• 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

  • Games of the Year 2024

    I. Dear Reader Today, I join the proud tradition of making up award categories as an excuse to talk about games (shoutout to the Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence in Gaming). I don’t have a cool name for the awards yet but here they are anyway: Game That Made My Brain Ask “What The Hell…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Best of the Newsletter 2024

    I. Dear Reader, Here’s ten of my favourite bits of writing from the newsletter this year. Thanks as well for reading and coming along with me for a whole year of posts. If you’ve got 5 minutes, I would greatly appreciate you filling out the annual survey! Last year, it helped me understand who my…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Every Game I Played in 2024 (So Far)

    I. Dear Reader, It’s time for one of my favourite posts to write every year. Here is every game I’ve played in the first half of 2024: Series Fathoms Deep (as GM): Let’s get my own game out of the way first: I’ve ran about 11 playtest sessions of Fathoms Deep, a game about a…

    Thomas Manuel

  • City of Last Chances

    I. Dear Reader I just finished the City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky recently and it’s really good. This is the first book by Tchaikovsky that I’ve read and I’m just going to assume that it’s his best one because otherwise what the hell have I been doing till now? Totally recommended if you…

    Thomas Manuel

  • The Dallas RPG was a Soap Opera Wargame?

    In 1980, SPI released an RPG based on the Dallas tv show. Players act as characters from the show, each with specific objectives and abilities. The game’s dense mechanics and need for multiple players are balanced by its surprisingly enjoyable playability. The newsletter also includes links to various RPG-related content.

    Thomas Manuel

  • So You Want To Be a Game Master

    I. Dear Reader, I was reading Justin Alexander’s book So You Want To Be a Game Master this week and something very obvious sneaked up on me. When someone says a book is for “new GMs”, they’re going to have to imagine some kind of person when they say that. When you say “new GMs”,…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Playing with Politics

    I. Dear Reader, Mostly when someone talks about “politics in games”, they’re about to say the worst thing you’ve ever heard in your life. But it’s good to be reminded that there can also be posts on that subject that are only mildly annoying. This is one of them. Why do people put politics in…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Hello Peril

    I. Dear Reader, It’s been two long posts in a row so I’ll keep it short this week. Over on Patreon, I posted 2000 words on a weird little gem of a game, Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo, an RPG from 1977. It’s an essay that goes to a couple of different places…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Narrative Combos!

    I. Dear Reader I’ve got a neat story and game mechanic for you. Everyone likes the idea of teamwork in games. It’s really satisfying to work together and pull off something cool. You know, “I line ’em up, you knock ’em down”. In sport or more tactical games, these often are explicit roles or moves…

    Thomas Manuel