Welcome to Random Loot, Loot The Room’s monthly newsletter. You can read previous issues here and support the newsletter on Ko-fi here. Subscribe to get new issues in your inbox!
January feels like it’s lasted an age, somehow. This month’s newletter is a long one and that’s without really covering any ZiMo/Zinequest stuff. I don’t want to overwhelm you with things - I’d like this to be a good quick read - so I’m considering maybe increasing the frequency of this letter to fortnightly. But I also don’t want you to feel like you’re being spammed by me, so please let me know in the comment whether you’d like to see a smaller more frequent email or stick to monthly and risk going a bit longer.
As always if you have anything you want me to take a look at for this newsletter, feel free to drop an email to chris at loottheroom dot uk. I can’t promise to cover everything, because I want this to be curated and not to just spam links at people, but I do promise to take a look at anything you ask me to look at.
What’s new with me?
Last year Joe D’Simone announced that he was starting a new tabletop gaming award called The Awards. It’s taken a few months but the winners were announced and I’m delighted to say that In The Bluelight won! The judges also wrote essays about their picks which make for a really good read.
I was contracted to do layout on the new edition of Laurie O’Connel’s Hieronymus and I’m pleased to say that the digital edition has now been released. I’m really proud of my work on this book and I hope people like it. This also now means that I’m open to new layout jobs, so if you’re looking for someone for your next project please do get in touch.
I’ll be tabling at the Dungeons & Flagons Weekender in Manchester later this month. The event takes place on the 11th and 12th of February, though I’ll only be there on the 12th. I’ll be demoing A Dungeon Game and generally being excited about RPGS, and it would be great if you came to say hi!
The Dungeon Drop has been arriving with people, finally, and Big Fuckin’ Mikey made a really fun unboxing of it that you should absolutely watch.
The Wretched started life as a 25-copy print run explicitly so I could figure out how to actually fulfil physical zines after Under The Floorboards funded as part of ZineQuest 2020. Floorboards largely got eclipsed by the subsequent success of Wretched, but I’m happy to say that it’s now back in stock at my store.
A Dungeon Game is getting constant updates and it’s always worth checking in on the website version, but I’ve finally published the PDF and epub versions to DriveThruRPG for the same price (Pay What You Want) as you can find it on itch.
Over on Patreon I’ve been scouring game texts for a firm definition of what a “dungeon” actually is. The first two posts (looking at OD&D and Holmes Basic) are both publicly available, and the third instalment about B1: In Search Of The Unknown is now available for subscribers. That will become public in a week or two, but I like to make sure the people supporting me financially actually get something for their money!
Also at Detritus, I posted the first two floors of my Dungeon23 megadungeon for subscribers as well as making floor 1 publicly available for free. I’m going to continue posting this dungeon weekly for as long as I’m still writing it.
ScreenRant wrote a list of open license RPGs and included A Dungeon Game alongside heavyweights like Mörk Borg and Quest!
I’ve been running my megadungeon and posting play reports over at Cohost. The first two sessions are here and here.
Royal Mail’s ongoing problems with their cyber attack mean that international print orders at my store are backed up. We’re currently only allowed to ship international orders that have some form of tracking, so if you’ve ordered something and didn’t select a tracked shipping option all I can do is apologise and ask you to continue being patient. As soon as I’m able to send them they’ll be in the post to you.
What’s good?
Cat Elm just launched a Kickstarter for Abimond Manor, a system neutral horror adventure set in a haunted house. It’s got a very cool time limit mechanism going on in it that makes it really good for one shots and I really want to see it succeed (not least because I’m going to be editing it and I’d like to get paid for that, but it’s genuinely a very good adventure as well).
Orbital Intelligence released Dungeon Grand Prix, a gonzo level 0 funnel adventure about kart racing and giant bone monsters. It’s an absolute blast, frankly. It’s written for DCC (and that’s what I’ll be running it in) but the one review that currently exists for it is by someone who ran it with A Dungeon Game and that’s made me really happy.
Spear Witch have released a ton of new adventures for Micah Anderson’s bastards., with more on the horizon.
Donn Stroud is Kickstarting his new game Ruination Pilgrimage, set in a world where demons swarm out of Hellmouths into the physical realm to be fought off by players taking the role of priests and knights of a holy order set on stamping out the demonic invasion. It looks really, really cool.
There’s a new pamphlet adventure for Mothership called Tachycardia, an investigative body horror module that looks great.
Speaking of Mothership, Sean McCoy interviewed the writer of Cloud Empress about all sorts of things. There’s a really good conversation about systems vs. adventures and how creators can support their games long term that I think is really worth reading and absorbing.
Another pamphlet adventure that caught my eye is Paleskin Princess, a short dungeon adventure for low level characters that looks really fun. I plan to run this during open gaming when my Office Hours start up again, so keep an eye out for that.
Batts made a really cool music video by feeding the titles of indie games into some algorithmic music generation tools.
Nick Spence has been running A Dungeon Game and writing play reports of their sessions. You can find the first one here.
And finally, Luke Gearing continues to write some of the best adventures in the scene. The Big Squirm is out and it’s fantastic. If you’re ever wondering how to write mystery adventures, this should be your go-to example.
That’s all for this month! As I said up top, let me know how you feel about the length of this update and what you think I should do in future. As always, thanks for reading!
As a thank you for subscribing and supporting my work, you can use the code F55W4N5G to grab 20% off physical books in my store when you spend £20 or more. Enjoy!
Ideally I like a monthly short read. But maybe also a mid-month special edition when there's big stuff like ZiMo happening?
Twice monthly is perfect in my opinion! Especially as I personally am trying to spend less time on Twitter (fingers crossed) being able stay up to date with longer form posts is great! Excited to get DD1 when Royal Mail gets their shit together! Have a great month Chris!