#39: Wanderhome & Paranoia
I. Dear Reader,
Last week was the first time in this newsletter’s lifetime that I missed sending out an issue. I was terribly sick and I’ll spare everyone the details but if you can afford to, consider donating to the COVID crisis going on in India right now. I’m recovering well now so we’ll be back to regular programming soon.
I’ve got a lot of gaming to look forward - Saturday evenings have switched from Heart to Cypher (I refer to it as “trad night”, tongue firmly in cheek); Sunday evenings in May are playtests of temporalhiccup’s new Forged in the Dark game; and there’s potentially going to be a third game as well every week. RPGs have been a good distraction in a bad time.
Distractedly,
Thomas
II. Watch of the Week
Dave Thaumavore’s latest review shows off the pastoral animal-folk RPG, Wanderhome.
Also, Seth Skorkowsky usually does D&D or CoC content but I enjoyed this recent review of the latest version of the sci-fi comedy classic, Paranoia. I think a lot about what games make for good introductions to the hobby and Paranoia’s focus on silly, weird fun at the table makes it a great option!
III. Links of the Week
Solid kickstarter and marketing advice from Zachary Cox, publisher of Best Left Buried, on the Mud and Blood Cast.
A text-based actual play report of Shadows of Yesterday, a classic storygame from the distant era that is 2005.
I came across a very interesting text-based roleplaying website called Mote (designed to mimic actual books) and the developers have been playing Lovecraftesque on it and it seems quite cool.
This is a really nice video overview of horror storytelling game, Lovecraftesque and the other titles of Black Armada Games. Explains the mechanics really well and tells you why you should be excited.
Ian Yusem talks about how he built a community of Mothership designers and how they’ve worked together to build solid collective success.
Allandaros blogs about tackling serious themes in games and how you can fall anywhere on a wide spectrum of “hugboxing” versus “scabpicking”.
PlusOneExp hosted three days exploring “itchfunding” (crowdfunding that uses itch.io rather than kickstarter) featuring a whole bunch of people (including me).
An interview with Sara Alfageeh, one of the co-founders of One More Multiverse, the million dollar VTT with big plans.
IV. Small Ads
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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. I’m half-man, half-beast, half-journalist, half-game designer.
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