• When Games Solve Their Own Problems

    I. Dear Reader, I’m running Defy the Gods, a queer sword and sorcery PbtA game, by Chrys Sellers. I liked the look of the quickstart and I needed a specific kind of game. Back in May, I wrote about how I ended my Apocalypse World: Burned Over game by skipping past the part where the…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Itch Games From June and July 2025

    I. Dear Reader As the issues with itch still rage, here’s another edition of my regular round-up of new games on the site. If this is the first time you’re seeing one of these: many of these games came through this form but others I just stumbled across. I haven’t played or read them but…

    Thomas Manuel

  • 5 Lessons from 5 Years

    I. Dear Reader It’s officially been 5 years of writing the Indie RPG Newsletter. I started in August 2020 (which maybe makes this a pandemic project) with no real goal except to write about games. And I don’t think I’ve ever so clearly achieved — and exceeded — a goal like this. On one level,…

    Thomas Manuel

  • August Mini-Letter

    I. Dear Reader, Just the links this weeks as I get this one out a little late (again). Next week, it’ll be the 5th anniversary of the newsletter and that’s something, right? I’m thinking about how to mark the occasion here but in the analog world, I’ll be eating cheesecake. Hope you’re having an okay…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Censoring Itch

    I. Dear Reader, There was a big attack on itch and steam this week as payment processors essentially forced the platforms to delist NSFW games or lose the ability to collect money. It’s a bad policy in a number of different ways, including but not limited to the fact that it disproportionately affects queer creators.…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Streaming Bastionland

    I. Dear Reader, I got back from vacation and quickly became overwhelmed, which wasn’t helped by me catching a convention cold. The weekend had too many things happening all at once and hence, the newsletter is coming to you on a Monday. Two of those weekend things was a session zero for a new campaign…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Jubensha in Malaysia

    I. Dear Reader Half a newsletter this week but unlike previously, this time it’s just this section and no links. Because I’m still travelling, I have been (blessedly) less online during that time. I’ve made it from Singapore to Malaysia! It’s not exactly a majestic journey. They’re neighbours. My flight basically started descending almost as…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Dispatch from Singapore

    I. Dear Reader I’m writing this week from Singapore. I’m on break. Well, mostly on break, because I just visited a D&D play studio, which is a place where professional Dungeon Masters run paid games for people, using fancy maps, minis, music, lighting, and stuff like that. They have more than 50 DMs running games…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Looking Up & Down

    I. Dear Reader, Last week, I talked about a technique we’ve been doing while paying the delicious folk horror game, Harvest. Looking back, I was using the word “freeform” to refer to the unstructured nature of the roleplaying as well as the unstructured nature of the game. The scene-planning technique is probably more about the…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Sliding Into Freeform

    I. Dear Reader, I started recently playing Harvest by Luke Jordan and very quickly ran into my usual struggles with Belonging outside Belonging games: they’re basically freeform games. And honestly, if you asked me at the start of the year, I would’ve said I didn’t really enjoy freeform and it wasn’t for me. (Despite the…

    Thomas Manuel