Two Zero Two Five

I. Dear Reader,

It’s a new year and this newsletter continues its inexorable march towards its 5th anniversary. Nothing shall stop it except all the usual things that stop stuff like this.

I hope you enjoyed the pre-planned surprise of not receiving an email in your inbox last week. It was nice to take a skip a week but hopefully I don’t do that again soon. No big post this week but I’ll have something for you next time.

Till then, enjoy the links!

Yours catching up,

Thomas

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II. Media of the Week

• The Open Hearth gaming community released their Game of the Year podcast, featuring something like 40 different people (including me) shouting out their favourites. Lots of great games, lots of enthusiasm for the hobby.

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• You too can support the newsletter on patreon!
• 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

Year End Reviews

• Shannon Applecline, RPG historian, did a review of 2024 as usual, calling out the big events for WOTC and beyond: “[The] anniversary felt on the one hand uninspiring and on the other hand like the beginning of the end (for D&D at least, as a traditional tabletop game)”.
  • You can also watch a video covering similar ground with Dieku Games.
• The Indie Gaming Reading Club has a massive post about all the games they played and read this year as well.
• Binary (Apocalypse Frame, Valiant Horizon) wrote a review of their year as a game designer, including finances. Very honest look at non-full time solo development.
• Idle Cartulary writes about her favourite modules (and more) after a year spent reviewing more than 50+ of them.
• Jeff Stormer wrote a look back on 2024 for his podcast, Party of One, including most popular games, episodes, and more.
• Bundle of Holding has a retrospective as well, including which were their biggest bundles and other insights into the hobby.

Articles

• Kieron Gillen (Wicked +Divine, DIE) and Jim Rossignol (TEETH,) have started a new RPG blog called Old Men Running the World.
• Yochai Gal (Cairn) writes about how he does play-by-post games over discord.
• Amanda P writes a small post about focused/capsule games titled In Defense of the Garlic Press: “These days, I just want single purpose games that build all mechanics, writing and aesthetics toward delivering that experience, full stop.
• Marx Shepherd writes a review of Inscapes, a zine by Paul Czege about his experiences with solo journalling games: “Where The Ink That Bleeds is (at least in part) an exploration of how to play journalling games, Inscapes feels more like an exploration of how journalling games might play us.”

Misc

• Talk of the Table, an interview podcast, has a form for designers crowdfunding games for zinequest/zinemonth in February who might want to guest.
• The Bloggies for 2024 have launched. This is a celebration of blogs organized primarily by the OSR community where people vote on their favourite reads from last year. I want to write more about these but I didn’t have time this week so hopefully next time!

From the archive:

• Snow’s long video exploring the alt-right figures that have been involved with the RPG space, in the past and present. (Issue 77, Jan 2022)

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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.

• Support the diverse international team building Drintera, a fantasy TTRPG world inspired by world culture and mythology. Published monthly in zine form. Follow our upcoming Kickstarter!
• Currently funding on itch, where the magic never ends? is a game about haunted theme parks in a world where they are magic and Coaster Mages seek their power.

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

• Fabula Ultima, the JRPG-inspired game from Emanuele Galetto and Need Games, with 2 sourcebooks.
• 50+ adventures for Dungeon Crawl Classics all bundled together.

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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!