Things I Liked Last Month: March 2024

01 April 2024

Welcome to another dispatch of Things I Liked Last Month! Check out February’s dispatch and Blood on the Clocktower: Misregistration and the Power of “Might” in TTRPGs.

The Lost Universe

Check it out for free here.

Early this month, NASA (the actual space agency!) released a TTRPG adventure called the Lost Universe, it sees players embodying NASA scientists who get isekai’d to a science-fantasy planet to rescue the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been stolen using teleportation magic. Being written by a science organisation, this adventure is full of facts about physics and astronomy, some of which is relevant to the adventure, and some of which is definitely not. I’m genuinely really fascinated by this scenario’s prose, the way it combines facts and fiction is a little cheesy in a very charming way.

That aside, the worldbuilding here is genuinely really interesting! I love how they took a weird and curious thing that happens in astrophysics and used it as the foundations for their science-fantasy setting, definitely something I want to try myself. The story is set on a rogue planet, a planet that has been affected by another gravitational force, and slingshotted out of its normal orbit path. Life is sustained on the rogue planet hurtling through space because the worlds’ wizards created a sphere of magical energy that keeps the atmosphere liveable and protects them from space debris. Because the world is not orbiting a sun, the rural areas are permanently shrouded in darkness, there’s a lot of potential here for cool and scary threats that don’t really get explored in this adventure, but the way this is written makes me think this won’t be the last time we’re invited to Exlaris.

I haven’t run this yet but I really want to! There are a couple changes I want to make, so I might write a blogpost about how it goes!

Daggerheart Character Creator

Check it out for free here.

I feel a little like I’m reporting on old news with both this and The Lost Universe, since both came out to massive acclaim at the start of the month. That being said…

Daggerheart is the new high-fantasy TTRPG by Critical Role’s Darington Press. It was released earlier this month to much discussion, both positive and negative. Those who have seemingly only played D&D were aghast at the idea of a flexible initiative system and its reliance on players to actually be polite and make decisions for the sake of the story. While fiction-first gamers were confused by the presence of crunchy character creation and combat mechanics for a game designed by (and for) professional improv actors. The game seems to simultaneously be too much like D&D, and so different as to be completely incomprehensible.

And this is a weird disconnect! I absolutely adore how gamey the character creation system is, and really enjoyed making my character Raya, a Wanderborn Faun Guardian. I love how each class is made up of a combination of 2 domains, and how those domains inform some of your class options. I can’t wait to see how they combine the domains in new ways and what could happen if they add even more domains (I’m hoping for a tech-focused domain, so we can get gunsmiths and artificers).

I haven’t played Daggerheart yet so I won’t make a final judgement. But at a glance this game feels like it has great mechanics from two separate schools of TTRPG design, and I’m really curious to see how they work together! Maybe I’ll write a full review if I find the time to play it.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Mario Wonder is so refreshing to play. For 13 years, the New Super Mario Bros. series (from the DS in 2006 to the Switch in 2019) felt like it was rehashing the same mechanics over and over again, which had definitely gotten stale by the 6th release in the series. While 3D Land and World were experimenting with new mechanics in 3D, 2D Mario had been left feeling a little dry, until Wonder. Wonder is chock full of new enemies, platforms and power-ups that finally make fresh and exciting challenges that I’ve been craving for so long.

My favourite type of levels were the badge challenges, where you have to equip specific badges that change your stats or give you new abilities. These levels were always fun and quick platforming challenges that aimed to highlight a specific game mechanic, the kind of level design I really appreciate and enjoy.

I love this game! Please put it in Mario Maker 3!

The Sandman Audio Drama: Act 2

Neil Gaimen’s Sandman series is one of my favourite stories in any medium ever. I was first introduced to them with Act 1 of the audio drama series when it first released and plunged straight into the original comics afterwards. I missed Act 2 when it came out because I had cancelled my Audible subscription a long time ago, but I found a CD copy at my local library and took the opportunity to finally check it out.

Man, I’d forgotten how good the production value of these are! The sound design is gorgeous and immersive and the cast is absolutely stacked! Neil Gaimen provides wonderful narration, while James McAvoy gives an intense and emotional Morpheus that is vastly different from the colder and indifferent Morpheus played by Tom Sturridge in the Netflix series (both of which I love!). It’s always wonderful to hear Jeffrey Wright and it’s great to have MIchael Sheen back from the first act!

I honestly don’t know which of the three mediums I would suggest the most, each iteration of Sandman has brought new and different things to the table, and I think that speaks to the merit of Gaimen’s hands-on job as producer for both the Audible and Netflix adaptations.

Jet Lag: the Game Season 9: Hide and Seek Across Switzerland

Check it out on YouTube here.

Not a day goes by where I don’t think about Jet Lag: the Game, and their newest season was one of my new favourites! Season 9 sees the boys playing hide and seek across Switzerland! I absolutely loved the selection of questions the seekers have to narrow their options down, the information feels just weird enough to be a really fun puzzle. The finale aired on Nebula last Wednesday and will be out on Youtube on the 3rd of April!

Links

Here's a new segment of What I Liked Last Month! Here I'll link to some other blogs, talks and essays. Mainly about game design but not exclusively!

Over at Gem Room Games, Dan Phipps discusses how to write inspiring RPG bestiary flavour text in The Monster’s Implied Adventure.
Back in 2021, journalist and Rascal Lin Codega wrote about lyric games in A Game Without Players Can Still Be Played. It made me think a lot about my own lyric supplement, DRAGONFALL, again, so I added some community copies!
Over at Exeunt Omnes, Making Combat Faster is inspiring me a bunch as I'm looking to make larger games with deeper combat rules
The Storyteller Conclave Podcast asks the ultimate discourse question: Is D&D Hurting the Hobby? I particularly loved the point about what weapon a fighter uses being a much more important decision than which instrument a bard uses - if D&D truly treated its 3 systems equally, shouldn't the social class’ core item have just as much mechanical depth as the martial class’?
In Implied Setting and Building a Line, Sean McCoy (Mothership) chats with watt (Cloud Empress) about worldbuilding for TTRPGs. Watts perfectly encapsulates my own philosophies of worldbuilding in this medium, it's all about giving the players foundations to build their own world upon.

Thanks for reading this dispatch of Jackalope Mail, Let me know what you’ve been up to this month in the comments!