#166: Shared Hearth
I. Dear Reader,
Befote I get to talking about roleplaying games but before that, if you can contribute to humanitarian aid in Gaza through orgs like PCRF or MAP, please do.
I'm running two sessions of This Ship Is No Mother during the Shared Hearth online event. It's a kind of mini online gaming convention run by the Open Hearth community. There'll be lots of other games (including the excellent Hearts of Wulin and Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast) and some talks. It's well-managed and fun and free and you can learn all about the event here.
If you'd like to play a game with me and see the power of This Ship Is No Mother’s excellent pacing, signups open on October 24th. I'm always happy to show the game off!
Yours conventionally,
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
New episode of Yes Indie’d this week: I talk to Josh Fox, co-founder of Black Armada Games who have published bangers like Lovecraftesque, Bite Marks and Last Fleet. We try to tell the story of the publishing company over the decade it has existed. A great study for those wondering what running a RPG business is like.
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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
On Deeper in the Game, Chris Chinn talks about The Magus, a solo game about a mage hungry for forbidden power, and Procedures To Discover The Path Ahead, a supplement for adding that cool detail to your location prep.
Sandy Pug U collects some resources for starting and running a co-op. It’s not only an RPG thing but I think about this literally every week (way more than I think about the roman empire) so thought it was worth sharing.
On Enworld, a review of the latest edition of scifi comedy game, Paranoia.
On Fail Forward, a fun post about the possibilities of running a living world with multiple groups operating in the same location. Inspired by Death Stranding.
Dicebreaker features a cool cardgame that apparently does very satisfying duels, uses 16 cards, and takes 5 minutes to play. I’d love to know if you can just use something like this for duels when playing trad games. I mean, 5 minute duels? Yes, please!
RPG freelancing and publishing advice from people taking notes at conventions:
a recap of a bunch of cool panels from Big Bad Con 2023 which has a lot about marketing, pitching, social media, etc.
notes from panel from Gen Con 2023 that fits in as a nice companion to the above
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.
Pokemon Go meets The Blair Witch Project. Don’t Play This Game, a legacy solo RPG of handcrafted horror. Grab your journal and prepare to be scared. Back now on Kickstarter.
Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy is a deck of 51 single-card RPG fragments from 51 different creators. That's a huge amount of diversity and pure creativity on the tabletop.
The Mending Circle is a gentle, gm-less RPG about healing, where three witches try to heal the world, one person at a time. The Kickstarter for a print edition and wooden tokens is now live!
Strike Force Omega is a fast-paced tactical game of science-fantasy supersoldiers who got out and are now being dragged back in, and I need some folks to help me fund a physical print run.
This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.
Best Left Buried, the old-school horror fantasy game, has a bundle with a lot of great adventures and setting material.
Also, an Arcane Library bundle with 9 5e adventures and combat cards.
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!