September Mini-Letter

I. Dear Reader,

Since this issue is already late, it’s another truncated edition. We’ll be back to more regular programming next week. Enjoy the links!

In short form, once more,

Thomas

II. Media of the Week

Loved the description of this podcast: “In this episode I chat with Dr. Emily C. Friedman, a scholar and critic of tabletop roleplaying games, never-published manuscripts, and the language of smell. I know pretty much nothing about roleplaying games, yet this was one of the most fascinating conversations I have ever had.”

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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.

III. Links of the Week

Came across this interesting article from ChinaDaily about jubensha. It’s a very uncritical piece but if you read between the lines it seems like jubensha have become another vector for nationalism. I haven’t seen these games and I’m not Chinese but that said, I know if I came across a game called “A Pure Love For India”, I would be very suspicious.
- “On Aug 29, a group of students gathered around a locked box in a classroom at the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB). When the lock clicked open, they discovered a booklet titled Truth, containing evidence of Japan’s aggressive actions following the September 18 Incident of 1931.”
Daniel Sell (Troika) has announced that his publishing company will be moving away from crowdfunding and instead take up a direct pre-order system. I really like how they lay it all out (and their upcoming adventures seem great) and Daniel has written a follow-up on his personal blog: “This might be deeply obvious to everyone, but the days of plucky underdogs funding their dreams is dead.”
Grognardia takes a look at classic Rifts: “Written by Kevin Siembieda, like most of Palladium’s output, the game now feels like the perfect encapsulation of its era’s RPG culture: exuberant, excessive, self-confident, and utterly unconcerned with its own contradictions.”
Anna Anthropy has been teaching RPGs for five years in a university classroom and has been blogging about how she does it (given classroom size and 90 minute session). The first post is about using Diplomacy to talk about roleplaying. Then, there’s follow-ups about how to present Apocalypse World and AD&D (Tomb of Horrors) to the classroom.
On a related note, the TTRPGkids blog has an interview with the Kentucky Educators for Roleplaying Games.
The Golden Cobra challenge shared this 2021 guide to creating larps, written by Jason Morningstar that has lots of solid advice.

From the archive:

Deeper in the Game’s excellent post about framing as dungeons as disaster zones: Disasters allow you to include all the cool stuff that goes into a dungeon without having to think about equilibrium, economy or ecology*. Do you want to include NPCs? They’re stuck, trapped, trying to escape or pull some hijinks while the disaster unfolds.” (Issue 112, October 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.

Nothing this week!

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

Fragged Empires 2e, a scifi post-apocalyptic game, all core books and adventures.

Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend. If you’d like to know more about my work, check out the coolest RPG website in the world Rascal News or listen to me talking to other people on the Yes Indie’d Podcast.