3 Games Inspiring Spicy Tuna Now + Digital Releases

Nov 01, 2023

Hello everybody!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween and a great October! We’re headed into the end of the year which feels nuts to me… At Spicy Tuna we’re planning on staying extra busy during November while we wrap up and move forward a number of projects (Outsourced printer approved and into printing, Greenhorns Quickstart available on itch!! [NEW COVER REVEAL BELOW], Knuckles Co and Professional Rebels finished and sent to Iko for the Outer Rim: Uprising bundle by the end of the month, graphic design and illustrations started for Incorporated Vol.1 while Gontijo moves forward with layout.)
*All Spicy Tuna Updates moved to the bottom of the newsletter.

I attended Gamehole Con in Madison, WI a few weeks ago GMing Mothership with World of Game Design and had an absolute blast!! I got to hang out with the World of Game Design crew including Troy Sandlin and Zac Goins and bunked and played games with Joel Hines of Silver Arm Press. I also made new friends, and did a panel on designing for Mothership with Joel Hines, Eric Alsandor, Zac Goins, and Greg Harris which helped recenter and upgrade what I had in the Knuckles Co and Professional Rebels manuscripts.

Aside from that I’m planning on enjoying more games, both reading and playing more, to better inform our game design on Greenhorns and other hacks and inhouse systems. That’s what The Guac 017 will focus on today - sharing some of the games and posts I’ve revisited that have been inspiring design lately.
*Expect another The Guac later in the month for the release of the Greenhorns Quickstart

So on to the docket, a quick list of links both new and ending soon, then into the guac of it!!

The Guac 017 Docket

Remarkable Games
Awesome Podcasts + Youtubes
Sandboxes!! Some inspiration from Joel Hines and Silver Arm Press
Cool Things From Other Creators
Spicy Tuna Project Updates

Spicy Tuna Links, New or Expiring

Outer Rim: Uprising is in it’s final 18 hours on Kickstarter!! We have two new releases in this bundle. Knuckles Co and Professional Rebels, and there are 18+ other Mothership products to check out.
Constant Downpour Remastered is available digitally at spicytunarpg.itch.io!! Our psychological thriller campaign for Mothership 1E. Find the CDR OST Only here. >>DriveThruRPG link
A Butterfly Dies is available digitally on spicytuna.itch.io!! Our hex crawl inspired by Mexican mythos and the Mexican Muralist Movement for Primal Quest. >>DriveThruRPG Link
Cocoxoca is available digitally on spicytuna.itch.io!! Our swamp pamphlet adventure inspired by Mexican mythos where players attempt to pass the trial of Xa, The Crocodile Lord, who holds the wisdom of the weather and rain, soil manipulation, and the cyclical nature of time. For Primal Quest.
>>DriveThruRPG link
Outsourced: The Luko Fin Corp Deception is now available for preorder on our Backerkit store, outsourced.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders. Our corporate and space horror hardcover for Mothership 1E.
Greenhorns: A Weird Space RPG has a prelaunch page on Kickstarter!! New and improved Cover Reveal below and more to come next The Guac!!!!

Greenhorns Prelaunch Page

Remarkable Games

These are some recently read games that are inspiring me recently. First a couple from World Champ Game Co.

I have to give credit to The Weekly Scroll again for turning me towards World Champ Game Co. I’ve been buying up Adam Vass’s games now for a few months, but finally turned to reading through the first few this week. Both No Future and Sleepless Seas set my design brain on fire!

I purchased No Future while listening to The Weekly Scroll’s Twitch Stream of them playing the game with Adam. (Here’s the Youtube upload of the stream.) I purchased it as part of a bundle with Heavy Steps On Hollow Ground by Chris Bissette which I’m looking forward to reading soon as well.

From World Champ Game Co.

“No Future is a tabletop rpg for 3-5 players about hardcore punks stuck in a time loop and dying over and over in an effort to get out. GREEN ROOM meets GROUNDHOG DAY.”

The death loop mechanic was a blast to listen to and really sucked me into the AP! The whole ruleset reads smoothly and feels easy to pick up. Death offers interesting outcomes and I’ve been falling in love with more narrative shared storytelling of the world and asking players to describe experiences and scenes which is how clues and finding a way out is achieved. This is the first Carved in Brindlewood game I’ve read through and I’m pretty stoked to get to some more.

Lastly, I gotta mention the playlist integration, including rules for making your own playlist and how it triggers Deja Vu is top tier game design. I love this shit, and fits the setting perfectly.

Sleepless Seas is the other World Champ Game Co. game I read.

“Sleepless Seas is a roleplaying game for a single player. You portray the thoughts and actions of a lonely insomniac doing the only thing they know how to do: fish.”

Admittedly, the only solo game I’ve actually played through is Thousand Empty Light by Alfred Valley…but I’ve been collecting them, reading them, and fantasizing about finding time to play through them.

Sleepless Seas is at the top of the list. It’s really a simple and short game that asks you to narrate both what is happening to you now and flashbacks of time spent with your Loss, the one thing you ever truly cared about and made you feel complete. I love this public domain, ink blotch, block print, printer overrun aesthetic -> especially the map that accompanies it. It has a great encounter list for a pocket mod too. Plus it’s PWYW so there’s no reason not to check it out.

Eleventh Beast by Exeunt Press is another solo game churning ideas for me. This is another one I picked up a few months ago but just got to reading it. It’s a pamphlet sized game where the majority of text fits on 4 panels…which is insane. I know Exeunt Press did a larger zine printing of the book, but the 4 panels of rules and the panel for the map feels full on its own. I love the tactile mechanic of moving around the map, the pogs using perplexingruins art, and the accurately dated map from early to mid 1700s to fit the theme of the game.

One of the core mechanics is a random movement of the Beast. Roll d8 and determine where the beast is on the map. But it only appears if there is a Rumor Token already placed. Otherwise, a Rumor Token is placed and available for you to pick up. There is an interesting management of removing the Rumor Tokens to lessen the chance of The Beast appearing and Verifying the Rumors you find which is the only way to receive weapons and wards to, hopefully, defeat The Beast. Another one at the top of my list that I think will be a nice brisk play. I think this Hunter Vs Hunted post from the Skeleton Code Machine Newsletter by Exeunt Press is a good read alongside the game.

Awesome Podcasts + Youtubes

Mad Dungeon

This podcast by Epic Levels is a freaking fun and gonzo interview style show where they build out a dungeon room during the second half with the guest. Listening to the creative process is the best part, no matter how goofy it is. I’ve only got an episode in, MD 221 A Brush With Death w/ Jarrett Crader, but I'm looking forward to more.

Link to the episode

Weird Games and Weirder People

This is a newer podcast by Diogo Nogueira.

Weird Games and Weirder People is a podcast about role playing games and the weird wonderful people behind them! This one is much more about the designers themselves than the things they are making. Diogo does a good job asking a mix between habits, beliefs, experiences and the like. It’s a great listen if you like to get to know the people behind the games.

Diogo had me on episode 8 and you can listen to that episode here. Here are the episodes I’ve listened to this past month or so. I recommend all of them:
Donn Stroud

Lucas Rolim

Evlyn Moreau

Emanoel Melo

Andrew and Steve from Epic Levels

The Weekly Scroll

You know I love The Weekly Scroll boys. They do awesome deep dives on game systems that really get my design brain ticking. Lately I’ve been listening to more of their APs in their SideQuests line of videos. I highlighted the No Future episode with Adam Vass above, but here are a few more recent episodes I’ve really enjoyed.

Side Quests Ep 3 | Liminal Horror with Josh Domanski as GM

Gotta plug the Outer Rim Uprising video with Iko interview and Josh Domanski running D.Kenny’s entry The Hunger In Achenar. It’s also a great listen as is.

Side Quests Ep 2 | Mausritter with Matthew Morris as GM

The Weekly Scroll Ep 106 | The Haunted Almanac

Speaking of The Weekly Scroll, I’m going to be playing Orbital Blues on their Twitch Channel this Friday! Josh Domanski is the GM and I believe Hunter and Ryan are playing as well. The current time is slotted for 4PM Central

Dieku Games

If you’ve been here awhile, you probably know I really like Garry and the Dieku Games show too. Garry does some great interviews and it’s solidly in my listening rotations. Here are a few episodes I’ve enjoyed.

Garry is releasing his first game, Bug Busters Ltd. He’s using all of the knowledge he’s gained from interviewing other designers to make a nice and streamlined system with thematic mechanics. (We have an interview lined up for the next The Guac btw!!)

Here is the episode where Garry breaks down the game:

Slugblaster with Mikey Hamm

Sandboxes!! Some inspiration from Joel Hines and Silver Arm Press

I’ve used Joel’s Desert Moon of Karth and blog posts as guiding posts for a lot of my adventures. The more I’ve written, I still use them more or less as a checklist to make sure I’m including interesting connections within modules. While we were hanging out at Gamehole Con we talked a bit about upcoming sandboxes, as its Silver Arm’s focus, and I picked up Secret of the Black Crag and a physical copy of Desert Moon of Karth. I’m really stoked to get to Secret of the Black Crag and see what Chad Dudinack produced! Especially since I’ll be planning a sandbox location module for Greenhorns starting next year. It will be one of a few modules we’ll be developing in 2024 to expand Greenhorns and give the game more playable content. We’ll kickstart those modules either later in 2024 or Q1 2025 if all goes well.

Since I had my head on sandboxes I wanted to share a few modules and posts I’ve seen repeated as great examples and tools to build out your own.

Desert Moon of Karth by Joel Hines

The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford by Chad Dudinack

Secret of the Black Crag by Chad Dudinack

The Dark of Hot Springs Island by Swordfish Islands

Silver Arm Press Sandbox Blog by Joel Hines

I’m sure there’s more - and honestly would love you to comment below if you have great resources, but hopefully these are helpful for anyone looking to begin or upgrade your sandbox writing.

Cool Things From Other Creators

5 Million Worlds Press just released Unseen City for Cloud Empress

https://chrisair.itch.io/the-unseen-city-biome

They also released their Mothership module, Bio-Drones & Cryo Clones

https://chrisair.itch.io/bio-drones-cryo-clones

Space Penguin and Kevin Rahman are Kickstarting Forbidden Psalm: End Times Edition

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impioussaint/forbidden-psalm-end-times-edition/

Tomb of a Thousand Doors is coming to print and has a prelaunch page on Kickstarter. This Mausritter module was created by 20+ creators.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/manarampmatt/tomb-of-a-thousand-doors-a-mausritter-megadungeon

RPG Zine Club is live!! Monthly games published with an alternative to crowdfunding working to make publishing sustainable for new voices. Expect a ton of different authors and variety to keep up with the schedule.

https://plusoneexp.com/pages/rpg-zine-club

Space Penguin Ink has new arrivals including a few stand outs. VR Dead by Kharrak and The Bloom from Goblin Archives and Josh Domanski,

https://spacepenguin.ink/collections/new-arrivals

MeatCastle Gameware Annual #1 is released!! I love most everything Christian makes and this compiles all of the goodies they gave out in their newsletter this past year.

https://shop.meatcastlegameware.com/products/meatcastle-annual-1-pre-order

Spicy Tuna Updates

I lost a little less than two weeks from some personal family stuff and sickness but we’re still on track for physical and digital fulfillment for Outsourced!! Although, I realize I made a mistake and had some mixed messaging both on the KS page and the last The Guac. Our bolded goal on KS is PDFs by December, Physical fulfillment in February.

Final proofreading for the last 20 pages is being sent to Walt by tomorrow. After he gets back to me I’ll have to invest the day or so to hyperlink and bookmark everything, but that will be prioritized so we can get it out as soon as possible.

So a few major changes. Let’s start with Greenhorns. Here’s the new cover!! !!

Just want to shout out Diego Acevedo again, because he is making this book f’n incredible. Check him out on Instagram if you want to see more. We also have a completely recolored cover for the Quickstart version which we’ll showcase when we release the game later this month.

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(As mentioned above you can sign up for the Kickstarter prelaunch page to get notified on launch!)
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So the biggest change is we’re going full out hardcover for the book. Roughly 100-130 pages. It will include a ton of playable material and loads of random tables for generating your own planet layers, worlds, and build out Kruxor and bounties. We want this to be a full and hearty game and we’re happy to be pivoting from the shorter zine format that we were originally aiming for.

The Quickstart version will be free and roughly 24 pages to start and release later this month. We’ll balloon it up as we introduce more content for the game. For instance it will release with the planet layers so you can start building planets right away. Planet Layers effectively play like dungeon diving, but have a bit of a different feel. We will introduce bounty hunting probably in December which offers more story and lore to explore as you hunt down escaped anomalies with a bone to pick with your home planet. More details in a few weeks though!

So with the expansion of the core book, we’ve moved crowdfunding the book to January 2024.

»»»»»» Last thing to mention about Greenhorns. If you are interested in playtesting the game. Either with your group or in an online game with me running it, I’d love for you to reach out to me!!
Email at marco@spicytunarpg.com «««««««

Incorporated Vol.1 is getting a much cooler name, courtesy of Stephan’s bullying. It will be far better for it. Also, Gontijo is doing layout now!!! I’ll start designing some graphics as early as next week! And we’ll be working in tandem to finish this book with the goal to make an art piece. A book worthy of being the centerpiece on a mahogany coffee table.

We’re far ahead of schedule to finish the book before it kickstarts in April/May 2024.

Knuckles Co and Professional Rebels got horror upgrades. The books were great before, but now they are more Mothershippy while still fitting the tone of the Outer Rim Uprising bundle. Our deadline is November 30th and we’re on schedule to get that knocked out. The manuscripts are 70% done and I’ve been plugging them into layout throughout writing so that’ll be a zip.

For now that’s it!! Thank you for reading this far if you made it. I hope that some of the linked material from other creators is inspiring to you too!! Looking forward to highlighting more of our influences!

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