October Newsletter: Goblins and Growlers Gazette

⚡ (Total read time: 3.95 minutes) ⚡

I’m worn out after assembling this pre-Halloween newsletter, so I’ll keep it short up top. There’s the best vampire news you’ll come a-cross, a blast of an indie GM-less game that relies on character motivations and rocks instead of dice, and an FYI about a G&G Twitch stream Wednesday and where to find some G&G merch. This newsletter is long. I’m sorry. 😭

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 📺 )

In this month’s newsletter:

🎥 1 spooky gaming stream you need to check out on Wednesday
🗞️ 3 great-to-know gaming news nuggets
❤️ 1 awesome indie game you need to try
🔥 2 hot takes and a preview from The Goblins and Growlers Podcast
🛍️ Two merchandise-oriented alerts for personal and holiday shopping

👻 1 spooky gaming stream this Wednesday (10/30)

Breaking format a little to let you know we’re doing a Goblins and Growlers Halloween game stream on our Twitch channel on Wednesday. Josh is GMing a ghostly game he wrote a while back, so be prepared for silly voices. Game starts around 7-ish and we’re planning to go for about three hours. Grab some candy and join us. The VOD is going to be exclusive to Patreon, so be sure to join us live if you’re not on there. (Twitch)

🗞️ 3 great-to-know gaming news nuggets

🧛🏽 Month of World of Darkness Humble Bundle! (Bite Deeper)

• 32 items in the $50 bundle if you want to get the physical items, 29 items if you just want to do the $18 PDF bundle.

• Vampire, Werewolf, Hunter, core books, adventure books, other books!

• Proceeds from this bundle support the Crisis Text Line.

• My high school gaming group always referred to WoD as the “[CREATURE]: The [EVOCATIVE NOUN] books” back in the day.

🛹 Get familiar with Greyhawk in a free adventure  (Dig Deeper)

• “Scions of Elemental Evil” is available to claim on D&D Beyond.

• It features the grown-up kids from the 1980s D&D cartoon as the pregen characters.

• It’s single-session, designed for the 2024 rules, and is part of the 50th anniversary celebration.

🫖 It’s Jeremy Crawford’s world and we’re just playing in it (Dig Deeper)

• D&D’s lead designer has been inserting his homebrew into official canon for years!

• “Death House,” the introductory adventure from “Curse of Strahd,” was lifted right out of his home game.

• He says more of his homebrew will be influencing future releases.

📰 1 awesome indie game you need to try

🐑 Follow us to this fun GM-less game. Increasingly, I enjoy games that can start up quickly. Like, it’s Saturday night and you have some folks over and you decide to start a game without a ton of front-end work (like prep). Such a game is “Follow: A New Fellowship,” from Ben Robbins. It’s a more svelte (and pay-what-you-want) version of “Follow,” which is slightly more robust. It’s a game about coming together as a team to accomplish a goal or to fall apart spectacularly.

In a very Babylon 5 Shadow War kind of way, the character creation is predicated on the question “What do you want?” from both the quest and from someone else. Each player has two characters, too, one main and one supporting. The whole arrangement is a fun expression of role play.

There’s too much to get into here, but check it out. It’s thematic right now because you can also get an additional pay-what-you-want quest for it called “The Haunting,” which gives off some serious “Maniac Mansion” vibes for people who are my age.

Check out all Ben’s stuff on itch.io and lamemage.com

Ben, can you come on the podcast to talk about this game? I love it.

🎧 2 hot takes from The Goblins and Growlers Podcast

• 🏰 Now we take a look at the new DMG. From Bastions to Greyhawk to adventure-writing education, we look through the DMG previews to see if it’s really a useful update of this often-ignored core rulebook. (YouTube, Audio)

• 🤖 Can we use AI responsibly in D&D/TTRPGs?: Everybody’s (rightfully) talking about how this over-indulgence in AI as the hot new thing is going to ruin TTRPGs. Sure, that’s true if we’re thinking of having machines write adventures. But can we reasonably and responsibly integrate AI into the game in ways that will help players and GMs? (YouTube, Audio)

🙏 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.

🛍️ A deep website discount

Recently, we found some additional copies of “Pirates of the Atarandic,” an original campaign we published that was written by Michael Mitchell; we thought we were sold out! These have some pre-press and printing errors that don’t affect any of the content but meant we weren’t comfortable selling them at full price, so you can snag them for 67% off. For a piratey adventure, these are hidden treasures! You can order here.

🛍️ Alpha Comics and Games G&G restock

You once again can find G&G merch in 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. Just in time for holidays!

🛏️ Zzzzzzzz.

Some months, I struggle to find something pithy to write in these newsletter closers. This is one of those months. I’m exhausted! I’m going to go sleep until next month’s newsletter.

Zzzzzzzzz!
Brandon