There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure: a headache darkens the universe while it lasts, a cup of tea really lightens the spirit bereft of all reasonable consolations. – William Dean Howells, The Night Boat No joke here. Just a nice quote. I. Attending Metatopia 2020 Metatopia, for the first time I believe,…

‘Indie game’ is actually just short for ‘Indiana Jones game’. You know it’s true. I. Indie is a Marketing Term What is the purpose of a label like ‘Science Fiction’? If you ask a dozen people for what they mean when they use the word, you’ll get thirteen different answers. If they’re academics, you’ll get…

Hello, fine readers, and welcome to Issue #15. Who brought snacks? I. The Different Types of GM Fun This week, I tackle a topic I’ve been thinking about for a long time: What is the fun of being a GM? Or taking a leaf from the Manyfold Glossary, what are the various kinds of fun?…

Hello! I’m “attending” Metatopia Online this year and it’s quite fun so far. Lots of panels being broadcast on twitch, including one by me! By the time, you see this, my panel will be over but there’s still Sunday’s panels left. Everything is being recorded this year so all the videos will be on Youtube…

It’s Sunday! Huzzah! *weeps in relief* I. The History of RPGs Is Nice But It’s Not Interesting As The Present So via the Liber Ludorum blog, I stumbled on a short but neat video on the pre-history of the hobby on Youtube. But I was slightly – just slightly – annoyed at the comments. There’s…

hello! [Other People Are Typing…] *waits* I. A Long Sea Journey One Discord Message At A Time This week, I wrap up a game of Across the Endless Sea, a storytelling (rather than roleplaying) game of a long journey across a vast ocean. The game self-identifies as a Powered by the Apocalypse game but there…

a reader asks a question and I don’t answer it Hello, everyone! The newsletter hit 350 subscribers last week! I’m quite happy about that. Hope you had a nice thing happen to you this week too. I. PbtA and the Purpose of Systems Really interesting comment from reader, John Wilson, this week: It seems that…

click it for the links, there are lots of them Welcome to Issue #10! I don’t know what we can deduce from that except that there’s probably going to be an Issue #11 … I. A Work-in-Progress Theory of Clue Design Back in Issue #3, I talked about how I wanted a mystery game where…

What’s on your mind?

and what separates rpgs from boardgames Hello, readers. Seems like you rolled well enough to find this newsletter. I hope you all had a good week. Thanks to everyone who checked out the Spider and the City last week. I really appreciate it. More news at the end of the newsletter. But for now, on…