• Difficulty and Challenge

    I. Spotlight A Knight at the Opera writes about how to talk about difficulty in RPGs. This is a great topic and Dwiz has a neat binary of challenging decisions versus challenging actions. “Chess is a game that only ever features decision-challenges. There is never a risk that you fail to execute a move you’ve…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Awards & Philosophy

    I. Spotlight The Awards 2026 is looking for judges. If you’re ready to read a bunch of games, regardless of your previous experience level, you should consider applying. It’s a hell of a way to be exposed to the weird and experimental side of the hobby. It’s a lot of reading but if you’ve got…

    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

  • 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

  • Almost About Challenge

    I. Dear Reader One of the big things I’ve been meaning to talk about for a very long time is seemingly large divide between people who want their games to be about overcoming challenge and people who don’t. This is tricky to talk about because it’s a conversation about, among other things, language and psychology.…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Expressionist Play

    I. Dear Reader, This week, there was a lot of buzz in indie RPG circles around jay dragon’s Expressionist Games Manifesto. You can see this as the culmination of jay dragon’s interest in RPG theory and experimental game design into this exploration about a specific type of game or approach to roleplay that she wants…

    Thomas Manuel

  • November Links

    I. Dear Reader, Nothing in this section today. It’s one of those weeks where I’ve thrown out more words than I’ve written. So enjoy the links and have a good week ahead. Yours, crumpling up paper into balls and throwing them at baskets, Thomas II. Media of the Week Heart of the Deernicorn recorded a…

    Thomas Manuel

  • A Guy Made Of Bees

    I. Dear Reader, There’s a problem with my post from last week. And I think it has to do with the guy who has bees living inside of him from Heart. If you’re not aware of it already, let me quickly explain: Heart is a fantasy game where you crawl through a living dungeon and…

    Thomas Manuel