Wow. Okay. So, let’s catch up. This issue of Cozy Companion came out in February. I finally got my hot little hands on it in March. Some not-great things happened. Now it’s May. Caught up? Great.
One of the things that happened was that I had a major leak in my car, and one of the things that got soaked the worst were my newly acquired Cozy Companions. I was very sad. My niece and I painstakingly gently separated and hand-dried each page as best we could. Hung the issues up to dry and spent the next few days checking to make sure the pages remained separated. In the end, my Cozy Companions held up SHOCKINGLY well. You can that the paper was extremely water-damaged, but it’s intact. There was no bleeding of ink, no torn pages, the magazine is just a bit crunchy. Even that has worked itself out to a large extent.
All that to say kudos to Snowbright Studio for the dedication to high-quality production values, even just for a magazine, now let’s get to the thing you’re here for. The review.
As always, the issue opens with a Letter from the Editor. This issue, that letter comes from a wonderful guest-editor by the name of Rachel Gluckstern. For those who don’t geek out about Editors, Rachel has a resume long enough to choke a bat…man. A long-time editor with DC Comics and a powerhouse in the industry. Her observations that there are endless variations on relationships and that “…all love, n to just romantic love, is worth celebrating”
The next exciting part of this was a spotlight on the first three winners of the Nonbinary Tabletop Awards. I posted about this on our social media when it was announced. But another congratulations to the winners:
- C.A.S. Taylor (they/them) & Yeonsoo Julian Kim (they/she/he) for Women are Werewolves
- Matthew Makak (he/they) for Room 51
- watt (they/them) for Cloud Empress
This issue’s theme is Love Cats, so it makes perfect sense that they would ask their Discord server to submit pictures of people’s cats for The Friends of Snowbright section. I’m no longer on Discord, so I never get to participate in this feature. But here’s a picture of “Interfering Cat” interfering in a game of Metal. ->
Next up comes one of my favourite parts of any Cozy Companion, the adventure. Since it’s an issue about cars, naturally it’s a Time Tails adventure. Before the players are dropped in, we are presented with “The Time Tails RPG Reshrinkified Rules!” Snowbright brilliantly condenses the rules of their soon-to-be-a-hit TTRPG down to just a few pages including a bunch of P.A.T.S. (Powers That Alter Time). I gave a very brief description of the unique system when the original shrinkified rules appeared in Issue #2. But I didn’t mention P.A.T.S. Characters are all equipped with a Time Band that includes these very special abilities loaded onto them à la magic spells slots in other TTRPG systems. In fact, I feel like eventually we will get an adventure down the road that literally presents P.A.T.S. as magic. After all, there are a ton of historic “magicians” and as Arthur C. Clark noted: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Much of the adventure focuses on Victorian England, so naturally, it is followed by a Time Travel Guide on the real-world Victorian era. As with everything in these magazines, the article is brief. It touches on notable people, places, and life at the time, and how those can be reflected in a game. The older I get, the more I have learned that history can be incredibly interesting when it’s presented in interesting ways. It’s unfortunate that our school teachers aren’t given the resources to present history in a way that will resonate with more students. When the full game is released I would totally be down with a separate Time Tails focused companion magazine that can delve deeper than a few pages.
Beyond their dedication to education, one of the things that impresses me the most about Snowbright Studio is their dedication to the community beyond their company doors. Being February, they interviewed Jacob Jaskov, the designer of Fog of Love. Then, to reinforce the idea that relationships and connection need not be based on love, each of their team members gave a brief shout out to a shop that has meant something special to them. Gathering with our friends and chosen-family at places like these are important connections. In the world of Tetime Adventures, this is celebrated during the Ties of the Deerkin and the Booristas of ink love to serve up a soothing soiree for players to relax and enjoy themselves at for a short while. (That’s the Fiction and Lore sections, by the way).
I was a bit surprised that the Science Corner was about birds, not cats, until I saw that it was about their plumage and mating behaviours. That makes sense. As always there are a few activities to do, some quick game reviews by Ryla the Office Cat, and my favourite part: a recipe. I have made several short videos about these recipes, and will very likely do one on these Raspberry Ribbon Hearts when my world settles down just a bit more. I did make a batch and they were delicious.
To make a long story short, even if you don’t play Snowbright Studio games, you should be reading Cozy Companion.