#177: See ya, 2023!

I. Dear Reader,

Happy new year, folks! I hope 2024 treats you better than 2023. It’s end-of-the-year wrap-up time for everyone so that’s a recurring theme in this week’s links. Enjoy!

Thanks for doing the survey and I will share one chart which was interesting which is that most of my readers are experienced players. Neat! I wasn’t sure about the break-up so this was useful to know!

I’m happy to see the patreon crowdfunding drive is now over. Thanks to everyone who now signed up! We’re at 112 patrons now which is almost double where we started! This quietens the nasty voices in my head and has filled me with enthusiasm and excitement for doing next year.

Yours 2024-ly,

Thomas

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II. Media of the Week

• The Open Hearth gaming community asked their members to send in audio messages discussing their favourite games of the year for an end-of-year special episode and it’s great as usual. A lovely list of games, showcasing so many small indie gems. It’s also available on youtube below.

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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.

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III. Links of the Week

• There’s GeekNative’s annual best-selling on drivethru lists.

  • The Fantasy list features Fabula Ultima at the top which is no surprise as the game has been on the best-selling list basically since it came out. Nice to see Skerples’ Monster Overhaul on the list as I thought it was a great reworking of the standard fantasy bestiary.

  • At the top of the Scifi list was Warhammer 40k but close behind was the new adventure for Delta Green, God’s Teeth and Cities without Number by Kevin Crawford. Public Access, the weird horror game from the Gauntlet, is also on this list as well as the Horror list.

• On Dicebreaker, Chase Carter writes about 7 indie games released this year that you shouldn’t miss featuring games like Slugblaster and Gubat Banwa as well as a general round-up of this year in games including WOTC shenanigans, the release of Pendragon 6e, and the success of the Break!! crowdfunding campaign.

• Rolling Boxcar has a list of their best posts from 2023, including a reflection on the Great Pendragon Campaign and reviews of Ghostbusters and Pirate Borg.

• Polygon has a list of affordable, no-prep RPGs including some gems like The Kind is Dead and Rusalka.

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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.

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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!