I. Dear Reader,
A while ago, I wrote about an Apocalypse World: Burned Over game that I was running. My players decided that they wanted to kill the psychic maelstrom and that led to a series of conversations where we skipped forward in time into a world where those initial characters had succeeded.
The new campaign was going to be in a different system and explicitly about killing gods. The idea was that as we played the new characters living in the future, we would discover how the old characters killed the psychic maelstrom. A cyclical thing.
Now, the thing was, as the GM, I now had to pay off this move. I wanted to figure out a cool answer to the question of, how did those old characters kill the maelstrom? And how did new gods arise in the world? And as you do in this situation, I answered one question with the other. The new gods were going to those old characters that had destroyed the psychic maelstrom and with that power, ascended into some kind of divine status. I thought this was cool! The players would essentially be on the war path to kill their old characters.
This is a bit tricky because these new gods had to suck so I was essentially describing how a thousand years had twisted their old characters into beings that had to be killed. But these are my friends and I was pretty sure they’d get a kick out of it.
On Friday, the moment came where I had to make the big reveal. They were in the process of levelling this grievous blow against a god and wanted an insight into how she became one in the first place. So I cracked my knuckles and I narrated what I thought was a slam dunk description of one of their characters and waited for their reaction. But instead of a wondrous moment of realisation, I just saw confusion on their faces. I had been too coy! I quickly added more details until it became clear what I was trying to do.
In the end, it was still a cool moment and my own panic at being too subtle was funny more than anything. But lesson learned, if you’re doing cool reveals, you’ve got to be way more obvious than you think. Oh well, for next time.
Yours revealingly,
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
- Nothing this week!
- 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
- Asa Donald of Backwards Tabletop has been doing a series of interviews and essays about the various ways that books inform and influence play in TTRPGs.
- There’s a conversation with jay dragon that frames the entire subject very well: “Avery Alder and I have been talking about this a bit, where Avery has a big belief that one of the big flaws of a lot of tabletop RPGs is that they are unintentionally book reading games… And I think, to me, if we’re going to have the book at the table, we should use the book in play. It shouldn’t just be a reference point. It should be an active participant and an active toy in that play process.”
- There’s also an interview with Clayton Notestine who talks about book design and how it informs play. This is Clayton’s wheelhouse and he says a lot of smart things.
- Related: The RPG Gazette writes a fun post about the poetry of how Mork Borg, Troika, and Into the Odd write their rules: “If MÖRK BORG is a sermon shouted from a crumbling cathedral then Troika! is a dream written down before it gets erased by morning.”
- Robin J of Cozy RPG Reviews, who we’ve linked to here before, takes a look at a popular D&D youtube channel whose own survey suggested that a lot of their audience wants to see non-5e content… but the channel hasn’t acted on it. Using view counts from the videos to prove their point, Robin argues that the sameness of “D&Dtube”, as it’s called, might be driven by their own lack of knowledge about other games rather than by the lack of audience.
- Paul Beakley writes about the current trend where books have high production values but seem to be lacking the novel experience he’s looking for in the design. I recognize Paul’s frustration but I disagree that this is a new phenomenon — people have always bought and then been disappointed by games, nowadays the games just look better. The actually new part is the sheer volume of games and that production value isn’t a useful rubric anymore (if it ever was) for people like Paul who have a well-developed taste for what they want.
- Fail Forward wrote an interesting response saying, “I love big and beautiful and decadent and I don’t think those things have to be at odds with excellent design. We’re living in an era of overproduction, where beautiful layout and pretty art will get you further than exacting language and bold design – The works that’ll stand as this era’s greats will likely have both.”
- While I think they are correct, I am proud to remain one of the few Truly Enlightened Ones who is basically uninterested in production values and will basically never talk about that stuff when it comes to games. (I am joking, of course. My tastes doesn’t make me Enlightened. I need at least a couple sessions of XP before I can take that feat.)
- Tabletop journalist Rob Wieland, whose work I’ve shared through here many times, sadly passed away this week. He was the author of, among so many other articles, this feature story about the influence of Pendragon for Wyrd Science magazine.
- The Molten Sulfur blog continues to teach history under the pretense of inspiring games. This post about a school for girls in colonial Peru is another fascinating instalment.
- Aaron Marks writes a negative review of Cyberpunk Red‘s Single Player Mode but at the same time does seem to arrive at who the product works for, which is always appreciated.
- The HELLO/GOODBYE charity bundle raises money for legal aid. It contains games like Planet Fist, Songbirds, and Magic of Inventorying.
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.
- SPINE is a dark solo TTRPG that looks like a book. Piece together the story without losing yourself in it. Claim your free copy for a limited time!
- Master of Fables is a TTRPG for the whole family. There is no killing or fighting here, just making friends and creatively solving problems that plague monsters. Follow us on Gamefound!
- The CryptID Show, a two-player storytelling game inspired by 90’s call-in radio shows, is live on BackerKit now!
- It’s October, time for horror games and play-to-lose one-shots! The Last Hand is a semi-competitive game for telling scary stories about escaping an unknown horror. On sale now!
This newsletter is sponsored by the wonderful Bundle of Holding. Check out the latest bundles below:
- Eclipse Phase 2e, the transhumanist game of survival in the far future, with all supplements.
- Huckleberry is a weird west RPG about tragic cowboys in a doomed world.
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.
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