I. Dear Reader,
Over on Yes Indie’d, I get together with Quinns to do a look back on the year – for Quinns Quest, for me, for RPGs in general. I’ll repeat some of those things here for all the people who don’t like podcasts but this will just be a general look-back on the year.
So all years are complicated years: we lose things and gain things, we lose people and sometimes, we gain people. This year, I basically lost my job and then gained a job – a job that changes my position in this space a little. 5 years ago, nobody reading this had heard of me, right? I’m slowly becoming aware that I can’t act like that person anymore. I am receiving more and more recognition, which is so great – but I am extremely aware that it comes with more and more responsibility. I don’t know what that responsibility entails yet. I’ve always tried to act with sensitivity and restraint, which I understand sometimes makes me come off as stiff, maybe even unfriendly. But it has also ensured that I haven’t made a fool of myself. Well, not too often, at least.
This year, I sent a weekly issue of the Indie RPG Newsletter without missing a day. That’ll be 52 issues by the time the year is out. (Actually, maybe I will skip 29th December.) Some of these issues didn’t have a section from me at the top, which thanks to the survey, seems to be people’s favourite section.
(If you haven’t filled in the survey, please consider it. It takes 2 minutes. Or less.)
That’s probably the hardest section of the newsletter to fill. I try my best to be as interesting as possible in as short a word count as possible. Given the fact that is also now what I do at Rascal, I’m going take the pressure off myself and say that I’m going to aim to do the “Dear Reader” section in every alternate issue. This is just permission for me to have a lighter load every second email. I’m planning to keep doing the itch roundup – my thanks to everyone who told me they enjoyed it.
I’m also restructuring the patreon slightly. The main thing is to be more clear about what its for – which is just supporting the newsletter and podcast and keeping it going. The only benefits I can provide are basically a discount on buying ads and a bonus post every month where I’m going to talk about books and movies I read and watched. Last year, patrons got a nice PDF called Fantasy Cities Vol 1. This year, my project on playing older games, 10 Games From The First 10 Years, didn’t quite generate enough writing for a PDF yet. (I only played 5.5 of the games on my list) So I’m just going to extend the deadline on that and get a couple more pieces done and then that will go up. The extra podcast episodes are just going to be on the main feed – having two of them isn’t worth it.
Next week, I talk games of the year two zero two four.
Thanks for reading and being part of this year,
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
- Dice Exploder did a year-in-review as well with Aaron Voigt, Mint and Rowan Zeoli from Rascal. They talk about their favourite games and game-adjacent things. It’s a good list!
- 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
Rascal News
- Lin Codega and I write about Wyrmwood’s recent decision to lay off 50% of their staff and make Youtube videos about it. It ended up leading to the Wyrmwood publishing a video about me on their channel. Not fun!
- Itch.io was down for a while this week due to an automated complaint filed by an AI-powered brand protection software used by Funko.
- Freelance writer Shardae R writes about various examples of sexist rules and lore of D&D and how we moved past them.
Articles
- Mad Jay Zero writes about his favourite fantasy RPGs, namely One Ring, OSE, Household, and more.
- Indie Game Reading Club does a deep dive into Inevitable, an Arthurian Western from Soul Muppet games.
- Seamus Conneely writes about his trip to PAX Unplugged and it’s fun reading.
- On Polygon, Em Friedman writes about her favourite Actual Plays from the year.
- Via Geek Native, here’s an article about the art from D&D – lots of illustrations from the greats.
- Idle Cartulary has been doing a thing called Critique Navidad where she reviews games almost every day. I liked this one about Into the Blind, a scifi horror game based on Trophy, by Riley Daniels.
From the archive:
- This is another post that I use regularly: Seven starter stories from Age of Ravens, which is a bunch of situations that you can deploy again and again in various games to kickstart the narrative. (Issue 74, 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.
- Do you dare to face the Sun? Purple Reaping is a Sword & Sorcery Horror Narrative TTRPG inspired by the stories of Robert E. Howard on Kickstarter from July 1, 2025.
- HitPoint brings a twist to tabletop gaming, playable as a trading card game or tabletop roleplaying game. You build a deck doubling as your character’s life and resource pool, keeping gameplay simple, fast-paced, and visually engaging.
This newsletter is sponsored by the the wonderful Bundle of Holding.
- Two Traveller bundles! One is a bundle of setting supplements for Mongoose Traveller and the other is a bunch of the latest rules updates and latest ship options.
- The One Ring 2e bundle with almost everything except Moria
- Cool bundle with World Wide Wrestling 2e and also Paoletta’s new game, Big Store!
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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