your character sheet.
• On the latest Yes Indie’d, I talk to MV Soumithri and Zoheb Mashiur who are cast members of Desperate Attune, a Blades in the Dark actual play set in Uduasha, a Middle Eastern/South Asian inspired alternative to Duskwall. They’ve now released a free supplement called Sunmirror, which brings a re-imagined city of gods and magic to the table.

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• 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

• It’s a huge week on Rascal News.
  • A 2 month long investigation into World of Game Design and their sketchy business practices. A total saga, with twists and turns, painstakingly reported by my colleague, Rowan Zeoli. (Paywalled, but more than worth the 1$ charge.)
  • Aaron Voigt writes about haunted houses and RPGs
  • I write about The Dark Eye and argue that it’s more than Germany’s D&D and lies at an interesting crossroads on its 40th birthday.
  • The public article for the week is all the Rascals recommending horror movies and games that pair well with them.

Reviews

• Cannibal Halfling reviews Zombie World
• Rolling Boxcars reviews Cthulhu Dark
• Jared Rascher reviews Pirate Borg and Shadow of the Weird Wizard

From the archive:

• Watabou’s fantasy map creator remains quite a nifty tool. If you click through and are confused, the header image isn’t an image. It’s interactive! (Issue 64, October 2021)

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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.

• 🎲DIE in a Dungeon is a solo/cooperative, narrative dungeon-crawl, covered in inky art, that turns your RPG dice into doomed heroes! Its Kickstarter is ending this week!
• Try out the 1st season of the award-winning, fully cast, and immersive low-fantasy mystery, “The Thief.” Follow Symphony, the drawlatch heroine, as she gets swept-up in a gripping missing-person conspiracy. The Thief is a high-production value Dungeons & Dragons Actual Play.
• Paranormal Freelancing is a new urban fantasy RPG being Kickstarted by the Far Horizons Co-op. Play as mercenaries with power borrowed from vampires, witches, and more!

This newsletter is sponsored by the the wonderful Bundle of Holding.

• Night’s Black Agents and the seminal Dracula Dossier, all bundled up.
• Corsairs of Cthulhu and other historical scenarios for your Lovecraft game.

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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!