I. Dear Reader, The problem with asking if games are art is that the answer can be as simple and as complicated as you have time for. In some sense, anyone trying to be stingy about what qualifies as art is fighting a battle that was decided a long time ago. Today, anything can be…

I. Dear Reader, Befote I get to talking about roleplaying games but before that, if you can contribute to humanitarian aid in Gaza through orgs like PCRF or MAP, please do. I’m running two sessions of This Ship Is No Mother during the Shared Hearth online event. It’s a kind of mini online gaming convention…

I. Dear Reader, I’ve been playing the wonderful telenovela game, Pasion de la Pasiones, recently. (I talked a little about one playbook, El Jefe, in an earlier issue – comparing it to Apocalypse World’s Hardholder.) For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a Powered by the Apocalypse game, designed by Brandon Leon-Gambetta and published by Magpie…

I. Dear Reader, Welcome to the bimonthly round-up of interesting games released on itch.io. I find these games through the form linked below (where readers can submit their own games) or I just stumble across on twitter or while browsing itch (which I do, purely for this issue). Like every edition of these, this one…

I. Dear Reader, This week got away from me for a number of reasons so enjoy the links and I’ll catch you with more stuff next week. Take care! Cheers, Thomas II. Media of the Week Dice Exploder features Jason Morningstar talking about a very abstract (but cool!) feature of RPGs: transparency and secrets. This…

I. Dear Reader It feels like there’s been a recent spate of discussion in RPG circles about the role of incentives (usually just referring to experience points, or XP). While a lot of that discussion has been mean-spirited (with a lot of conflating preference for “the only correct way to do things”), I would like…

I. Dear Reader People seemed to like last week’s post so I thought I’d expand the charts to include Mithril-winning products. Mithril is the second highest medal you can win behind Adamantine. A product at the Mithril level has sold more than 2000 copies (but less than 5000 because otherwise it would be Adamantine). There…

Charts and graphs are my friend. I. Dear Reader If you’re not aware, DriveThru allocates medals to products based on the number of sales. Their highest medal, Adamantine, is given to products that have sold more than 5000 copies. Only 180 products have crossed this threshold. I thought it might be cool to classify these…

Lots to sink your teeth into in this edition of the world best weekly newsletter about indie games sent from my house. I. Dear Reader On tumblr, designer David J Prokopetz posted 10 points titled as the The Gremlin Game Designer’s Creed. I really enjoyed and found it swirling around in my brain so as…

Trusting the players and helping GMs I. Dear Reader, I’ve been thinking about the design of two games, Apocalypse World and Pasion de la Pasiones. I’ve been playing both – we just wrapped up a 5-6 session run of AW and we are 2 sessions into a series of Pasion. And I’m noticing an interesting…