July Newsletter: Goblins and Growlers Gazette
🐉 Baldur's Great: Gaming bundles, your own personal radio station, and 50 years of text adventures.
Brandon Dingess
July 28, 2023
⚡ (Total read time: 2.9 minutes) ⚡
Welcome to a very late-in-the-month July newsletter. Usually, I like to be a little more on time, but this month really took it out of me. Scroll down for some fun news nuggets – especially if you’re an old-school Baldur’s Gate fan – along with a cool radio station solo play game and book recommendation that won’t give you dysentery. We’re at Queen City Anime in August – come see us! Details below.
This month:
🗞️ 3 must-know gaming news nuggets
📻 1 great indie game you need to play
🔥 2 hot takes from the podcast
📚 1 cool book recommendation
🧭 Goblins in the wild: Upcoming events
🗞️ 2 must-know gaming news nuggets
🖥️ Baldur’s Gate Humble Bundle. Looking forward to BG3 next week? Humble Bundle has the classic BG-era game library available. (Go for the link, Boo!)
BG, BG2, Neverwinter Nights, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, and more.
$12 for the whole shebang - 8 games.
All purchases support the Active Minds charity.
🖖 Modiphius Solo Play ‘Star Trek’ RPG. From the folks who brought you “Star Trek Adventures” 2d20 game, here’s Star Trek Adventures: Captain’s Log. (Make it solo)
Simplified rules designed around solo play storytelling.
Uses randomization tables to help players tell their own solo Trek adventures.
Pre-order the print version and get a PDF of the 326-source book immediately.
🏴☠️ MorkBorg Goes Pirate. Get ready for some doom metal pirates in “Pirate Borg,” a high seas spinoff of the apocalyptic indie favorite. (Dig for Treasure)
Rules-light OSR-style play.
Releasing on Sept. 19 with a main book price of $37.
166 pages with sea combat rules, a bestiary, system agnostic tables, and a sandbox adventure.
📻 1 great indie game you need to play
🎙️ VOID 1680 AM. Ever listen to the radio in the middle of the night on a long drive? It can get kind of weird and haunting without even trying. This solo play game uses a deck of cards and six-sided dice and revolves around building a playlist and interacting with callers to your radio show over multiple episodes. You’ll evolve peoples’ stories but probably won’t get any closure. You can even add yourself to a library of “callers” for other players to use. “VOID 1680 AM” was in the Judges’ Spotlight in this year’s Ennie Awards. It’s a different kind of game, but super fun. (Link) (Check out an actual play)
VOID 1680 AM lets you build your own radio station and interact with callers’ stories.
🎧 2 hot takes from the podcasts
📘 Questing for Glory. We talk with author Jason Michal about his upcoming book, which is a definitive history of the classic Sierra point-and-click adventure series, “Quest for Glory.” Brandon: “This was my gateway drug into D&D.” (Link to podcast)
🌴 QPR: Gabe STILL on Vacation. As our audio engineer nears the end of his summer regeneration, we’ve started getting a little weird with our one-off releases. Enjoy us battling the undead and enjoying reasonably priced casual-dining breakfasts in “Cracker Barrel Has Fallen.” (It actually takes place in a Waffle House)
🧭 1 cool book recommendation.
☀️ You Are Likely To Be Eaten By A Grue. Last year, I (Brandon) backed the Kickstarter for Aaron Reed’s “50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon.” As you might expect, it’s a history of the computer text adventure genre. It arrived a few weeks ago and I’ve been enjoying diving into all the 70s and 80s text games I remember playing like “Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” “Zork,” “Super Star Trek,” and “dnd.” It’s a magisterial and comprehensive work that’s easy to pick up for a few minutes – each “chapter” is a different game. There are a few copies left from the original run, but you can still get it electronically and Aaron is working on making print-on-demand copies available. It’s so worth it if you’re a fan of old-school gaming. (Obvious exits are North, South, and West)
There are still some first-run print copies available!
🧭 Goblins in the wild: Where to find us.
Queen City Anime Con (Aug 11-13): We’ll be running games, doing panels, maybe a live show(?), and vending this year in Charlotte. Come by and see us! We’re always thrilled to see our Charlotte peeps.
🔊 Remember to hydrate.
Beat the heatwave by staying inside and rolling some dice – that’s the best idea I have.
Peace and Long Life,
Brandon