Notice: This post contains affiliate links for multiple entries. This means I receive a commission if a purchase takes place during your link journey.
I. You Enter the Chasm …
Shimmering steel pierces into the event horizon. A mind shattering storm of lightning spills from the ethereal wound of the mass of dark fae energy. The entire library is consumed in a blinding flash, pitch darkness, a negation of sound and color. ... The thief and sage slide and fall into the storm, centered round the paladins stab into the collective conscious of the fae lord and their prized souls.
The floor buckles. All begin to descend as the structure hiding the surrounding chasm begins to collapse into it. The rest... is a vanishing of consciousness, visions blurring in and out amongst the fall. A world upside down...
Today, the newsletter is upside-down! … Our journey in sharing and celebrating TTRPGs in creation, homebrew, and play has switched modes. Assembly of this rag is delightful, but can be laborious, and its critical to keep things fresh. … Do more with less. More punch with fewer words. More resources and sales earlier. Ye olde sea skimmers get the quick gimmies, and true scholars get the thought pieces and personal stuff. No more explanation! … Lets delve this dungeon!
II. Looting the Room
RPG Sales and Deals
Matt Finch’s fantastic system neutral adventure-building guide trilogy series!
Build quests with Tome of Adventure Design (Revised)!
$25$19.99Name your creations with The Nomicon!
$25$19.99Inspire your setting with Tome of Worldbuilding!
$25$19.99
Corp Borg is a rules-lite office-crawl in a corporate apocalypse!
$17.99Tons of DnD 5E supplements in Kobold Press’s Heroic Hoard of 5E Power by Kobold Press, covering spells, items, adventures, and more!
$441$25/PWYWFor the retired adventurers! Run your own fantasy tavern in Stewpot Complete Bundle. Includes PDF and VTT materials. -
$50$30Over 100 solo games, part of the Solo But Not Alone 5 bundle to raise money for mental health services for game industry workers.
$429$10Our ongoing affiliate, Phoenix Dice! Made from eco-friendly materials. Each purchase goes towards funding research into various recycled materials such as ocean plastic, safe industrial waste, and more!
Use the code DELVE25 and get 10% off your order today!
About to Expire:
Pathfinder Classic Bundle - A massive 1E entire collection for a fragment of the cost!
$2,566.58$45
Free Resources and Things
Campaign Creator Card Deck is a brilliant tool that aids in quest and story creation! … PDF download is free! (Premium Cards $12.50)
Worlds Without Number: Free Edition for the trial explorers of sword and sorcery in the ashes of civilization!
indulged in a fun project, and just gifted the community Gallows, a brutal dungeon-delving RPG in just three pages!
III. Markings on the Wall
Latest rumors, discoveries, and puzzling finds in the RPG world and beyond!
Sweet Kickstarter Campaigns!
Hellborn Descended. Studio Hex presents… a demonpunk RPG in the inspired veins of Cyberpunk, Helluva Boss, Hazbin Hotel, Shadowrun, Blades in the Dark, and more! … Grow some horns and reap havoc in infernal dystopia! … Pledges open this week!
SOLO BORG. From The Soloist - an indie RPG newsletter. … Ever wanted to play MÖRK BORG on your own? Grab this single-player 80+ page game and toolkit to experience the end of everything without a GM or other players!
OMG Cats! Simply described by Wet Ink Games as an RPG about cats doin’ stuff, playing stories of cat shenanegans as you Purr, Hiss, Zoom, and Dismiss your way through furry adventures with your other feline pals!
Gameable Advice
In Unlocking Content Terraria-Style In Your TTRPG World, our friend Wobblerocket suggests a dynamic approach to adventures and world events using the pacing found in crafting games like Terraria.
Meanwhile, in the Prismatic Wasteland, Playing Card Initiative dares to leverage your ace-through-king card deck for turn order, including risk die.
Over at RPGGeek, designer Eric Jome continues the community-run Behind the Screen series, and presents how to add a subsystem to your game, with interesting examples!
Theory Stuff
The Alexandrian takes a closer look at an improv game convention that makes its way into RPG tables, and suggests that always saying yes might not be what it’s cracked up to be.
Aaron over at Cannibal Halfling Gaming puts on the thinking cap in mid-pondering the RPG review process and poses the question: Do games need a reason to exist?
Latest RPG News
According to Bell of Lost Souls, the hit game Frostpunk is getting its own TTRPG, and Shadowrun-creator Catalyst Games is the one jumping on the opportunity!
CreativeBloq interviews award-winning creators of Koriko: A Magical Year and Across a Thousand Dead Worlds to talk about Why Vibe And Tone Matters in a TTRPG.
For the PC gaming tabletop fans, SunderFolk is getting a lot of attention right now, and Good Time Society just dropped a 3-part video kickoff with several action play stars (Matt Mercer, Jasmine Bhullar, Becca Scott, and Persephone Valentine.)
Its all over the mainstream RPG media, but in case you wanted a refresh, Rascal News wrote about WOTC’s layoff of multiple developers and its shuttering of Sigil, the VTT project.
A Maniacs Insight (Where I quote an adjacent Substack blog) x2
Scheduling in D&D has a very simple solution which seems difficult for some to grasp. If someone doesn’t show up to your game, too bad for them. Give them a chance or two and then cut them loose. If they ain’t showing, they don’t want to play.
So it’s kind of a non-problem if you handle it in a really simple, non-emotional way. But what I like about the concept of a “living game” of the type I am creating with Cyberpunk is that it becomes even less of an issue.
One of the more egregious examples of abstraction in my mind is how to handle progression or advancement, level-ups, skill increases, stuff like that. Which is frustrating, because we have many, many different ways of handling those sorts of things than the traditional point system. Yet more and more we see games with really innovative systems still defaulting to a system that was invented 50 years ago.
I just find the entire process to be really unsatisfying. So let’s talk about how to make it better.
We Can Do Better than XP by at
IV. New Random Name Generator
Chaotican Writer has dropped a new name generator!! … Name your islands for your world, and populate your seas with unique places to find on your seafaring journey! All at the click of a button.
V. Treasure Chest (Sponsored Ads)
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