• 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…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Blogs & Mysteries

    I. Spotlight The Bloggies begin and end in a whirlwind. The winners for the main categories have been announced. Here are my favorites among them: I also enjoyed this critique of the Bloggies categories that asks: where is the poetry? Given that these change each year, it’s very possible that next year’s event incorporates something…

    Thomas Manuel

  • 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…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Answering & Not Answering

    I. Spotlight Apologies for spotlighting myself but: over at Rascal News, I’ve launched a new podcast called the Rascal Reading Club. It’s a book club podcast in two parts. The first section is where I read a book (the first episode about the Wardens’ Operations Manual for Mothership) and the second part is where I…

    Thomas Manuel

  • 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…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Cold Starts & Campaigns

    I. Spotlight A couple of links that are interesting to put next to each other: II. Media of the Week III. Links of the Week IV. What am I playing? We played the first session of Gradient Descent via Psi*Run. Gradient Descent is a mini-megadungeon by Luke Gearing for Mothership. It’s an achievement of form…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Recaps & Refreshes

    I. Spotlight It’s a new year and so welcome to the new format for the newsletter! Like I said in my previous post, I’m taking the pressure of having a whole post every week ready to go and focusing on curation. The main change is this new section at the top, which I’m calling the…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Goodbye 2025!

    I. Dear Reader, We skipped last week (unplanned) and we’re going to skip next week (planned) so this is officially the last newsletter for 2025 and since it’s the end of the year, let’s talk about my plans for 2026. While I’ve been a journalist off and on since 2015, I’ve never actually done it…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Endies 2025

    I. Dear Reader, People are posting about their favourite games of the year (regardless of when they were released) using the term Endies 2025. I did this last year but Endies does have a certain ring (maybe a worse ring) than Games of the Year so let’s try it out. Here’s what I got: One-Shot…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Holiday Mode

    I. Dear Reader, I wrapped up two games this week: The Defy the Gods game that has been going on since July. It ended really triumphantly, appropriately bombastic and dramatic and fun — everyone got what they wanted out of it for their characters and the story. I also wrapped a four session run of…

    Thomas Manuel