Things I Liked Last Month: April 2024

01 May 2024

Welcome to another dispatch of Things I Liked Last Month! Check out March’s dispatch and my last post: Some Weird Folklore to Put in Your TTRPGs.

Dropout

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This month, my friend has lent me their subscription to Dropout, the streaming service founded by a bunch of the CollegeHumor team. These guys are some of the most creative people working right now and I consistently love all of the work they put out.

I started with Game Changer, the game show where the game changes every episode and the players have to work out the rules by playing. Game Changer has some of the most creative games I’ve ever seen and it’s amazing to see such a high-budget production strive to be so experimental.

I’m also making my way through Dimension 20’s A Crown of Candy. I love the worldbuilding here and the masses of food puns in the character names. I also adore the contrast between the very serious political drama and the silly candy and cheese people.

MCDM’s Designing the Game

Check out the series on YouTube here.

Matt Colville is back with his Designing the Game series for the first time since I’ve started this newsletter! The MCDM RPG is my most anticipated game that came out of the D&D exodus last year, and getting to hear all this behind the scenes design has been so fascinating. In the latest video, The Power Roll, Colville explains the new system for dice results in the game. It feels very reminiscent of PbtA’s ranges of success, but a little more gamey since there are more mechanical effects (rather than narrative effects) on each result. He was right to point out that it’s not for everyone, that level of abstraction can definitely put a dampener on your immersion, but I personally love that level of gaminess and welcome it at my table.

These videos consistently inspire me to think about the mechanics of my larger games, and I can’t wait to get the MCDM RPG in my hands!

Introducing Tarot Readings into your TTRPGs

Buy it from the Fumble Folk’s store here!

This small zine by fellow Welsh creators the Fumble Folks is a fun little tool that allows you to bring tarot readings into your TTRPG games. The zine encourages you to perform a past/present/future reading, with narrative prompts inspired by each of the major arcana (both upright and reversed), as well as the four aces from the minor arcana.

With my reading of Emperor, Reversed Death and Justice, I wrote a knight who, over the course of the narrative, becomes disillusioned with the authoritarian system they serve. I feel like they would be best suited as an NPC that starts as an antagonist to the PCs before joining their side after they see the light.

I love this as a system for generating characters, and it’s got me thinking about how to use the themes of tarot cards more in games. Maybe you’ll see something from me that uses a similar system eventually!

Scurry

Read it online here!

Scurry is one of the most gorgeous comics I’ve ever read. I was so enamoured by the style of this webcomic that I immediately purchased the physical version without reading much on the site. The series was pitched to me in the Overly Sarcastic Productions video Small Mammal on a Big Adventure, which all really inspired some ideas I’ve had for a home game of Mausritter.

The story follows a group of house mice attempting to survive after all humans mysteriously vanished. With food scarce and temperatures colder than ever, the colony’s greatest scavenger, Wix, travels into the deadly woods nearby in search of food and answers.