319: Oh, Kid Ignition
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And lo, The Power Fantasy is back for its second arc, Mutually Reassuring Destruction. To thine own bullshit, you must be true.
The first issue moves like I suspect most my first issues of a new arc do - if the new status quo is in play, we see everyone respond to it. In this book, making their moves and counter moves. Of all the issues, it feels like issue 2, which is probably appropriate, given we finally get back to Heavy's Kid and Haven.
As well as Caspar's covers, we've got Abz Harding guesting on our Alt and Rian finishing off his series of Floro Covers.
Want a preview? Here's a handful of pages from early on...
Oh, Kid Ignition.
As always, if you want to know more and where to buy the Power Fantasy, look here.
It's not the only release this week. Rowan Rook & Decard has released a DIE RPG Quickstart in PDF form, as a pay what you want (i.e. Free, unless you wanna give us some cash). It's a 52 page document which gives the core of DIE RPG , plus pre-generated characters plus a whole new scenario to play. There's enough in here to take DIE RPG out for 2-3 sessions, I think.
Basically, want have a chance to play the game? Or just have a new scenario? It's here for you.
We're releasing it in PDF to get playtesting experience too, so any feedback is great. We're also still catching errata – the main one right now is that 3 classes have the wrong defence score on their sheet – the Emotion Knight should have 1, the Fool should have 1 and the Master should have 0.
But grab it, give it to your friends, have fun.
As we're in the monthly release schedule again, we're back on our teaser game. Here’s the one I just lobed on Instagram, to tell folks issue 6 is out...
And the order cut off for issue 7 is Monday, so we'll be releasing this one too...
I'm really enjoying doing these. They're fun, but also getting me more used to design software, which is a handy thing to have. The thing about indie comics, at least done the way I tend to do them, is that you're forced to expand your skillset. More tools is better, as far as I'm concerned.
I actually wrote a new essay over on Old Men Running The World, entitled “What I’d Tell You To Try If You Told Me Your Game Sucks” which starts like this...
Look, ma, I can do clickbait titles. I’m a real boy content generator now.
I wasn’t going to call the article that. It’s very much what I’d use if I was 20-30 years younger on Youtube and forced to try and engage with that hellscape. Instead, I am on a blog: an elegant weapon, for a more civilized age. I don’t need to do it. I am, because while the blog is a lightsaber, it is a lightsaber made of shits and giggles.
This post was born of a period circa Covid Lockdowns, where everyone and their dog was trying to play RPGs, and coming to me disappointed that it wasn’t working as they hoped. They thought I was an knowledgeable expert, instead of just lurking on the Open Hearth slack and seeing what the smart kids were up to. This is what I’d do.
...and continues, eventually getting the point (though not too quickly). The TL:DR is basically “try stars & wishes if you're a player and CATS if you're a GM” but I do go on. Folks seemed to like this one, which I was glad about. It was written to be useful, or at least forward a position. Go read.
The fourth of our The Power Fantasy Decompressed series has just released. This time it's editor Katie west on the horror of trying to make us do anything
Lots of great things written about The Power Fantasy over the last couple of weeks. To pull some together, here's From Cover to Cover writing about the whole story so far, here's Reading Reindeer chewing over mass death in the book and here's AIPT's review. There's been a bunch more too. It’s great to see.
Dave Richards Ex-CBR's patreon is doing a lot of great interviews, and was glad to have a chance to chat about where we're going on the second arc..
Also, over at Polygon, we talked archetypes and analogues and the Power Fantasy, and she also hit me up about my suggestions for Superhero RPGs to look at.
Neil Kulkarni writing about his experience as a teacher came to me when I was searching my inbox looking for something, and saw down a bit was an unread message from his newsletter. I clicked and it's a huge, passionate, and thoughtful essay about learning and is well worth your time. As much as I felt bad I didn't read it at the time, I was grateful to have something so meaty and new to read now a year after he died.
My outros are getting curter. I swear, I'll have a proper ramble to you soon enough. My house is just about to have my brother and family arrive, so I need to get this out before the whirlwind of family consumes all.
In fact, it happened just as I wrote that, so I had to go and do family stuff, before coming back here to send this out and/or play add Rollin’ to an instagram post.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
19.1.2025