Apocalypse Power

I. Spotlight

On Notes From The Labyrinth, a delightful review of the erotic and violent work in progress PbtA game Praise the Hawkmoth King: “Praise the Hawkmoth King is fun, it’s just also a warning about how easy it is to become complicit. How easy it is, once you’ve been given modicum of power, to turn around and use it to punch down out of fear of becoming one of the powerless Them again — out of fear that if you don’t turn and take advantage of Them now, you’ll lose all your buttons and fucking die.”

The article, like the game, is extremely NSFW so please click the link only if you’re interested in that. But at the same time, the article, like the game, is very well-written.

II. Media of the Week

On Yes Indie’d, I spoke to Gabriel and Le, the creators of YouTube channel, Weird Place. We talk about how they got started, their exploration of the international world of RPGs, and their game design projects.
On Dice Exploder, a good conversation around the role of fictional details like the lightning barrier in Blades in the Dark and how they shape play in small and big ways.
On the Rascal Reading Club, I ~~deliver a~~ ~~lecture~~ talk about Apocalypse World‘s GM section, discussing the framework it invented, how it thinks about its audience, and what “play to find out” has come to mean after all these years.

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III. Links of the Week

Ty Pitre of Mindstorm Press writes about designing settlements for sandbox play: “There was one important thing I wanted when I started designing this campaign. I want the PCs to visit settlements often, and revisit them over and over again. Each settlement should be worth exploring, spending time in, and engaging with. A good chunk of gameplay should come simply from travelling from settlement to settlement.”
An interview with GR Michael on his urban horror skirmish game, Best Case Scenario: “Horror is a modern genre — that is, like modern art or modern poetry, it was born from political and artistic movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which formed in response to a growing cultural sense of alienation from a highly technological and increasingly deracinated and atomized world.”
Valeria reviews fantasy juggernaut Daggerheart and sings its praises: “How funny is it that the best strategy to maximize market appeal is to look complicated while being simple?”
The Triangle Agency team have been iterating on mission / adventure structures and formatting to make the game easier to run.
Mint writes about her game Protect the Child and how it tries to facilitate a story about guardians and children, where they both help each other grow: “Protect the Child is, in part for all of those kids I know that did not get a happy childhood… It is a game of danger and heartbreak and struggle, but it is also meant to be a hopeful story. It is a chance to give the storytellers and the audience the ending that they wanted.”

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.

One of Us Will Die is a social deduction TTRPG where one player secretly knows that their character will die. Follow the Kickstarter now!
desert is a free 42-page roleplaying game and toolkit for GMless campaigns in the near future. Create cities, run factions and navigate a point-based security economy.
Live on Kickstarter: Native American creators (and allies) are building a fantasy setting based on Native American cultures and folklore. Rules light and indie system friendly!

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

Mists of Akuma, a setting and campaign for D&D 5e
Good Society and its expansions that introduce other genres apart from Regency romance.

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.