The month of Gen Con is upon us!
Hey there, everyone! Tony the Communications Guy here! As we’re working on this month’s newsletter, we’re also preparing for Gen Con here in Indianapolis, just a week and a half away! Funny, it feels like only yesterday we were in Columbus, Ohio for Origins. Speaking of Origins, the team had a fantastic time at the show. It was great seeing and talking to people who we first met when we launched our Kickstarter at Origins 2023, getting feedback and catching up on their games. We also loved talking to new people about their games and how we could help them run their games and collaborate with their players. The Tuesday after the con, Mark, Twenty, and I got together on PowerWash Simulator 2 to clean off some parade floats, talk about the show, and reminisce about the chocolate cake milkshake at Bareburger across the street from the convention center.
Now, I know Mark and Mike have a lot to talk about, so let’s go ahead and jump into this newsletter!
Thanks, I’ll try and sum up, but there’s so much to talk about! On the streaming side of Lore Link, as I mentioned last week, these summer months are going to be a bit more relaxed. We’ve got conventions and dev work a-plenty going on, so we’re keeping it lowkey on the streaming side. That doesn’t mean that we’ve stopped, though. Our Indie Creator series has continued with my conversation with Wojtek Borowicz about his beginner-friendly TTRPG, Campfire. One of the goals of Lore Link is to make it easier for first time GMs to get behind the screen and run a game, and Campfire is a perfect match for that. Simple test resolution combined with an amazing set of low prep beginner modules makes for a perfect opportunity for people to give GMing a try.
We’re also keeping our GMing skills polished with both Mike and Mark planning out games. Mark took a look at the Twilight Sword Beta rules for a take on an action adventure JRPG TTRPG while Mike <does something>started planning his next game in The One Ring. Check those videos out to see Lore Link in action, especially the new Category Customization features.
And we still take the time to play video games over on the Twitch channel, with Mark going back to his roots with Nethack 5.0.0, and having a great time reminiscing about one of the original Rogue-like games… and discovering the game is still as punishing of hubris as it always was.
In the coming weeks, you’ll see less of me at the channel, but more of the rest of the team, as Twenty returns to continue Midnight Suns, Tony returns to chat and powerwash some Star Wars, and Mike will likely sneak back in with his own Indie Creator Series entry!
So what’s keeping me so busy? Well, we’re excited to have a booth at Gen Con at the beginning of August, and we want to be sure to make a splash! That means getting the next feature polished so that I can hand it over to our amazing testing team to put it through its paces before Gen Con. So much to do and so little time! What is that next great feature? As I mentioned last month, we’re looking forward to being able to help creators and GMs. That means having Lore Link itself help you play the game, by allowing your game system terminology to be reflected in your Lore. It also means having your system choose to add and rename categories, and Lore with customized fields that match your game. Pick up a cool new sci-fi system and have Lore Link add Planets and Spaceships right from the start. Now, the goal is to have this change be as opt-in as possible; if you want to continue using Lore Link as the System Agnostic tool it has always been, you’ll be able to do so with zero changes. However, once you’re comfortable enough to dig in and make Lore Link more customized, the option will be available for you when you’re ready!
Hi everyone, Mike here for a rare newsletter appearance. We here at Lore Link want you to Spill the Tea and talk to us about your hopes, dreams, and frustrations with gaming us so we can build an amazing community together. So often in this industry companies and organizations make decisions in a vacuum and seem to listen only after they’ve been called out for making a mistake. I provided details in our latest blog post, but here at Lore Link we want to flip the script and START by listening. So if you want to say hi to us at Gen Con, connect on Discord, or schedule time with one of our founders, we’re here to listen.
Hey, it’s Tony again!
That was a lot, wasn’t it? There’s a lot of really cool things coming down the pike, and we hope to see you at booth 2862 in Entrepreneur’s Avenue at Gen Con so that we can talk to you about it. As always, don’t forget about all the places you can find us other than your inbox. Not only do we have the Discord server Mike mentioned above, but we also have the Twitch stream, our YouTube channel, our blog, and our Bluesky account. If you want to know more about where we’re showing up in the real world, or who we’re working with, you can also check out our Community page.
Thank you all for reading this far! Until next month, may your players stay on target instead of getting distracted by trying to adopt and domesticate that bugbear.
