#130: ZiMo, Patreon & More

truth universally acknowledged: every newsletter must be in want of a patreon

Feb 5, 2023

I. Dear Reader,

Biiig week for games and big week for me!

It’s the beginning of Zine Month (and Zine Quest) and there are hundreds of zine projects that are going to launch across February. If you feel like browsing, check out the Zine Month site. I’ll shout out two projects being run by folks from the Global South.

Cover of Grandmothership and Hit the Road Jack

Argentinian designer, Armanda Haller’s Grandmothership, which mashes together Honey Heist, Brindlewood Bay, and Mothership to make a game about grannies in space. It’s on Crowdfundr, a new platform that’s accessible in countries that are blocked by Kickstarter.
There’s also Hit the Road, Jack by Filipino designer Kyle Tam which is a one or two person game about a thrilling chase between a vengeful lawman and a criminal trying to escape their sins. There’s a great actual play on Party of One if you want to check it out. It’s itchfunding so the number of sales decide the amount of additional content and design in the game.

There are also a very cool set of games that have taken ads as well so go check all of these games out. I’ll also share other people’s round-ups and recommendations as and when I come across them!

Yours zine-fully,

Thomas

It’s also a big week for me, personally. The newsletter has a patreon!

There are three tiers: 2$, 5$ and 15$. Each of them gets you increased goodies but mostly, you get my gratitude for helping me keep the metaphorical lights on. Thank you!

With a weekly newsletter, a fortnightly podcast, and also as-yet-unannounced SECRET PROJECT, this is going to be a busy year for me. I’d love to be able to do all the things I have planned. So if you can, click the button!

Support On Patreon

II. City23: Immoria

It’s nice to see various parts of the city start intertwining together in these submissions. Here’s a resident of the city from reader Ryan:

Oral storyteller, griot, and historian, Saga sits outside The Dough/The Rise/The Bake/The Bread, entertaining the crowds with her ever-changing stories. No one quite remembers how old she is, and she speaks as though she has lived through all time. Every tale she spins is different. If yesterday was all about the pride of the foolish Hero, then tomorrow will be his humility and triumph. A resident of the Eddies, Saga tells stories nonlinearly. Sometimes she will tell six different endings to the same story, putting even the most established historical events in dispute. Sometimes she tells history from the perspective of the greedy king, then his downtrodden subjects who never wrote their stories down. She interprets and reinterprets the story as she tells it. Those brave enough to join Saga’s storytelling may tell rival tales or satirize Saga’s strange tellings.
Every once and a while, a small group of people tell stories together while chewing on their yeasted loaves, with Saga watching in glee. They sing and dance together, as if it is a game to be played. It is at this moment that her face fills with delight, lit by the yellowish glimmer of the bakery. She clasps the hands of her companions and closes her eyes: “Tell your stories! Of Bargetown’s riots and flame, of Tangent’s illustrious shops, of the hidden delights and dangers in the Warrens!” But sometimes Saga sits alone, by the darkened shop when no crowds have gathered. She plays her lute quietly, singing of all the peoples long forgotten, washed away in Immoria’s waves. Only she knows their names, their languages, their laughter, their loves. And she waits for them to come back and tell their stories. And she waits.
True Name: She who watches the flood of time.

You can read all the entries at immoria.xyz.
For the rules of what a submission looks like, go here!
The current compass is HISTORY. What are the tourist attractions, forgotten monuments, historians, founding myths of the city? Submit neighbourhoods, landmarks or people themed around history.

III. Media of the Week

I released the first episode of my tenure at the helm of Yes Indie’d Pod. It’s called The GM Who Talks To Goats where I speak to Judd Karlman about Daydreaming about Dragons and why he’s so good at giving gaming advice! I sound nervous as all hell, but it was incredibly fun.
- If you want to then explore Daydreaming about Dragons, I’m happy to recommend two of my favourite episodes: Episode 85. Playing Chess With Villains and Episode 70. Making World History Relevant.
The Alexandrian explains the problem with asking your players, “Are you sure you want to do that?”

IV. Links of the Week

RPG Theory

Really interesting! An excerpt from Paul Czege’s new zine The Ink That Bleeds, about how to play immersive journalling games: “I think of this process as “write to find out,” and I think it’s necessary to a journaling game for it to be immersive.”
An article after my own heart. Videogame designer Tanya X Short (Boyfriend Dungeon, among others) writes in praise of messiness: “When I meet with other experienced game designers, we find ourselves admitting to fascination with decidedly inelegant game designs, and envious of those designers that permit themselves this kind of latitude.”
An interesting read about using Netrunner cards like a tarot deck and telling a story with them. It feels a bit like what I thought CCGs were as a kid before I actually knew anything about them.

Misc

On Polygon, Gamefound discusses their progress as a crowdfunding platform and their goal of eating into Kickstarter’s stranglehold.
Matthew Gravelyn collected data from 125 game designers/publishers on itch and published a report with some data visualizations to show the results. Interesting results, useful for any solo designer who publishes games.
Black Armada Games talks about almost getting scammed by someone pretending to be an artist by using other people’s art.
A database of RPGs or SRDs with open licenses
If you don’t subscribe to the Indie Press Revolution newsletter, it’s another good way to keep up with the indie games.
Applications for the Diana Jones Emerging Game Designer award are open.
Alongside #RPGSEA and #RPGLatAm, there is now a hashtag for tabletop games form South Asia: #saRPG.

V. 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.

Constellation collects 12 indie RPG zines packed with action, horror, and intimate emotional experiences. Visit new adventure settings, fight vampires in space, explore grief and more. On Kickstarter now!
The Connection Machine is a science fiction RPG about attachment, trauma and the search for meaningful connection. Explore a dream-like world to create stories about hope, grief, shame, freedom, attachment and love.
Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound is a slice of life sci-fi RPG about living on a gigantic alien space station and everyday community drama.
Project ECCO is a solo game of time travel and cosmic horror. Time travel across the pages of a planner as you track a time-consuming entity. Support on Crowdfundr
Cloud Empress is an expansive, Nausicaa-inspired setting for the Mothership RPG. Cloud Empress imagines a far-off future ruled by giant psychic cicadas. Back on Kickstarter

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

There’ a Hero 6e bundle as well as a Champions 6e bundle. There’s also adventures for Hero 6e.
There’s also a bundle of funnels for DCC.

Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, 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!