Reaction Rolls & Reviews

I. Spotlight

Carouse Carouse is a group newsletter that started last year and I’m not sure I’ve ever linked to it before. It’s great! The latest issue has an end of year awards style post, curated links, and a wacky review of Reincarnated As The Unloveable Villainess?!, a solo game by artist and designer Wym Lawson that oozes with charm.

Here’s a taste of the review: “Reincarnated has a nested bedrock of meta-horror that bangs supremely hard because it is both perfectly appropriate for the genre and pushing at the edges of what the genre allows. As you tinker with the game trying to get your perfect ending, it splits apart, unravels, distends into new and unrecognizable shapes. All changes to all things are permanent forever, and how ethical can a seduction be when you have knowledge from across multiple timelines and lifetimes?”

II. Media of the Week

Weird Place made another video exploring the global RPG scene and they used some of my reporting to do it (which was a pleasant surprise).

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III. Links of the Week

Reviews

On Old Men Running The World, there’s a fun discussion of Deathmatch Island that touches on the beautiful visual design, the strengths of the Paragon system, and the important of good endings.
- I’m really drawn to the idea of a “who is best / i am best” dynamic as the authors put it but there was this weird thing that happened when we played Agon where it seemed like there was a lot of stuff that being shoehorned to fit into that shape. I think Paragon games handle the core idea well but I’m still looking to understand how they envision everything else that happens at the table.
On the Monkey X blog, a look at Hillfolk and the Drama system: “If your group lights up when someone says, “I need you to say you’re proud of me,” this is your dessert.”
- I’ve never read the original game but I’ve always wanted to play Malandros, Tom McGrenery’s adaptation that moves the action to Brazil. There’s something about how it imagines play that I feel is useful to have experienced and considered, even if it’s not to your taste.

RPG Theory

Jeff Stormer writes “Against Games That Say I Can Do Anything (But That I Can’t Play Sonic the Hedgehog)“, which is a nice critique of some bad discourse.

Fantasy Games

Mazirian’s Garden, one of my favourite OSR blog, is back with a niche but insightful post. It’s about what’s important to express when writing monster encounters in RPGs. Essentially, it takes the ‘reaction roll’ as sacrosanct and then gives the monsters unique and flavourful responses to it.
- A lot of OSR games assume that encounters aren’t automatically fights and the reaction roll is key to that. But they also just assume that the GM will interpret the reaction roll and figure out an interesting non-combat context for the encounter out of thin air. Which is weird because that’s actually the most important or useful thing a scenario designer could be telling me.
The Was it Likely blog recommends a dungeon and describes the rules they’re using to run it and it sounds so wild and fun: “Each of your HD is someone in the city of Emermeraan who believes you will be the one to undo Mordrannen’s Truth, and sings for you while you are off questing. each point of HP is a song they will sing.”
Yggdrasil is a fantasy games magazine by artist Keith Senkowski that I think some people out there will really dig. The latest issue is a bestiary inspired “by the interview work of Studs Terkel and the second Ravenloft Monster Manual“. It’s full of weird, horrible, and original monsters with descriptions written like they’re oral histories.
On that note, Stu Horvath is spending the next 12 weeks looking at non-RPG monster books, some of them for kids, some of them for adults.

Misc

There’s a game jam collecting games that will eventually be in a charity bundle raising money for orgs in Minnesota fighting ICE.
EnWorld readers voted for a list of their most anticipated games in 2026 and as is the norm, it’s a list that reflects the popularity contest nature of the exercise. A couple of games made by Youtubers (Deathbringer and Broken Empires), a couple of big IP stuff (Invincible and Discworld), and a couple of new editions (Warhammer and Ars Magica).

IV. What am I playing?

We kicked off the new Band of Blades campaign last week and I really enjoyed using my opening spiel to just hype the game we’re going to play: “A lot of games want to be Band of Blades but they aren’t. Only Band of Blades is Band of Blades. Lucky for us, we are going to be playing Band of Blades.” I’m so comfortable selling (maybe even overselling) this game because I know how good it can be, which is the joy of replaying something you love.

One of the interesting things that this game does is that it kicks off with a tutorial mission of sorts. It’s not expressly framed as a tutorial but that’s what it is. It’s a hot start (hey, reference to last week’s issue!) and plays fast and straightforward, letting everyone make a few rolls and understand th mechanics, including the GM. As I was running it, I kept going, “Oh right, I need to look up how this works and maybe write it down so I have it handy next time”.

It’s not something every game needs to do but it’s something that’s going to happen in every game (the rough first session) so it’s nice to see a game think about that. This is a sentiment that’s going to keep coming up — how much the designers seem to have thought about the act of playing their game. It’s not perfect (like I could’ve really used more specific details about the obstacles that might arise) but it’s pretty great.

V. 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.

Mystery Snacks, a collection of easy-to-use TTRPG mysteries, is funding during Zine Month! This game features drop-in scenarios that serve up cozy, silly, and twisty whodunit vibes to your table.

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

A bundle of Mork Borg adventures and scenarios from Christian Eichhorn, one of that scene’s most prolific creators.
Arden Vul, one of the most iconic megadungeons, along with VTT support.

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.