April Mini-letter

I. Dear Reader,

Just the links this week!

See you next time,

Thomas

II. Media of the Week

Dice Exploder did two episodes on Heart: The City Beneath. One episode on Zenith abilities (which are showstopping character-ending powers) and one on the Beats system (which are tools for facilitating character arcs). It’s an interesting conversation with both praise and criticism for these mechanics.
Aaron Lim moderates a panel of various interesting people to tell a quick history of giant robots in RPGs.

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III. Links of the Week

IGDN Groundbreakers were announced last week. Triangle Agency walked away with Game of the Year and Last Train To Bremen was Most Innovative. This post has all the details.
If you’re interested in Triangle Agency, the TEETH newsletter has a great conversation about the game.
Split/Party review Slugblaster: “Slugblaster ends. That is unavoidable and written into every aspect of the game, from the moment you chose a playbook you are accepting your narrative weight in how the story wraps up. You can fret about it, you can weep about it, and you can rage against it, but at the end of the day your radical teens will have to grow up.”
Writing about the setup phase of games, Caroline Hobbs captures why they’re so important in storygames: “As a game player, you are author, actor, and audience. A short setup allows you to go into actor and audience mode more quickly, but it can sacrifice players’ ability to be an effective author.”
Deeper in the Game has another fun post about improving factions in the prep phase with a procedure for making them have dynamic demands.
The Planets & Monsters blog looks back with: ‘Renraku Arcology: Shutdown,’ or The Greatest Sci-Fi Megadungeon that Never Was
The Alexandrian published a nice list of Essential Reading RPGs, as in “if you were making a college course, what would be on your list?”.
- Then, Jay of Play Fearless wrote his own version and that’s also great.
On the Old Men Running the World blog, a look at the weird “more GMs than players” structure of the Bakers’ new series of games, specifically The Thief & The Necromancer.
From Malaysia, an article about how RPGs are being used in language learning.
Not RPGs but: This is good reading from 2014 and everything you need to know is in the title. It’s called “making games in a fucked up world“.

From the archive:

A list of resources for designing hexcrawls. (Issue 92, May 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.

Claim your free copy! Rust Never Sleeps is a solo ttrpg with doomed mecha pilots, blackjack mechanics, a card deck for your battery pack, and character sheets that you color in.
Occult Curious? Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine is an RPG-adjacent zine of art and magic. Our new issue launches on Kickstarter April 22 with lots of extra goodies!
Honest Dice: precision RPG dice machined from aerospace grade aluminum or titanium. Easy-to-read, laser-marked, mathematically balanced. Ending Soon: Check out the Kickstarter now!
Calamity Punk Publishing Launches First Major Kickstarter: The Ardenfell Complete Setting Guide & Adventure Path! A modular setting guide and three-part adventure path to enrich any table!

This newsletter is sponsored by the the wonderful Bundle of Holding. Check out the latest bundles below:

Defiant, an urban fantasy game of aristocratic intrigue, bundled with all its supplements.
A collection of adventures from MT Black, the best-selling D&D 5e designer.
Grab Five Torches, Deep, Vagabonds of Dyfed, and a host of OSR adventures from Sigil Stone.

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!