I. Dear Reader,
Here’s ten of my favourite bits of writing from the newsletter this year.
- Narrative combos, or how Bite Marks turns good communication between pack-mates into strength. This is nice example of a post I do regularly: here’s the most interesting mechanical part of a game I played.
- On GM Advice: Theatricality versus Transparency, where I discuss the two broad flavours of advice given when running games. This is a good example of me trying to elaborate non-judgmentally on subjects that tend to be inflected heavily with judgment normally.
- Last ditch consequences, where I talk about games that try to make sure GMs have an easy and fun consequence to dish out even when it’s late and their brain is tired.
- My review of So You Want To Be a Gamemaster, where I read the book and ask, “who is this book for?”. The answer is, specifically, “someone who is running D&D 5e or some other un-opinionated game and wants structures to follow when they write their own adventures.”
- How rules and setting drive play differently, i.e, system can push while settings ask to be pulled.
- My review of the Dallas RPG and how it’s a kind of soap opera wargame. One of my favourite pieces of writing this whole year.
- A sociology of tabletop RPGs, which is a once-in-a-year post where I try to explain everything about the world of RPGs in one swoop. This could easily be ten thousand words more.
- Two theories about vibes is a short post about what people mean by vibes and I basically come up with two types.
- What do you see when you look at a game is trying to talk about “form” in RPGs that doesn’t mean the visual design or the mechanical design necessarily.
- Lastly, the recent post about the Murder on Arcturus Station, that people seemed to really like!
Thanks as well for reading and coming along with me for a whole year of posts. If you’ve got 5 minutes, I would greatly appreciate you filling out the annual survey! Last year, it helped me understand who my audience is, what they like, and what they’d like more of!
Yours retrospectively,
Thomas
PS. Normally, in December, I would have done a pledge drive for my patreon. You can still support me on patreon if you’d like but because I now get a salary from Rascal News, I am financially stable in a very pleasant way. So I won’t be asking for your support… yet. In February, Rascal News will have completed one year and will need to do a pledge drive to continue existing. I will be annoying then. I cannot be annoying twice a year.
II. Media of the Week
- On Dice Exploder, an episode about the Challenge deck, a piece of the witchy tarot game, Wickedness, from Possum Creek Games.
- On Yes Indie’d, I talk to Jim Rossignol and Marsh Davies on horror, comedy and class war in the setting of their TEETH. We analyse their setting and talk about how they layer in history and adventure into locations.
- 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
Articles, Reviews
- Jason Morningstar writes a great post about scenes and how to end them: “I can’t really tell you how to trust and love each other, that’s up to you… Editing, now, there’s another story. I can tell you how to edit.”
- Indie Game Reading Club reviews Through the Hedgerow, a British rustic fantasy RPG from Osprey: “There’s an existential battle across time between Light and Darkness. The characters are all Briar Knights in service to the Light, mortals and fay drawn across time to battle Darkness wherever it appears.”
- Yochai Gal explains how he (successfully) does play by post.
- Grognardia has a great post about another great adventure called Nomads of the World Ocean from the Keith brothers – one of whom was behind Murder on Arcturus Station.
- Ryan of Fool’s Pyrite looks back on their 30 session campaign of ICON by Tom Bloom.
News, Misc
- DOTS RPG project have released a set of polyhedral Braille dice.
- Solarian Games is running the Golden Fez awards to in memory of their co-founder.
- Rascal News is having a 1$ for 2 months offer.
Design
- Goblin Punch has a fantastic checklist on designing monsters.
- Binary Star gamers has a very long post about cognitive load in RPG design and how to break down mechanics so they’re as simple or complicated as you want them to be.
- Alfred Valley writes a design diary of how he worked on the Citizen Sleeper TTRPG.
- Vincent Baker is thinking about GM-less troupe-style play, where there’s no running the game and everyone controls multiple characters.
From the archive:
- Dungeon News makes a video called How To Play PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) (Issue 73, Jan 2022)
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.
- Who killed Brianna Pilgrim? Solve a murder and prevent a war in Orgy of the Blood Leeches, a deluxe campaign adventure for Mothership 1e, now on BackerKit Crowdfunding as part of Mothership Month.
This newsletter is sponsored by the the wonderful Bundle of Holding.
- Shadowrun 4e megabundle, 25 books!
- Plus, there’s 20 more about the Sixth World setting.
- Forged in the Dark bundle with Rebel Crown, A Nocturne, and more.
- Quick deal on Slugblaster for those who want to grab it.
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!
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