Free Activity Page, interview with Chris McDowall, and The Lost Bay community.

Dear readers of The Dispatch,

You might know that The Lost Bay Podcast is back and full steam ahead! We’ve released last week an interview with Chris McDowall where he discusses influences and design choices behind Mythic Bastionland, his latest game. Mythic Bastionland is an extraordinary game and is probably going to influence indie RPG design, as much as his previous titles did.

Listen to The Lost Bay Podcast

Apple 

Spotify

Coming up next week, an interview with Yochai Gal!

Three days left before the end of The Lost Bay RPG Kickstarter! We’ve unlocked so many stretch goals, and are super close to the next one: German and Chinese quickstarts. If we reach it, in addition to the quickstarts, I’ll be commissioning a Taiwan inspired mini TLB module, written both in Chinese and English! I’m in touch with Taiwanese members of the community, and super excited to see what they’ll come up with.

Yesterday Scargend, who is designing/illustrating/laying out Late Night Broadcasts, an adventure included in the Community Edition tier, sent me a few new pages of their zine that put a grin on my face. LNB is an adventure about a horrifying community TV channel, and Scargend is including in the module pages from a cursed in-world TV magazine, like the one below. 

This is both so fun and so unexpected. This blend between gaming and in-world material fits The Lost Bay mood so well. And by the way, if you want to play this activity page, you’ll find the blank version here. You can also expect in the zine a D66 shopping channel catalog! 

I know there are a lot of new subscribers to this newsletter, welcome and thank you folks! Let me share a few words about The Lost Bay community.

The Lost Bay community is super creative and welcoming. It counts both members that are extremely active, and others that chime in from time to time. Most of the activity happens in The Lost Bay Discord Server. Feel free to come and say hi. And BTW there are quite a few solo players in the Discord as well.

We are currently running two campaigns: a play by post campaign (at the moment in pause mode, ran by Verdant Core), and a West Marshes like campaign run by myself and other GMs, like Caelin, and soon Chris Airiau, and why not yourself (you can be both a player and a GM). Below is a visual session report by Caelin, actually by their character Dwayne, a Seer who does divination via the drawings they make.

As I’ve mentioned in the The Lost Bay Kickstarter page I like to ask the community feedback about important design decisions. And today I’d like to discuss something with you: the GM Screen. I’m super excited to make a GM screen for The Lost Bay. I like to use them, not so much to hide information from the players (this is why it’s not going to be too big), but rather to have useful info at hand. I use GM screens even when I run games online!

Broadly speaking I feel like GM screens can hold two kinds of information:

• Rules-side: mechanics, summaries, combat flow, NPC stats

• Adventure helpers: NPC names, list of items, complications, adventure sparks, Roles (what TLB uses instead of reaction tables)

Probably the most useful screen contains a blend between those two kinds of things. But I’d like to hear from you: what would you like to find on a (The Lost Bay) GM screen? Let me know in the comments.

I have to go now, I’m feeling an urge to write about White Vans, a Nest, the Hollow Hitchhiker, and other spooky Urban Legends for The Lost Bay.

Iko