Awards & Philosophy

Thomas Manuel

I. Spotlight

The Awards 2026 is looking for judges. If you’re ready to read a bunch of games, regardless of your previous experience level, you should consider applying. It’s a hell of a way to be exposed to the weird and experimental side of the hobby.

It’s a lot of reading but if you’ve got the time, I think most people who have learned a lot from the process! And it is genuinely important not to self-select out of stuff like this, if you’re the kind of person who would like to do it but thinks they don’t know enough, please apply anyway. It’s a quick process, let the organizers decide.

II. Media of the Week

  • C Thi Nguyen, philosopher and author of Games: Agency as Art, did a nice interview with Adam Conover.
  • I did another Rascal Reading Club where I discussed Deathmatch Island, the battle-royale-looking RPG from Tim Denee and Evil Hat. I start by asking if there’s any GM advice at all and quickly reach the conclusion that what we really need is more player advice.
  • On Yes Indie’d, I published a nice, long interview with Jeremy Strandberg, the designer of landmark fantasy game Stonetop. Stonetop is one of the purest articulations of a widely-cherished vision of D&D as a game of “low fantasy”. It’s also got some truly beautiful moments and design as it thinks about community life, seasons, and change.
  • Daydreaming about Dragons releases a new episode after a long hiatus. As always, it’s a bite-sized delight.

III. Links of the Week

Articles

  • On the mindstorm blog, a fun idea called “energy coin adventure design“, which is about thinking about people, places, etc in a scenario as either having kinetic or potential energy, i.e., as actors or sleeping game-changers. The idea is that nothing in a sandbox is necessarily passive. Everything either has an agenda and is an agent. Or is something that can be activated (with major effort) into becoming an agent.
  • David Prokopetz writes on tumblr about why a lot of players don’t really care about a game’s design: “I’ve talked in the past about how Hasbro’s efforts to deceptively market Dungeons & Dragons as universal entry-level game have fostered a culture of play in which any appearance that D&D isn’t a universal entry-level game is regarded as evidence that you have a “bad GM”, and how, in order to avoid being a “bad GM”, it’s necessary to treat it as a normal part of the GM’s responsibilities to constantly monitor the outputs of the rules and quickly paper over any gaps between the game the rules want to produce and the game the group wants to play, like a cartoon train conductor frantically constructing the very tracks along which the train they’re conducting is riding.”
  • If you want to read an exhaustive dive into the logic and style of writing keys to a map or adventure location, this is a great post that collects examples from various games.
  • On Wargamer, an interview with designer Gav Thorpe about the original system behind the new Godzilla RPG.
  • Iain Macallister of Giant Brain writes a useful post about how to interact with boardgame (and RPG) media.
  • Patchwork Paladin has a nice post about “close and distant playstyles“, which is about basically how much embodiment, in-character talking, etc happens in the game and how that changes how the game feels.
  • The Brackish Draught blog has a cool post about releasing a game as hobbyist from start to finish — just every piece of advice or experience that they can think of putting down, they have.

Reviews

  • On Tabletop Bookshelf, a review of worldbuilding game, A Perfect Rock, which uses real rocks: “Players (or player – it’s immediately obvious how soloable the game is) gather some rocks, lay out a provided star map, and envision themselves, their starship, and their now-destroyed home planet. They then decide where to travel next, visiting new stars and looking for the ‘perfect rock’ to call their new home.”
  • On the Fail Forward blog, a review of Public Access, “I’ve read the game cover-to-cover, read most of the adventures, run the adventure the game talks the most about (The House of Escondido Street) and to quote a player during our debrief, “I don’t think any of us liked this game, but this session was great.””

IV. What am I playing?

We wrapped up our PsiRun x Gradient Descent game and that table is catching its breath. I’m now letting my thoughts soak as I figure out how to write about the campaign, which had some cool ideas and dynamics emerge. There was a lot of stuff about humanity, machines, and memory — less scary and more thoughtful, which was as intended. I usually try to be more dramatic as the GM but it was nice to really lean back and let the game play out and then just react.

Even as Band of Blades continues (we’re about halfway done because of lots of games being missed), I’ve started a third table which is playing Warriors of the World Ablaze, a sword and sorcery hack of the new Apocalypse World 3e, available via the Bakers’ patreon. I’m a player in this one and it’s really fun. I’m trying to play someone who is both the best brother in the world as well as the most evil warlock on the planet. The joy is in the balancing act.

This game comes out of my attempts at moving an online group offline. We’ve never played face-to-face but we all live in adjacent cities so two of us actually travel so we can meet up once a month in-person and play. We’ve done it twice now, which is pretty cool!

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.

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

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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