I. Dear Reader, This newsletter is late because I’ve been down with the flu this whole weekend. I could’ve sent it out without this opening section but last week, a lot of people had commented with suggestions and I felt like I’d rather be late but maintain our flow of conversation. Okay, so we were…

I. Dear Reader Like last week’s post about first session procedures, I wanted to do a post this week about diagrams in rulebooks that help communicate a game’s rules. But I couldn’t find any! Maybe my brain is just mush right now but my mental index isn’t throwing up examples right away and paging through…

I. Dear Reader, I’ve been playing lots of new games lately and something I’ve really come to appreciate is when a game tells me how to start playing. Usually, this involves giving me a step-by-step breakdown of what the first session looks like. And in my experience, this is a place where a lot of…

also, theory strikes back! I. Dear Reader, Hope you’re having a safe week! Here is February’s round-up of new games on itch.io. These come from both browsing itch and people self-submitting their games directly to me. Against the Grey: An adorable system-neutral adventure about anthropomorphic animals fighting to protect their forest. Has a nice form…

more theory than anyone should be legally allowed to possess I. Dear Reader, All the way back in Issue #69, I linked to a series of episodes from the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast about the “axes of game design”. I’ve been thinking about them again recently and thought it might be interesting…

First of a series of thoughts from a January full of gaming. I. Dear Reader I’ve been playing lots of different games over the last two months: Spire, Swords of the Serpentine, Blades in the Dark, and more. It’s been an embarrassment of riches. These are all very different games and there’s a couple patterns…

truth universally acknowledged: every newsletter must be in want of a patreon I. Dear Reader, Biiig week for games and big week for me! It’s the beginning of Zine Month (and Zine Quest) and there are hundreds of zine projects that are going to launch across February. If you feel like browsing, check out the…

There are a lot of games on itch and this is 10 of them! I. Dear Reader, Welcome to the first monthly round-up of new games on itch.io. Before we get to the games themselves, let me talk about itch for a minute. The website was designed for selling videogames but the indie RPG scene…

Okay, so there’s a turtle flying through space… I. Dear Reader, I just finished reading A Life in Footnotes, the official biography of Terry Pratchett. And I’m talking about it on a newsletter (allegedly) about games for a couple reasons. One, because Discworld is a foundational pillar of high fantasy now. If you like dwarves…

More like No-GL, amirite I. Dear Reader On his newsletter, Sean McCoy talks about why he thinks “adventures beat systems”. What he means is that if you’re trying to be a successful publishing business, systems are “loss leaders”. You publish them so you can attract players. You make your money through adventures. He doesn’t mention…