Love Letters

I. Spotlight

On Rascal, Khee Hoon writes about the first Jubenshacon organized in London.
On a similar note, there’s a really cool piece here about how a jubensha-like scripted romance roleplaying game (?) has become popular among women in China.

II. Media of the Week

The penultimate subject of the first season of the Rascal Radio Hour was Burning Wheel. We did our usual analysis section with questions and then Andrew Gillis (Girl by Moonlight) came on for the talkback and that was really good.

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III. Links of the Week

Articles, Blogs

Jason Tocci explores what happens if you pre-decide that combat is limited to three rounds (and don’t change any other rules).
Joe B writes about lots of different places to get interesting world or area maps from.
Whose Measure has a cool post about making an OSR Vampire the Masquerade game set in the Midwest.
Rascal also had a cool story about Tabletop Bookshelf going from website to a physical store in Milwaukee and the huge line of people that showed up on opening day.

Misc

Wizards of the Coast announce a D&D Community Advisory Group.
Itch.io revamps how bundles work introducing a series of great improvements for organizers.

IV. What am I playing?

I’ve been having lots of success with Apocalypse World-style love letters in both of my games. Essentially, they’re ways of turning an absence from the game from something that dissipates energy to something that can inject momentum or spark new directions. In two of my games, we’ve been doing them every time someone misses a session so that it seems like that character also did stuff.

And right now, these letters are throwing up stuff that’s so fun and weird and interesting that it’s great when someone misses a session because when they come back, we all know that they’re going to return with something awesome.

Here’s a couple from our Daggerheart game that both have the same format of throwing a bunch of stuff on the wall that we’ll flesh out based on the choices people make:

Dear Carcosh, roll+Instinct, Hope or Fear decides the tone.

On a 10-15, pick one. On a 15+, pick two. On a 15-, GM picks one and makes it slightly worse.

Your uncle suddenly moved the date for his job forward and you handled it alone.

You were questioned by the guards about your uncle. Did you give him up?

You discovered a secret about Roark. What coincidence put you in his presence?

You made a new contact with someone high up in the Topaz Guild.

You went on a date and forgot about the Valentina job entirely.

Dear Moss, roll+Instinct. Hope or Fear decides the tone.

On a 10-15, pick one. On a 15+, pick two. On a 15-, GM picks one and makes it slightly worse.

Someone knows you’re looking for a tiger and gives you a lead on a collector of rare animals in the city.

Endo, your rich friend, finds you again and doubles the reward for recovering his ring.

You’ve found a drug that dulls the haunted music in your head but leaves you functional.

Jimmy the Pig hears of your drug manufacturing skills and offers to hire you as a consultant for an absurd amount of money.

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.

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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.