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November: What's News In Gaming?

This month's newsletter includes this article as well as Mystic Bull News and Gaming Inspiration.


As the sun drifts away south, the winter seems to bring out the games. This month, I attended a convention and am trying to avoid taxing my wallet too much before the Christmas season. This is the November Gaming News...


FlagCon Report



Gorges and gaming. This is a shot of a great waterfall in Ithaca, NY.
Ithaca is GORGE-ous... Photo by Me.

I went up to visit my buddy Charlie in Ithaca, NY, and in addition to hiking all over with him and his wife (and rolling my ankle), we attended FLAGCon, a sophomore gaming convention focused on boardgames, though we manage to get these RPG sessions in:




  • Shadowdark: Ravenloft. (as in the original I6: Ravenloft). I played this when it came out (!), so it was great from a nostalgia standpoint. The GM compressed the module into a fun con session, and it played very well in the Shadowdark ruleset, as expected. She even added a “real-time” component to the overall session, which hewed nicely to the module content and the Shadowdark conceit.

  • Batman: The Final Rogue. (using the Final Girl rules). I enjoyed the game though the free-form story game style is not my normal fare. I loved the idea of re-purposing a “slasher movie” RPG to a Batman scenario where he’s the relentless opponent and you play various Batman villains.

  • The Brujah, the Beast, and Barrow. Using the Trophy Gold rules. Another story gamey game, but using a great OSR/OSE scenario. I found a couple of interesting mechanics I’m going to spring on my home game to see if it takes.


New Games by Indie Creators


Saruman is waiting there to take all the money out of my wallet.

  • Saruman, Oh Saruman. Free League continues to assault my wallet with every Lord of the Rings RPG / One Ring RPG release. Now they have the pre-order up for Trials of Saruman (LotR) and Hands of the White Wizard (One Ring).

  • Appendix N Jam. This is very cool. Itch.io had a contest for a two-page dungeon (front and back of one page) and gave each author a pulp-style name to work with. 266 adventures resulted. Some really interesting stuff here, though I’m still digging through it. What I love is the design conceits for each book – just beautiful work.

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