Bundles on Bundles

I. Spotlight

The No ICE in Minnesota bundle is live. It’s already raised a ton of money for a immigrant legal assistance organization.

But if you haven’t picked it up, it contains thousands of games, including Exquisite Biome (a worldbuilding game), Demon Driven To The Maw (a nice Cairn adventure), Desert Moon of Karth (a Mothership setting/adventure), Girl Underground (Alice in Wonderland PbtA game), and so much more.

And some kind soul has made a spreadsheet with all of them sorted into categories.

II. Media of the Week

The Bloggies have begun and Clayton has released the list of post for those who want to read some of the best of the blogging scene. Voting will open next week, I believe!

But it’s in this section because some generous volunteers have been turning these posts into podcasts so you can just listen to them if that’s what you’d prefer.

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

Articles, Essays

I enjoyed this post called “Why I Like Binary Resolution” that basically argues that binary doesn’t mean “success/fail” but any two states, including “success/success with a cost”. But importantly, the two states can change from roll to roll. It’s a framing that I hadn’t considered and have decided I really like.
The Triangle Agency patreon is publishing some useful GM guidance, helping people figure out how they want to approach the game. The first post is about how missions end, or how to end them.
ElmCat blog has a nice post called “Common, Recalled, Obscure” that takes a framework for thinking about hexes and applies to character knowledge of the world. This feels like a natural extension and framework to me, very elegant.
Since I’ve been running Gradient Descent, I was curious when found this post where Ben L elaborates on a minor reference to a sacrament of the Minotaur and turns it into a thoroughly defined part of the game. Because I chose to start my campaign differently, I am sure this will never come up but it was cool to see someone else’s process.
A Knight At The Opera has a long essay about how the value of mapping and navigating the dungeon as the challenge that made that type of play interesting. I have never done this and probably never will but it does sound fun to play a game that gives mapping that central focus.
Aaron Marks wrote an interesting piece called Five Tiers of RPG Publishing, which tries to divide the RPG scene according to scale of revenue. It’s a sharp exercise though the estimates are just estimates.
- On Bluesky, Fred Hicks wrote a thread contextualizing Evil Hat a little better and sharing their financials.
Not RPGs but I enjoyed this essay about non-commercial games festivals in the public arts model. It begins with the news that the venerable Free Play Australia, a games non-profit, might be shutting down and generally explores the challenges of organizing events for games outside the standard commercial convention model.

Reviews

TTRPG Fans has an overview of the new Pendragon sourcebook, The Sauvage King.
On the Valeria Loves blog, there’s a cool interview with Isabelle M Ruebsaat, the designer of Girlframe, a lesbian mechsploitation game. If you don’t know what any of that means, the interview will help but Valeria digs into the game as a trans work: “Girl Frame is the first game I’ve read since Dungeon Bitches that feels by us and for us, instead of merely about us.”
Kieron Gillen counts down from 97 to 90 in their list of favourite RPGs of all time.
On tumblr, 6* Things I Love About Trespasser: Dark Fantasy Tactics (as a non-tactics gamer).

Misc

I’ve been watching Judd run The Bureau, an adventure for Liminal Horror, and is clearly meshing with it much more than Impossible Landscapes. It plays in a similar thematic space but has a completely different design and play philosophy. Very good point of comparison for people who want that.
Chimera Hearts is a discord server that incubates some cool community-sourced projects, like the TTRPG Tree, which is a wiki to catalogue the lineages and inspirations between games.
For layout folks, Fari RPGs has a cool tutorial for using text styles to make text look like tables without using the often janky table tool.

IV. What am I playing?

I missed two weeks of the newsletter, which is why this week is even more packed than it usually is. It was mostly personal stuff, like my weekends being eaten with care responsibilities, but we are back now!

Band of Blades and Gradient Descent continue to happen. We’re getting into the groove for both and I’ve more or less stopped having to think about the game at all. I can show up 15-30 minutes before the session is supposed to start and be fine.

One of the things I’m playing with in Gradient Descent is how random encounters work. In the game, it happens when the GM rolls doubles on their encounter check, which is very rare. I could’ve houseruled it into something I liked more but since we’re playing PsiRun. I turned into something that the players had control over.

So this is a weird array of results but the key detail here is that the players assign a die to this out of their pool and so they decide if there is an encounter and what’s the tenor is. So it’s the encounter check and the reaction roll, if you want to use the technical terms.

It’s been really interesting to see my players take to the fact that they are completely in control of how complicated their lives get. That transparency has made them comfortable and they are occasionally deciding that things aren’t exciting enough and they want something potentially dangerous to happen. My belief is that this is an approach which is going to pay dividends even in games where they don’t have this control. Taking risks is good!

But even if they never picked the bad option here, I’d be fine and it would also fit with the intent of the game, because Gradient Descent goes out of its way to encourage GMs to make every encounter a talking one, rather than something violent. Combat is a powerful spice, as the Warden’s Operations Manual goes.

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.

Slightly Random Tables is a motley assortment of inspiring ideas to slot into your games, from Slightly Unpleasant Diseases to Slightly Unsociable Aliens. Part of Kickstarter’s Zine Quest.
Want to play a TTRPG about kids with extraordinary powers on the run from danger? Back Extra Ordinary on Kickstarter in February 2026!
Punderworld is a new tabletop *wordplaying* game by Linnie Schell powered by puns, wordplay, and groan-worthy Dad Jokes. Join the campaign now on Kickstarter!
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:

Shadowdark-compatible adventures from various creators. Only 2 days left to check this out because of the skipped weeks!
Forbidden Psalm, miniature games based on Mork Borg.
A bundle of two-player games for Valentine’s Day including I Have The High Ground, Chiron’s Doom, and A Modern Prometheus.
Neon City Overdrive, a cyberpunk RPG based on Freeform Universal.

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.