#79: A Loving Retroclone
I. Dear Reader,
I’ve been playing Legacy 2e, a post-apocalyptic game about factions trying to rebuild and survive. The most interesting thing about the game is that it has this 'faction level’ play. You do play as a single character at times but you also “zoom out” and then play as the faction - conducting diplomacy, waging war, and so on.
I am very excited about this kind of game because I like “social” games. Even among boardgames, I like auction games and so on because there’s a lot of talking among the players - lots of interaction rather than everyone just focused on their strategy. Even among RPGs, some games incentivize interaction and teamwork and some… just don’t. Which is fine if you’re a regular group that has a dynamic but among new players, if the game doesn’t help you talk to each other, then it can start to feel like everyone is in their own little silo. They talk to the GM but they don’t really have a reason to talk to each other.
But Legacy 2e is a big game and I couldn’t summon the energy to sit down and read the book. But now that I’m playing it, I’ve really enjoyed diving into the rules and the crunch is fun. At the same time, I can’t help but start planning my loving “retroclone” of it - in the vein of World of Dungeons to Dungeon World. Because you can have faction-level and single-character play in a 2 page game, I think. Seems like it should exist!
Zooming out,
Thomas
II. Listen of the Week
Two gems for my readers this week:
First, I’m one of the first ten subscribers to Youtuber, AA Voigt, who makes short video reviews of indie TTRPGs. I really love the initial selection of videos for how off-the-beaten track the games are. Go check them out!
The second gem is also a look at some really cool indie games. Adam Bell of Have You Played This looks at 14 games that he has read and wants to play. Each game gets a brief (often hilarious) blurb before Adam zips off to the next one.
III. Links of the Week
Part of writing about tabletop stuff is writing about platforms now. Dicebreaker covers how itch.io rejects NFTs and how a boardgame publishers has invested millions in Gamefound, a major Kickstarter competitor.
DriveThruRPG has also said they see no use for NFTs via a tweet so overall, it’s been a reasonable week in games!
Cannibal Halfling Gaming continues their ZineMonth coverage with more round-ups of games with part two and part three!
If you’re on TikTok, Philippa Mort is another indie RPG person making videos about indie games.
Spelltoken Press have a cool review of Flying Circus, a “aviation fantasy” game of airplanes and dogfights.
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. I’m half-man, half-beast, half-journalist, half-game designer.
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Yes please to a rules-light version of Legacy! I desperately wanted to like it more than I did, but the crunch was too much for us.