List of Lists

I. Dear Reader,

I don’t know if it’s just me but even though it’s mid-November, I’m already in end-of-year mode. My two regular tables seem to reflect that as well. One went on hiatus till the new year. The other is still going but we’re hitting what will probably the last session of our god-killing campaign next week. After that, who knows. We might start our new game straight away, we might wind down for a while too.

I will take the opportunity to some reading. I just finished Some Desperate Glory, which is the most “this is a scifi novel” scifi novel I’ve read recently. Very pleasant reading that got me out of a slump. ‘

Hope you’ve got something good going too!

Batteries drained, systems depowered, code in want of debugging,

Thomas

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II. Media of the Week

• Last week was so full of stuff that I feel like you should just go back and check it out. I don’t have the hubris to share more right now.

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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

Big One

• Rare substack share but Steven Santana has a fantastic post about fighting against circular discourse with an archive about essays, reviews, and criticism on video games. It’s a good read but if you want to skip it, here’s a direct link to the google doc with pages and pages of links to some really good writing.
• On a similar note: Snow, designer of .dungeon, created a list of tabletop-focused writing on tumblr that acts as a thorough survey of “system matters” as a conversation.

Articles

• We finally got a decent article about D&D in the mainstream press. For a long time, we’ve suffered from the New York Times and the Guardian telling us TTRPGs exist and, in a shock to them, bring people together. The Atlantic gives us a sourer treat with this essay on why Elon Musk wants D&D to stay racist. It’s partly a personal essay, partly an exploration into the desire to classify people into boxes.
• The Rise Up Comus blog has a nice post about “stepladder tables” where the roll decides if you move one up or down on the table’s results.

Reviews

• Seyed Razavi blogs about five urban fantasy games (Urban Shadows, Buffy, Liminal, Vampire) and the different promises they make: “What they did offer was a way to dramatise the stuff that felt huge and unmanageable at the time: class, race, sexuality, money, popularity, loneliness. Being from somewhere else, culturally and economically; moving between crowds without ever being sure which one was “yours”; watching the shiny kids burn out or burn others.”
• Also from Razavi, a look at three licensed games from Renegade’s Essence D20 line, Transformers, GI Joe and Power Rangers. While the general tone of the post is matter of fact about these games and their appeal, I liked this insight into the problem with the form factor of these games: “Licensed games suffer from a weird problem. They are too big to be toys and too small to be lifestyles.”
• I also liked this review of Riverbank, a game from writer Kij Johnson and Kobold Press, that is what many people wanted Wanderhome to be. Genteel, pastoral, comic, and chaotic. Animals in waistcoats, taking tea and falling into rivers. Lovely to see Kobold Press publish something like this.
• This review of Outgunned by Two Little Mice doesn’t go very deep but I think it captures the game very well. A punchy, short form, action game that is half-a-dozen recognizable movies with their serial numbers filed off.

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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.

• Gravity is a one-shot focused TTRPG about powerful people trapped in an ever-worsening situation. Will they work together? Or will they be defeated by the Threat? Crowdfunding now!
• Would a long-time RPG designer ever create a skirmish wargame? Would it include crews of angry, armed, alien swine battling over a spaceport? Rebel Trash, kickstarting now, answers both affirmatively!

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

• Ken Writes Stuff, a bundle of writing for Lovecraftian games from Ken Hite
• Outgunned, the action movie RPG from Two Little Mice, with all of its supplements.
• After last week’s bundle for the third edition, there’s now a bundle for Over the Edge 2e.

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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. 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.