001 February 2024

Welcome! This is my first newsletter in this new format. Take sometime to look around.

Feb 01, 2024

This is The Largshire Bulletin.

This is the first Largshire Bulletin. It’s primarily a monthly newsletter but they may be the occasional fortnightly run too. We’ll see how it goes!

1 Thing Worked On

The Abbot Trilogy

A system-agnostic OSR zine triple feature: Abbotsmoore, Bitterpeak, and Steelhollow.

Crawl through a fetid swamp and explore the otherworldly technology of a long-forgotten civilisation, hoping to meet the Troll Priest. Survive the tundra in search of the mysterious Demonsbane. Get across the desert to the Steelhollow and the god that is supposedly trapped within.

This is live today on Kickstarter! Argh!

Writing for the firs two adventures is complete and the third is the final stages. We got covers and some sweet sketches to give you an idea of it is to come. Can’t wait for you all to see it. Give it a little looksee and maybe even back it :)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stuartwatkinson/the-abbot-trilogy

2 Things Learned

Firstly, I learned a whole heap about layout. I have done bits and pieces in the past but have decided to dive right in this last few weeks. The most influential element has been through using the Classic Explorer Start Template. It’s free and it gives a place to start. The layout template provided will teach you more about laying out zine than spending two hours watching a random tutorial on YouTube. Here’s an example of what I knocked up in an afternoon.

Secondly, I learned to about sharing my work regularly and often. The TTRPG community is filled with creatives who genuinely want to see each other succeed. Here’s a quote from Show Your Work by Austin Kleon

There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals—artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers—who make up an “ecology of talent.” If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.”

3 Things to Consume

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

One line: What would happen to the natural and built environment if humans suddenly disappeared?

No one knows how many underground cities lie beneath Cappadocia. Eight have been discovered, and many smaller villages, but there are doubtless more. The biggest, Derinkuyu, wasn’t discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning a back room of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he’d never seen, which led to still another, and another. Eventually, spelunking archaeologists found a maze of connecting chambers that descended at least 18 stories and 280 feet beneath the surface, ample enough to hold 30,000 people—and much remains to be excavated.

Quest for Fire (1981)

This is a very strange film I found while looking for something else… and then I watched it all. It’s essentially a Primal Quest adventure. Fire is god and God has been snuffed out.

You can watch it on YouTube but it’s not for everyone and has got some uncomfortable scenes. Viewer beware.

You Meet in a Tavern, you Die in a Dungeon by Matt Bear

I received this in the post this week and it is excellent. It’s a procedurally generated dungeon crawler where all the characters are destined to die. Go and find it here: https://ursidice.itch.io/dieinadungeon

4 Things to Know Someone

Christian Sorrell of Meatcastle Gameware

Stuart: Who are you and what do you do?
Christian: I'm Christian Sorrell (he/they) aka MeatCastle! I am a TTRPG designer, writer, and editor in my mid-30s born and raised in the Midwestern U.S. but now living in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. I publish my own TTRPG projects under the MeatCastle GameWare imprint (including Mothership modules like The Bloodfields at Blackstar Station and There is a Goblin on the Loose in Icarus Station and the Liminal Horror module Tunnels in White) and I contribute to loads of other projects as a freelance developer, writer, and editor (including games like Cloud Empress, Triangle Agency, and more). More than anything, I aim to make the TTRPG stuff I wish was out there but I haven't been able to find (or haven't found enough of to sate my thirst for it), whether that be a Hunger Games-style battle royale or a so-bad-its-good horror comedy in the vein of Leprechaun 4: In Space.
S: What are you working on at the moment?
C: Right now, I'm working on Tacticians of Ahm, my first standalone TTRPG system. It grew out of my desire to keep grids-n-minis combat at the center of my game while getting rid of all the frustrating and boring aspects that style of game traditionally entails. In time, I coupled that with my lifelong love of tactical video games and built a super-streamlined combat system inside of a dying video game world, bitrotting away with time. It's been my primary background project more than a year, and I'm so excited it's out now in early access itchfunding and is only going to continue to grow. I had big plans for it, like all creators do (at times) for their creations but I needed to know that I was really on to something before I put more time and money on the line. Luckily, folks have shown themselves to be as interested as I am which means now I can dive right back into expanding the game world, write a proper introductory campaign, and more. It's been a really exciting and rewarding time!
S: Whose work are you excited about at the moment?
C: One of the pleasures of being a freelancer in the space, across a variety of roles as an editor, adventure writer, and developer, is that I often get to take part, even if only in small ways, on some of my favorite work happening in the tabletop roleplaying game space. Cloud Empress by worlds by watt is a game that, in full disclosure, I did some additional development and playtesting on. Even still, it is a game I am really immersed in at the moment (as a GM with both my home group and on a recent actual play, not in any freelance capacity). There's a heart and humanity to it despite its world being strange, dangerous, and horrific at times that creates stories unlike most I've encountered in recent years. Thrilling and intriguing, but also emotionally fulfilling. Liminal Horror is another game that continues to grow and develop in exciting ways. As a longtime Call of Cthulhu keeper and someone who has now moved away from the weight of more traditional games (especially given the typical prep load placed on the GM there), Liminal Horror arrived to give me an experience in that style but with an ease of play (and prep) I hadn't experienced before. Plus, its designers are building one of the most thoughtful, consistent, and well documented/accessible systems in the scene (the whole game plus loads of rules add-ons are available for free on Github, for example)! I have written one adventure for Liminal Horror, but I would love to do more in the future. It's as fun to write for as it is to play. Beyond that, I think Spencer Campbell (of Gila RPGs) continues to do really interesting work moving beyond what we think of as "tried and true" elements of roleplaying games and finding new, mechanically interesting ways to tell stories in the space. I tend to really love any designers that are more than willing to kill our sacred cows and build something new in their place. Overall, I'm just a huge fan of so many folks in the indie space. It's where 90% of the most exciting, innovative, and just downright weird and interesting work is happening in tabletop roleplaying games.
S: Share a book, a film, a game, and an album.
C: This may seem odd given everything else I've said here, but the book that I am currently really fascinated by is a collection of essays by the 1940s writer Joseph Mitchell called Up in the Old Motel. It’s a vivid, intriguing look at a huge selection of weird, eclectic folks from old New York City. For TTRPG creators, writers, and GMs, I think it’s a fascinating look at just how varied, rich, and even contradictory the life of a single person can be. Plus, it's brimming with great inspiration for NPCs of all types. It really has inspired me to start raising my standard on characters in my writing and embracing the seemingly too weird and wild elements I may think up but would have cut in the past. The book is a great example of truth being stranger than fiction which I take as a challenge for us to all make our fiction that much stranger.