#125: 2023, Names, & Lists!
The game is getting good and there's so much stuff to click
I. Dear Reader
Happy New Year, folks. Fingers crossed for 2024, eh?
So last week, I asked for names for our collaborative citybuilding game that we’re all playing and you folks really delivered. Maybe you all did too good a job because this one answer from reader, Aaron, reminded me about something important:
A city's names - Nham Sin by the old pump-guard families down in the deep, Khim Sin-har by the brass lords of the upper strata, Turnwater by the traders of the night roads, Trickstream by the knaves of the dusklight eaves, Hanam by the records of the empire of the dead.
Our city has got many names! Obviously! And in some sense, the more names the better.
But we still still need to pick one name for a couple reasons. One, because there is probably an official name for the city and two, the more important reason, so it’s easy for us to refer to the city without being confused. So, vote time!
Delta is a great name from reader Alex that is “both the landmass that forms at the mouth of a river as it meets the sea and the symbol for change over time”. Clepsydra from Charles is Greek for water clock. Riffing on that, Ron suggested Chronourcleftis, which sorta means “thief of time” in Greek. Boyd suggested Clog Uisce as the Irish Gaelic for water clock. And finally, Immoria from Preston.
There were other names but substack limits polls to 5 options so I had to choose. Thanks to everyone who submitted!
We also got some neighbourhoods which I’m adding to the website (that will be finished this week hopefully).
But other than the name, we’re officially starting through actual rounds of i’m sorry did you street magic. Every round begins with a compass. A compass is sort of our direction or theme for the round. Every submission (neighbourhood, landmark, person) has to be based around our compass. Anything can be a compass. It can even be a specific neighbourhood or person. So the simple question: What about our city do we explore first?
Sound off in the replies.
Yours annually,
Thomas
II. Listen of the Week
Questing Beast reviews Errant, an OSR ruleset that collects and builds on and grows the generally rules-conservative canon.
Marx Shepherd and I interview each other as they hand off the Yes Indie’d Podcast to me. Here’s Marx talking to me and then finally, me interviewing Marx.
III. Links of the Week
Articles
Linda Codega writes about #Dungeon23 for Gizmodo. And a lot of people have been sharing their plans for the writing they plan to do:
On the Age of Ravens blog, a huge inspiration table and some exciting plans for a hexcrawl in a ruined city.
Jason of Pretendo Games talks about his plans for making a soulslike setting: “I will practice restraint and limit myself to only one poison swamp.”
Max Fefer is doing a series on Jewish RPG designers and content creators.
End of Year Wraps
Luka Rejec talks openly about his insecurities and struggles with designing the follow-up to Ultraviolet Grasslands. Some exciting things coming up!
Aaron Lim has a warm end of year wrap-up on his newsletter, love seeing someone so excited for their game.
Dave Thaumavore also does an insightful breakdown of his Youtube channel over the last year on his newsletter.
Geeknative have their annual roundup of best-selling titles on DriveThruRPG.
The most popular fantasy game that wasn’t D&D was Cubicle 7’s Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay with Fabula Ultima coming in 2nd.
The most popular scifi games has Tales of the Red at the top and Ironsworn: Starforged at second place.
The most popular horror game and the most popular modern game was Hunter the Vigil.
The most popular family games has Avatar taking top spot but Friendship Effort Victory from Far Horizons Co-op taking 4th place.
The list of most popular games from new publishers is interesting with Coyote and Crow at the top but lots of games that are new to me in the mix.
Resources
Sersa Victory has an interesting guide for “cyclic dungeon generation” which really illustrates the logic of how to design a dungeon level in pleasing loops.
Alex Rinehart publishes a massive 12 part tutorial on making character sheets on Roll20.
IV. Small Ads
All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.
Nothing this week!
This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.
Shadow of the Demon Lord! There’s a core bundle and a bundle with gaggle of supplements.
And a huuuge Fate bundle with all of the rulesets as well as 45 worlds of adventure and other sourcebooks.
This newsletter is written by Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!
Nothing tells you more about a city than the way you move through it. Roads, alleys, tunnels, trains, gondolas, cable cars.... The different ways to get through a city, fast and slow, tell us how people experience it on a day to day basis, the ways they encounter each other and the various locations they travel between (and stumble upon while on the move). So here's my compass pitch: Traversal.
Let's go to the historic sites first, the kind that in most cities (not necessarily this one) attract tour guides explaining history to the tourists. Monuments, architecture from another age, etc. I want to see.