#93: Stealing the Throne, Spire & More

I. Dear Reader

I had a mid-week session of The Sword, The Crown and the Unspeakable Power cancel recently. In its place, we spun up a one shot of Stealing the Throne by Nick Bate.

Stealing the Throne is a very slick, very fast playing storygame about a crew of thieves pulling off the heist of a legendary mech. It's got simple rules - there is a setup phase where you flesh out the world and the mec, a heist phase where you describe your thieves doing cool stuff, and then a getaway phase where you try to escape with the mech and any traitors in the crew reveal themselves.

What is extra fun about these tight storygames is that the action and drama very seamlessly takes on an epic scale as players realise that there's nothing stopping them from going over the top. It feels like the kind of fun, sci-fi heist movie that they could but never ever make.

Stealing the fun,

Thomas

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II. Media of the Week

Pre-eminent boardgame tastemakers, Shut Up and Sit Down, did a full-fledged review of Spire: The City Must Fall. The review is funny and honest - a line that is hard to walk. And it ends with Quinns listing every RPG he’s every played in order of least fun to most. The last one will shock you. (Disclaimer: I wrote for SIN, a supplement for Spire but it isn’t mentioned in the review.)

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III. Links of the Week

• Tim Hutchings, designer of Thousand Year Old Vampire, has released another game. It’s called Apollo 47 Technical Handbook and it’s a few pages of game with 1000+ pages of flavour text. Here’s a review from Liber Ludorum and Polygon that outlines the whole project.

• Entanglements is a very cool mechanic in Hearts of Wulin that ties up your character into a triangle with another player character and an NPC. It’s supercharged bonds mechanic and great for drama. On the Gauntlet blog, there’s a whole list of various entanglements to use in your game.

• I think the whole question of “perception checks” in storygames is a rich source for discussion. (Because usually things don’t exist till someone makes it up.) Judd Karlman writes about how the hunt rolls in Trophy Gold turn perception checks into random encounter rolls.

• Professional GMing is now in the sights of serious venture capital. StartPlaying, a website where GMs can host paid games, raised $6.5 million recently.

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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.

• It's the last week to back PITCRAWLER, a wizard-bothering, 2-player RPG inspired by choose-your-own-adventure books!

• Travel to exotic locales, investigate mysteries, fight hench-dogs, and save the world in Agent Purrvocateur, a GM-less, no-prep RPG of heroic derring-do for one or more players.

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the all-new, fan-supported Fate-SRD.com. Built to be fast, attractive, and accessible, check out the site for rules, downloads, actual plays, and community.

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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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