#138: March Itch Games Round-up

It's in April because of the wibblywobbly nature of time.

I. Dear Reader,

Every month, I do a round-up of new tabletop RPGs that have been listed on itch.io. They come from be browsing the site as well as designers pro-actively telling me via this form. This is the round-up for March!

1. Bloodsucker Elegy: Play vampires on the night that humans decide if’s time to wipe them out forever. A 15 page game with an interesting diceless system. From Tom McGrenery of Porcupine Games and Fear of a Black Dragon. (Free/PWYW)

2. Passion of the Jukebox: An early draft of a hack of Pasion de la Pasiones that emulates a teen drama/jukebox musical show. From Jack Blair, designer of Sea Legs. (Free/PWYW)

3. The King’s Poisoner: One of you is the king, everyone else is trying to poison them or unveil the assassins. Larp-ish, one page game that works up to 7 players and seems to play in less than 2 hours. (Free/ PWYW)

4. Derelict Delvers: A game of survival and profit, exploring space and coming back with something to sell. Cezar Capacle is a really interesting designer and this seems like a really tight game.

5. The Librarian’s Apprentice: A solo game about exploring a weird library. Based on the interesting Firelights system that uses cards to set difficulty and make a map alongside rolling dice to decide if outcomes are favourable or not.

6. Sidekick Story: Whimsical solo game about a sidekick trying to find a missing superhero. Has this cheerful and bright, full-colour comic art style that is fun to look at.

See you all next week!

Yours exploratorily,

Thomas

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II. Media of the Week

Big Bad Con Online just wrapped up and there’s heaps of panels that have been online. I haven’t had time to watch all of them but I did have time to do a fun panel with Aaron Lim and friends, all about playtesting.

I’ll recommend other specific talks next week but for now, here’s an easy one: the Storybrewers Roleplaying folks talk about a survey they did with 50 designers about their inspiration for games and where they come form.

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III. Links of the Week

News

• Critical Role is getting into audio drama, as they’ve purchased/licensed an existing space western audio series called Midst.

• Linda Codega investigates the company culture at Wyrmwood Gaming.

Blogs/Essays

• The Deeper in the Game blog has a really nice process for quickly generating people who represent various factions. Something I’m going to steal as I plan for my political intrigue sessions.

• On Age of Ravens, a free mystery about tarot and Las Vegas for the Apocalypse Keys RPG.

• A review of Public Access, the surreal TV horror game from Brindlewood Bay designedr Jason Cordova.

• Related to last week’s post on character sheets, here’s an essay from Jason Morningstar in Analog Game Studies about designing the character sheet for Night Witches.

• If you like optimistic sci-fi, here’s a nice post from Skerples and one from Zedeck Siew.

Misc

• Free League announce their licenses for making supplemental material for their games and systems.

• Via GeekNative, the winners of the BAMFSIES, an award for the best superhero RPGs of 2022.

• Very fun planet generator from the people behind Hull Breach, the Mothership anthology.

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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.

• Guns Blazing is an alternate history RPG about international volunteers fighting colonial empires and supernatural horrors in the roaring 20s. It is kickstarting through April 27th.

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

• A bundle of science fiction maps for you to use in your VTTs.

• Also, a bundle of rules and supplements for Clement Sector 3e, a Traveller-like space opera game.

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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!