Random Loot: Issue 11

I am still alive

Are you in the UK? If you’re in the UK, are you okay? Seriously. Are you okay?

Everyone I know in real life has spent the past few weeks riddled by this horrible cold/flu thing that seems to be ripping through the population. I’ve spent the past ~10 days unable to do anything more than sweat and cough and it’s been awful. Today marks the first day that I’ve felt able to sit down at my desk and do anything approaching meaningful work. My partner is still in bed with all the lights off and a cold flannel on her forehead because she just can’t.

It hasn’t been fun.

I wanted to have a lot of things to talk about in this newsletter, including having finally released the digital version of Down In Yongardy, but illness means I’m behind. That book is finally limping over the line, though, and I’ll be glad to eventually put it in front of people after years of working on it. With any luck it will be landing in inboxes in the next week or so.

I do have some stuff to talk about, though, not least because it’s February and that means zine month and that means lots of people doing lots of cool stuff. So let’s get to the meat.

What’s new with me?

• I’m coming back to Kickstarter with an adventure for Troika! called Troika City Speedway. The pre-launch page is live and I’ll be sharing more information about it in the run-up to going live, which is going to happen only when Down In Yongardy is complete.

• The pamphlet adventure I wrote as an add-on for Down In Yongardy is now available for purchase. It’s £3 and should provide you with a very entertaining evening of murder and mayhem. You can grab it here.

• I released an album! Never Another You contains 10 brand new instrumental tracks. Chilled lo-fi pianos, crunchy beats, and weird jazz chords. I’m very proud of it and I hope people like it.

• A couple of years ago I wrote a very short-lived blog series called Naming The Faceless in which I rolled up characters in an assortment of RPG systems. That eventually became my Twitter Long Read threads, but I’m bringing it back because it was fun to write. The first two posts are live already, featuring Luke Gearing’s Swyvers and Wolves Upon The Coast.

What’s good elsewhere?

• Spencer Campbell released REAP, his tactical grid-based solo combat game. It comes with the Soul Atlas, a book of additional Realms (basically levels) to explore. I wrote one of them, a weird demon-infested city in the shadow of a waterfall on the river of the dead, that I’m very fond of.

• Swyvers is on Kickstarter. If you want to be an ‘orrible bastard in a smoggy, pseudo-Victorian pseudo-London, doing heists and murders and delving into the labyrinthine dungeons of the Midden, you’re going to love it.

• Leo of Vaults of Vaarn fame is Kickstarting The Shrike, an enormous 300+ page sandbox adventure for Old School Essentials. This looks incredible, frankly.

• Michael Duxbury is raising funds for Me, The Singularity, a haunted-house-in-space game about the crew of a deep space research station being haunted by an extradimensional ghost. It’s got a neat blend of prompt-based storytelling and fun party game mechanisms that make it really unusual (in a good way) and I think it’s worth checking out.

What’s on the decks?

• Alkaline Trio’s new album Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs might be the best thing they’ve released in years? They were my favourite band for a long time but I haven’t really been enamoured with their output since This Addiction. It’s very nice to see them back on top form.

• I’ve been listening to Valiant Hearts’ Yonder a lot, which has really filled the hole in my life left behind by Hands Like Houses (who are back, but it’s not the same without Trenton Woodley’s vocals).

• Galleons put out an album called Violent Delights that reminds me a lot of the first A Lot Like Birds record. It’s only been out for a week so I haven’t had much time with it yet but I think this is going to become a favourite for me.

That’s all for this month. Thanks for reading, as always!