October Roundup

I. Dear Reader,

It’s a day late and just the links this week because I had another extremely busy weekend. On top of everything else, I’m househunting and that has ended up being more physically and emotionally taxing than I thought.

I’ll catch you next week!

Yours housingly,

Thomas

II. Media of the Week

On Yes Indied, I spoke to Allen Varney, the operator of the Bundle of Holding which sponsors this newsletter, about his long career as a freelancer in the TTRPG industry. It’s a conversation with some great stories right from the very start and makes for some entertaining listening I think.
Swords without Master, a unique sword and sorcery game I really like, is getting a new edition and on the latest episode of their podcast, designer Epidiah Ravachol discusses its origins and the plans for the standalone version.
Elaine Lithgow, a producer at Rowan Rook & Decard, has been publishing these short vlogs that document what its like working on games full-time. (Elaine is the lead on the book for Heart I’m writing for, which is both a disclosure and a reason to check out the videos.)

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.

III. Links of the Week

Clayton Notestine published a four-part series exploring the Ennies and the question of RPG awards in general. You can start at part one that outlines the series or you can jump into parts three and four, which talk about how the Ennies are structured and where RPG awards could go from here.
- Probably the most interesting part for me is how Clayton argues that the whole goal of awards is to create conversation around the work and what could be done to make that happen.
Em Friedman has been posting a series of excellent articles recently but I’ll share just one: Her essay on the start of the new Critical Role series being run by Brennan Lee Mulligan. With its three table setup, it does seem to be an even more ambitious version of long form storytelling: “One of the artistic benefits of the expanded table is a built-in sense of epic sweep that does not necessarily require scaling to world ending stakes. It feels fitting that while many have pointed to Mulligan’s well-documented love of Tolkien, Mulligan cites his love of The Wire (2002-8) in the talkback.”
An interview with John Power, the editor of Wyrd Science, to celebrate the seventh issue.
There’s a free preview of Shannon Appelcline’s new book Designers & Dragons: Origins, a product-by-product history of the first decades of D&D.
Sam Sorensen and the Mothership discord are organizing an online megagame to celebrate Mothership Month. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s the sort of thing that is just cool to try!
The Tabletop Arts Fund is giving small grants to actual play streamers.
Metatopia Online is coming back in 2025 and you can submit panels here.
For those having trouble with itch.io payouts, they’ve built a feature to raise a customer support ticket directly about the issue which should hopefully speed things up.

From the archive:

John Harper made a video explaining how the core roll in Blades in the Dark works and it really helped a lot of people. That said,one of the under-discussed strengths of Blades is that you can move out of this mode into a more “trad” mode very easily. (Issue 118, November 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.

Live on Kickstarter! 101 Tales of Magic and Mystery is a treasury of adventure plots rooted in the history and folklore of Renaissance England. Usable with any TTRPG.
HELLO//GOODBYE is a charity bundle containing 203 games for only $12. Every dollar goes directly to Virginia charities providing free legal aid to people facing injustice. Get yours now!
Haunted: A Game About Murder And What Comes After is a roleplaying game about a murderer being stalked by the ghost of their victim. It will be released in time for Halloween.

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

Mystery Flesh Pit National Park is a Cypher system game about exploring a weird fleshscape, based on artist Trevor Roberts project.
Achtung! Cthulhu is a 2d20 game from Modiphius about cosmic horror during WW2.

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.