Haus of Valley Exclusives + New vibe
+ Designer interview and Actual Play
SUNDAY PROMO
Haus of Valley Exclusives
Alfred Valley is one of the most creative designers in the indie ttrpg scene, and friend of The Lost Bay Studio. Alfred mans the Haus of Valley, producing many solo-first games with an eerie angle. We’re thrilled to offer folks exclusive wares from the Haus of Valley, both old and new, at 20% off!
First, TLBS is excited to announce our exclusive Haus of Valley Mini-bundle, Letters from Valley, containing three games in a single green envelope:
Ossuary is a one page dungeon-diving system, intended for quick group play and play-by-post on Discord.
Hill Marks is trifold pamphlet for making your own solo oracle system, and takes a solo player on a mysterious investigation.
Diedream, a one-page, double-sided solo game you play in your head, designed to be played before falling asleep.
Our Letters from Valley won’t last long, find this mini-bundle on TLBS webstore.
We have two special versions of Thousand Empty Light, the suboceanic solo adventure for Mothership RPG still making waves in for its iconic semiotic oracle system. The Lost Bay Studio has a very limited number, so grab ’em while they’re hot!
Heimat Der Katastrophe (HDK) TEL cassette tape with music by GUS BC, and an abridged version of Thousand Empty Light in a 32pg mini-booklet!
Thousand Empty Light Deluxe, with dust cover and bookmark. A full 36pg diegetic guide for your Lamplighter to descend into the dark.
Don’t forget to leave the lights on. Check out Thousand Empty Light now.
Finally, we have restocks of Lay on Hands. In this diceless solo game that put Alfred on every indie designer’s radar, you play an exceptionally talented healer in a post-apocalyptic world. The main resolution employs player dexterity and coin-spinning, truly a unique ttrpg experience. Find reprints available on our webstore.
All Haus of Valley zines are on sale 20% OFF during Spooky month. Grab them here.
INSIDE THE BAY
We are close... Almost there... The preview release of several The Lost Bay RPG modules, manuscripts, and digital editions is near!
And one of them is Heterogony of Ends, a Peter Pan and community theatre themed Urban Legend/Module with a gruesome body-horror twist. This module is by
, designer of the iconic Cloud Empress. In it you play high-school students, preparing for their school play during dress rehearsal.Here’s a snippet of the Urban Legend :
Kids in the district know a flesh-eating bacteria rampages inside Saint Nell’s walls. Stanley Monx ate infected lettuce from the salad bar five years ago and rotted away days later. It gets worse – students still die from the flesh-eating virus! Of course the teachers lie claiming missing children merely moved to another town on short notice.
I somehow strangely wish my high-school was like this. It certainly sounds more exciting!
THE SHIFTER
As we release new TLB-compatible adventure modules, I’ll be bringing back to the center stage several Vibes that have been excluded from the core book. Considering the double theme of body-horror and theatre that runs in Heterogony of Ends’ veins, what better Vibe could I bring back from the hard drive than the Shifter? Here it is, in its ever-changing and unedited form (the gear list is missing), to make your skin crawl and your body feel not-quite-right. Caution: mild body horror.
You are so much more than the decaying flesh vessel that serves as your body, and yet that body is your greatest gift. You collect masks, wigs and clothes, and own the pager number of a controversial esthetic surgeon. You like to dwell in fringe theatres and know the secret entrance to the Old Opera House. The scents of freshly melted latex and face powder fill your lungs with joy. You are one, you are a hundred, free to be anyone, yet sometimes you can’t remember clearly who you are.
Read the full Vibe preview on The Lost Bay Blog
VISIONS OF THE BAY
A NIGHT ON ROSE HILL ACTUAL PLAY
Allen Hall is one of the most prolific The Lost Bay designers, but you probably already know that by now. He’s released four The Lost Bay modules, and he’s got more in the works! On the occasion of the recent release of A Night on Rose Hill (a gothic graveyard crawling module for one player)
and have recorded a really cool actual play of the module. Allen GMs his own module, and Chris plays Toru, a character featured in the previous TLB character creation how-to video. You can watch it on Youtube, though only once you’re done reading the mini-designer interview with Allen included below.DESIGNER INTERVIEW: ALLEN HALL
IKO: Hey Allen, welcome to The Dispatch. I’m glad to have you here for this designer focus. You’re one of the most productive designers on The Lost Bay server. You release new zines with a very steady rhythm, dabbling in various systems, including The Lost Bay, Liminal Horror, Mörk Borg, and more. You write well and fast, which makes me think you’ve probably been writing for a long time. Is that accurate, and how did you start writing?
MAH: Hi Iko, and thanks for inviting me on. As far as writing goes, writing has been part of my life since I was a kid, but it has changed focus a lot over that time. While I enjoyed writing fiction in school, I was focused solely on writing scientific articles for most of the time since I finished school. About four years ago, I decided to take a swing at writing a novel, and things sort of spiralled (in a good way!) since then.
IKO: How did you transition from writing narrative fiction to game design, and why?
MAH: That novel that I wrote, and the other 4 books in the series, were in the LitRPG genre. It was the story of a game of D&D that jumped back and forth between the players at the table and the fantasy story they were telling. Writing in that genre exposed me to writers of other types of D&D and TTRPG content, and that’s when I found the MÖRK BORG 3rd party community. I started by writing a couple of adventures for that system, and I’ve been branching out from there ever since.
IKO: What is your writing routine? Are there tools or tips you use to fuel creativity and concentration? Do you favor the pen or the keyboard?
MAH: I can’t say I have a fixed routine, other than writing whenever I get time. My home and work life can be pretty busy, so writing has to fit in around those. I do have a pretty long commute, so I’m always thinking about games during that time. Sometimes I’ll dictate while I drive if an idea strikes me.
As far as tools, I always have my laptop with me, and I usually carry a few notebooks as well. Usually the first ideas for a project go on paper, since those first thoughts are the hardest to form into words for a computer screen. Maybe I’ll write a poem or sketch a map or just draw some blobby characters to try to capture as much of the original idea as I can.
IKO: Your key signature is designing modules for one or two players intended for solo play or with one GM and one PC. Why do you enjoy creating those?
MAH: I am still very new to TTRPGs. My introduction came in 2019 when some friends from work got a game of D&D going. The pandemic ended that game, and I haven’t been able to manage a long-running game since then. I write games for 1-2 players because those are the games that I play most, either solo or with one of my kids or my partner (who is incredibly supportive despite having interest of her own in the hobby).
IKO: Your latest one/two player zine is A Night on Rose Hill, a module for The Lost Bay. It has a very cool and unique premise, with the character being stuck, trying not to spoil here, between life and death. They have only one night to crawl their way back to the living. What was the inspiration behind that?
MAH: A big part of the inspiration for that adventure was practising what I preach. I had just written a blog post talking about how important it is to encourage character change in TTRPGs. Coming off writing that post, I was thinking about ways to force a solo player to really think about the character that they were playing. From that came the idea of (re)acquiring formational memories in a character’s past. And from that came the idea for A Night on Rose Hill.
IKO: I feel that you’re constantly developing new projects. Can you reveal something about what new things you’re concocting?
MAH: At the moment, I have returned to something that has been sitting on my WIP list for a very long time. It’s a tarot-based solo journaling game where you are the last living human. I designed the core game loop around a Hexflower Game Engine for the 1-page RPG Jam in 2023, but as an exploration game it was not very fun. I added the journaling part late 2023, but was stumped as far as the art/graphic design was concerned, so it got shelved. I recently had a bit of a breakthrough on that front (think “Y2K palimpsest”), so I’m diving back in. I hope to have it ready for PAX Unplugged in December.
FRIENDS OF THE BAY
There’s some Frenzy in the air, and the scene is crowded. So many releases, so little time! Luckily The Dispatch is here to tell you where to look, and maybe spend a few Gold Pieces.
The ultimate Mörk Borg solo tool?
CIK from The Soloist, the coolest solo RPG newsletter in town, was kind enough to invite me to pitch some of the spooky-themed solo games we’re carrying this season. I’m a big fan of the newsletter, so that really meant a lot. This morning, when I read the newsletter, I had a big WTF moment reading that Patrick is preparing his first Kickstarter campaign for Solo Borg. He’ll be using all his solo RPG brain matter to release a collection of solo tools for Mörk Borg. I’m ultra-excited about it. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t play much MB solo, but I know for a fact whatever Patrick is going to put out is going to be solo-gold, and highly inspiring for any solo gamer. In it you’ll find all kinds of tools for worldbuilding, quest generation, NPC & companion behavior, encounters, and more! If you’re a solo-nerd, check it out! If you’re solo-curious... well check it out too! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thesoloist/solo-borg-a-toolkit-for-playing-mork-borg-without-a-gmNot Enough Scoundrels
In the category of super productive designers, I call Chris Airiau. Yes, the very Chris that dwells here and contributes to The Dispatch! In addition to currently writing The Swine (a TLB Slasher module), doing AP videos, and having just released When in Rome (a MoSh module inspired by the recent Alien Romulus), Chris is also contributing to the Mothership Month initiative run by Tuesday Knight Games on Backerkit. I told you he was super productive! This time Chris is bringing us Not Enough Scoundrels, a zine packed with stark black-and-white layouts, new ships, and priceless cargo to smuggle through the depths of space. Follow it on https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/5-million-worlds-press/not-enough-scoundrels-a-smuggling-module-for-mothership-rpg?ref=discover_email_landing_pages
A Fool’s Errand
I’m a sucker for tarot decks, as anybody who knows me can tell you. Where I grew up, aside from reading the future (and more importantly, the past), they are a popular card game among high-schoolers. They’ve always been. Tarot cards can be such a powerful spark generator, and despite being adaptable to any sort of game, they seem to fit naturally into science-fantasy settings/games. Planet Arcana’s J Strautman (and also occasional TLB Podcast editor) is bringing us a tarot-infused game where you play as Fools, dealing with gods and calamities. In A Fool’s Errand tarot cards are much more than just a cool gimmick. They are used for all the core mechanics, from character building to conflict resolution. If you’re interested in a beautiful book, a deck of cards, and playing the fool, go check A Fool’s Errand! Their Kickstarter campaign starts up soon. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strautmaskreplica/a-fools-errand
From Mörk Borg post-apoc outcasts, to space scoundrels and Fools, I feel that we’re pulling on a very consistent thread in this section.
That is all we’ve got for you today folks!
I’m back to compulsively purchasing vintage things that I can’t name to help me inform and design a specific TLB thing I can’t tell you about just yet.
I’ll tell you later, promise!
Have a great Sunday,
Iko, Chris Airiau, Wren the Forrester
Wow! Thanks for the kind words Iko! And again, thanks for the great recommendations in the last issue of The Soloist!
Thanks for the shout-out Iko! I didn't even realize this was gonna be in here, haha, '^^