BBG Digest - November 14th, 2022

Anamnesis Jam and Audio Dramas

Hello all!

Welcome to the inaugural newsletter for Blinking Birch Games - thanks for being here! In these letters, I’ll be providing BBG updates, sharing what I’m working on, and chatting about what’s currently catching my attention in the TTRPG world.

I’m planning to write these approximately once a month. This one is longer than most will be, serving as a brief summary of everything going on right now (which is a lot!). Let’s dig in!

Current Projects

I’m currently designing 3 different TTRPGs:

1. A hack of Anamnesis for the Anamnesis Jam. While the topic of the game is still a secret, I can say I’m introducing some fun new mechanics that I’m very excited about.

2. A 2-player game about communication and relationships. In this asymmetrical TTRPG, one character is turned into an animal without the other’s knowledge. A couple of my friends recently playtested this game - it was a fantastic playtest, meaning I have 40 notes and will be rewriting almost everything.

3. A multiplayer game about exploring and cataloging strange, eerie spaces. It’s primarily inspired by The Backrooms and Annihilation, and it’s definitely going to be my largest game yet. I’m extremely excited about this one - I think it’s the most fun I’ve had designing a game. Also, it uses a dictionary to play!

Concept art by Lou-Ellen Allwood for my Backrooms-inspired game.

Aside from my own games, I’ve had the pleasure of recently contributing to The Zone and Broken: A Tragic Romance Game. I had a blast writing for these and I’m excited for you to see them!

This month, I’ve also been editing two projects: ghostbox and Skyrealms. This is my first dip into the editing world and I’m really enjoying it! I’d love to do more of this work in 2023, and I’m delighted to have a couple glowing testimonials.

(P.S. - ghostbox is currently crowdfunding and it’s very close to it’s final goal!)

Anamnesis Jam

I’m hosting an Anamnesis Jam from November 1st through January 31st! Submissions can be anything that takes inspiration from Anamnesis: games, stories, art, you name it. Tin Can Audio is even making an audio drama!

We’ve had a couple great submissions already and I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with. Even though the jam has already started, everyone is still welcome to join - we still have 2.5 months left!

Indie TTRPG Videos

I make a lot of short-form videos that show off TTRPGs by different game designers. Each video is under 3 minutes long and provides a summary of the game and why it’s cool. I primarily post these to TikTok, but I also upload them to YouTube (they just get there a little slower!).

Over the past month, I’ve made videos for:

1. Locus by CobblePath Games - A horror game where the monsters are personal

2. Errant by Kill Jester - A fantasy roleplaying game with a great sense of humor

3. Meanwhile, in the Subway by Côme Martin and Nicolas Folliot - A game about exploring a surreal subway - it looks like a fold-up subway map!

And below is a bonus video I made for Halloween about 6 spooky games (though I enjoy a good spooky game any time of the year).

Playing, Watching, Reading, Listening

This section is about what I’ve been enjoying over the past month - it usually won’t be this long, and in fact it probably wont have all 4 sub-sections every update. It gives me an opportunity to spread the word about some media I love, and to share some of my inspirations.

Playing

Some of you are aware that I’ve GMed a 2-player Blades in the Dark campaign for 2 years now. The three of us have had a blast in Doskvol and I absolutely love the setting.

BitD is incredible at giving the reader building blocks for their own creative ideas - there’s enough setting info to paint a clear picture of the city, but not so much that the reader feels bogged down or limited. For example, the timeline in the book, which spans about 1000 years, is only 1 page long. This gives a framework while leaving room to explore, allowing players to fill in the gaps (i.e. Who is the Immortal Emperor mentioned throughout the timeline? Are they even human?).

My group recently decided that it’s time to wrap up our journey in Doskvol. Ending a campaign can be hugely emotional and impactful. This one especially is meaningful to me - the characters we made are so realized, and the campaign helped me through isolation during the pandemic.

Because of how important this campaign is for us, we’ve decided to close the curtain by playing World Ending Game by Everest Pipkin. This game is specifically meant to be played as the final session of a campaign. It’s made of 20 mini-games that you can pick and choose from, such as “20 years later” and “I Need Answers”. Aaron Voigt made an incredible video essay about it (see below). I’m so excited to try it for my BitD campaign - I’m sure I’ll have more to say in a future update!

I also recently ran a one-shot of Rafenheim by Tadhg Lyons. I am not exaggerating when I say this is some of the most fun I’ve had GMing a one-shot.

Rafenheim is a one-page TTRPG about solving a mystery in a crumbling castle as hundreds of crows watch your every move. It’s inspired by gothic literature and each character has an archetype from this genre (i.e. The Byronic, The Haunted). I cannot recommend this more highly.

Reading

While my reading waxes and wanes, I’m happy to say I AM reading something at the moment, and that thing is The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts (which a friend lent me over a year ago, oops).

I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy back in high school and, to this day, it’s the funniest book I’ve ever read. Since then I’ve become much more interested in audio dramas, so reading through the scripts is a delight. These stories always leave me feeling refreshed and remind me to not take life too seriously.

One of my favorite bits from the scripts

Alt. Text

Arthur: Ford, I don’t know if this sounds like a silly question, but what am I doing here?

Ford: Well, you know that. I rescued you from the Earth.

Arthur: And what has happened to the Earth?

Ford: It’s been disintegrated.

Arthur: Has it?

Ford: Yes, it just boiled away into space.

Arthur: Look. I’m a bit upset about that.

Ford: Yes, I can understand.

Watching

For Halloween, I watched Wendell & Wild, a new stop-motion animation about a girl and her literal demons. I’ve been in love with stop-motion ever since seeing Coraline in theaters (still one of my top 5 movies). Wendell & Wild was a very fun watch and the animation is so impressive!

Listening

I listen to a ton of fiction podcasts, usually queer audio dramas and actual plays. Here’s what I’ve been listening to this month:

1. WOE.BEGONE - A man joins a mysterious and violent game with high-stakes and no room for remorse. This show really sucked me in - I’ve listened to the first 2 seasons in as many weeks. It has two of my favorite things: an unreliable narrator, and “Death Note”-level mind games.

2. The Goblet Wire - An surreal anthology of people playing a TTRPG over the telephone. The word pictures painted in this show are so vivid. If this game was real I’d play in a heartbeat.

3. The Tower - This show follows a young woman who leaves everything behind to climb an enormous tower. As she tries to find herself, she comes across relics of the past and gathers more questions than answers. (This show is also by Tin Can Audio, who is making the Anamnesis audio drama!)

4. The Magnus Archives - My friend and I are doing a relisten before the second show comes out, as neither of us quite finished the last season. TMA really opened my eyes to the horror genre. I’ve always had a difficult time stomaching horror video games and movies, but podcasts? Apparently horror podcasts hit the mark perfectly for me, and TMA’s particular style of horror is right up my alley.

Thanks for joining me for this first newsletter! Much more to come in the future.

~ Sam Leigh