November Newsletter: Goblins and Growlers Gazette

⚡ (Total read time: 3.6 minutes) ⚡

Thanksgiving is over and we’re into that home stretch of the year. I know we’ll talk at least one more time before the new year, but I’m looking forward to G&G 2025. I want to start doing a kind of state of the union for G&G every year to talk about how to serve the community and where we’d like to take things. This community is the best and we really love all of you. 😭

Hit us up at [email protected]. Or, you know, Discord. And consider supporting us on Patreon; we’re still in the process of rebooting it but there’s a lot of new stuff there already.

(And if you haven’t, please subscribe to the GG YouTube channel 📺 )

P.S., @snapshot (on the Discord), yes, I wrote that LoTR news item specifically with you in mind.

In this month’s newsletter:
🗞️ 3 great-to-know gaming news nuggets
❤️ 1 frigid indie game you need to try
🔥 2 hot takes and a preview from The Goblins and Growlers Podcast
🛍️ Reminder about Small Business Saturday

🗞️ 3 need-to-know gaming news nuggets

👣 Humble Bundle for almost $900 of Pathfinder books (Dig Deeper)

• Paizo’s D&D alternative offering 72 books for ~$30 through Dec. 5.

• It’s all Second Edition Pathfinder.

• It’s core rules, bestiaries, maps, Pathfinder Society adventures. Honestly, it’s a ton of stuff so you should click the link and check it out.

🚢 Potential tariffs could hurt board game/tabletop industry (Dig Deeper)

• Import fees on goods from China, where lots of manufacturing for tabletop and board games happens, could increase between 60% and 100%.

• Margins in the tabletop industry are thin, so the increased cost for offshore printing and manufacturing, could be devastating for small companies.

• Steve Jackson Games CEO Meredith Placko: “We are looking at where we can move manufacturing outside of China (hard mode, not a lot of places outside China or Europe produce board game components at the scale our industry uses).”

• tl;dr: Physical games may cost more next year and some companies say they may not be able to weather the tariffs.

💍 What has D&D Beyond got in its pocket? (Dig Too Deep)

• Free League Publishing’s “Lord of the Rings” joins the third-party fellowship of content on the digital platform. You could say it’s a New-menor addition!

• It’s based on the Fifth Edition Core (Melkor?) Rules but with some additional features that Tolkienize the experience a little.

• With the news months ago that Free League was partnering with D&D Beyond, you could say that this was a long-expected party.

• Currently on sale for $29.99 and that deal bows to no one.

🥶 1 sub-zero indie game you need to try

🇨🇦 It’s an odd game, but I think you’ll warm up to it. So, I really don’t like winter. It’s cold and it’s dark. It’s miserable. So this game spoke to me when I saw it. It’s called “ICASO (It’s Cold As Sh*t Outside).” It’s a quick, solo TTRPG — a genre of which I am increasingly a fan — that is grounded in the harsh reality of living slim in Canada. The goal is to stay warm because when you drop to zero HP (heat points), you die. You go to work every day to earn money (unless you lose your job), deal with events from the day, and make choices about whether to turn on the heat to gain your heat points back. Get some people together and see who can survive the harsh Canadian winter longest.

It’s from Michael Lee, who’s a high school math teacher and enjoys creating silly TTRPG content. I enjoy it, too, Michael, I enjoy it too. This game also could have been called “It’s Cheap as Sh*t to Play” because it’s free to download. Check it out!

🎧 2 hot takes from The Goblins and Growlers Podcast

• 🏰 Got Our Hands on the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide and spent 90 minutes going through it. You can see below that we landed somewhere in the middle in our final judgment. Are you experienced? Probably don’t need it. New to the game? It’ll be worth your while. (Watch, Listen)

• 😵‍💫 There’s an additional 2 hours of Deep Dive video on Patreon where we focus on the Bastion rules and the Campaign Creation chapter. That means we talked about this for 3.5 hours! 😵‍💫

• 🏰 Writing for public games is a whole different animal. We talk through the vast gulf that is writing for a home game versus a convention game or pick-up D&D game. The goals are different, the strategies are different, and running those games is the single best way to level up your GMing ability. (Watch, Listen)

🙏 Support us on Patreon (https://patreon.com/goblinsgrowlers) Supporters at the $5 level get early access to both the audio and video versions of the podcast plus Patreon-exclusive “Deep Dive” bonus episodes.

And don’t forget: Telephone, Telegraph, Tell a Friend about The Goblins and Growlers Podcast.

🛍️ Small Business Saturday

Snag some G&G merch (and other stuff) at Alpha Comics and Games, conveniently located in Richmond’s Willow Lawn. You can find our custom character sheets, One-Page Dungeon Collections, Chaotic Poor shirts, and the new series of collaborative RPG indie games we publish from designer Cezar Capacle. Support local businesses just in time for holidays!

🎁 Happy Holidays.

We’re getting into a very stressful time of year, so I’m trying to actively practice being more chill, less reactionary, and more slack-cutting. Look out for each other and help out where you can. We’re all in this together.

Talk to you all in December (or, you know, on Discord)!
Brandon