RPGADay 2023, Day 3
The Third Day
The first roleplaying game core rulebook I bought this year has got to be Foragers Manifesto, now Foragers Fantasy, by Lightspress Media. I can verify this because DriveThruRPG makes note of the date each title was first uploaded to their library.
I have bought a lot of Lightspress Media's output. The author has a prodigious imagination, and has created dozens of sourcebooks for two genres - fantasy, and modern thriller.
Foragers Manifesto was a core rulebook to enact fantastic stories. Elements such as character types (e.g. Troubadours, The Damned, Knights, Disciples, Priests, Engineers etc), genre types (Epic Fantasy, Renaissance Fantasy, Cozy Fantasy, Science Fantasy), and even vice-led stories such as tales based on Envy, Avarice, and Lechery, have all been covered by this umbrella title; and Guides (don't call them Gamesmasters) get their own resources.
The modern game, which includes three intrigue-based games from the spy genre, is called DoubleZero. This is a game set in a recognisable modern world, though the different settings can change the nature of that world, from gritty Cold War espionage thrillers along the lines of John LeCarre to something more in the line of a certain secret agent for MI5 who's the star of a bunch of movies, to a far future setting straight out of Gerry Anderson's Captain Scarlet and UFO.
Point being, neither of these core rulebooks are like any game you have ever seen on sale. They are neat little books which you can carry with you and play any way you like (if you have a dice roller app on a smartphone, you don't even need to carry dice with you to game anywhere). They're also damned cheap at $4.99 each.
I know I'm probably going to come back to individual Lightspress Media sourcebooks over the coming month, but this is just so you know - it was a Lightspress Media core book which was the first one I bought in 2023.
And I have not a single regret.