#143: Still Just Links
I. Dear Reader,
I’m travelling again! So this week is another issue with just links, but there’s a bumper crop of interesting stuff to read. Enjoy!
Back next week,
Thomas
PS. Here’s a picture of some dachshunds (I think!) looking at a frog.
II. Media of the Week
Liber Ludorum launches a podcast and in the first episodes, a fleet of guests come onboard and discuss their indie RPG award programme, The Awards 2023.
We hit 50 patrons! Thanks so much for everyone supporting my endless reading and writing about games. I’m excited that everyday this becomes more sustainable and rewarding for me!
If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.
III. Links of the Week
Reviews
Indie Game Reading Club is doing bite-sized reviews of games. There’s Apocalypse Keys, Bladerunner, and Hieronymous in one set and City of Winter, Atlas of Latter Earths, and Terminator in the other.
POCGamer reviews Fantasy Age 2nd Edition
Articles
Polygon talks about Yazeba Online, a digital implementation of Possum Creek Games’ unique game over on the One More Multiverse virtual tabletop: “Everything about Yazeba’s Online pushes the lesson at the heart of the original game: Home is what you make of it”
Emmy Allen has a intriguing and unsettling blogpost that asks the question what if races in D&D weren’t species but social constructs: “we'll just look at the position each occupies in our setting socially, and extrapolite backwards from that. EG, let's suppose you're an elf because you do elf things and people treat you like an elf.”
Molten Sulfur blog has a fun adventure idea around the pope selling a kingdom… that already had a king in it.
Indie videogame Citizen Sleeper (which I played and enjoyed!) is now getting a solo tabletop game designed by Alfred Valley.
There’s An RPG For That collects Paragon games (aka based on the greek hero game, Agon).
Jack Blair shares a fun story about running Quest for a 10 year old over on his newsletter.
Burn After Reading highlights an important way for players to make games more fun: take more risks!
The Twenty Sided Newsletter is doing a series about how to make an actual play podcast.
Luke Gearing has been doing a series of mentorships for new writers. His retrospective alongside some notes from his mentee, watt of Cloud Empress fame, make for interesting reading about what mentorship in game writing can be.
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.
TEETH is a game about occult criminality and monster-hunting in a cursed corner of 18th-century England. Cursed pies, bad weather, deeply weird creatures and 320-pages of RPG.
My First Dungeon is running a DIE actual play with immersive sound design and original music. Featuring: Nathan Yaffe, Drakoniques, Carolyn Page, Shenuque Tissera, Abby Hepworth, and Brian Flaherty.
This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.
Get some Grim Noir, a GUMSHOE game of film noir and occult mystery.
A bundle of Traveller adventures from FASA Corporation
A Solidarity bundle of games about hate Pinkertons
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!