Greetings, gremlins! Happy October!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: October is quite possibly my favorite month of the year. Halloween's probably my favorite holiday, and though I will admit I've been in Halloween mode since July, I'm excited for it nonetheless.

It's probably no surprise, then, that I'm doing quite a bit this month in honor of the season, so let's get into it so I can give you all an update on all of the things going on.

First and foremost, I'm fortunate enough to be able to participate in an actual play this month! I was able to be part of my very first actual play back in June in honor of Pride Month, and I loved participating in it so much that I was thrilled when I found out I was able to participate in this one. Every Tuesday night throughout the month of October and ending on Halloween, I'm going to be participating in an actual play of a Candela Obscura mini-campaign with some other wonderful roleplayers!

If you're not familiar with Candela Obscura, it's a brand-new TTRPG created by the good folks at Critical Role. All player characters are part of a circle of a secret organization dedicated to protecting the city of Newfaire from occult horrors from the world beyond this one. We might not have the players handbook for it just yet, but we're not letting that stop us!

Please be warned that Candela Obscura does contain horror elements. There may be gore, violence, and body horror, among other things.

The stream will be starting at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern on October 3rd over on BriarHart RPG on Twitch, and will air every Tuesday in October, culminating in our final episode on Halloween! I hope you'll come and join us and check out the chaos that I'm sure the dice will inevitably bestow upon us.

Second, next week, yours truly is going to be participating in the Halloween Indie Games Showcase this year! I will be part of an incredible community of streamers that are coming together to share some terrifying games made by a variety of independent game studios and I'm hyped for it.

During that week, we will also be raising money for Stream for a Cause! If you're not familiar, Stream for a Cause is a nonprofit organization that creates grants for other community-based nonprofits. They also offer sustainability coaching, streamer support programs, and they organize a variety of events designed to create spaces and dialogue around marginalized creator groups.

The goal is for us to raise $100 for the organization, but even if we don't do that, that's okay. We're trying our best while also sharing some pretty cool games. I believe this will be the link that all donations will come through that will contribute specifically to our goal, but I'm still waiting to hear back from the organizers to confirm that. Links will, of course, be updated and have appropriate commands during the event.

As we've done for all fundraisers, we'll be bringing back the Wheel of Horror. For anyone who hasn't been with us for previous fundraisers, here's how the Wheel works:

• The Wheel of Horror consists of a spinning wheel with multiple wedges.
• Each wedge of the wheel corresponds to a horror game that the community would like to see me terrify myself with for their enjoyment. This year, a few of these games will also come from a list compiled by the event organizers of the Halloween Indie Games Showcase.
• Everyone who donates to the fundraiser can increase or decrease a wedge of the wheel to either increase the chances of their favorite game winning or to decrease another game's chance.
• For every $100 raised, the wheel is spun, and whatever game fate chooses will be streamed at some point in the future.

As I mentioned above, the majority of the games have been community-sourced. Over the past few years, whether on Discord or otherwise, you wonderful gremlins in our streaming community have made a variety of suggestions to fill the wedges of our Wheel. We do have a lot of them, though. Not all those suggestions will make it onto the wheel. However, if you want a specific game to be considered, you have until 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, October 4th to make your suggestion known. After that, submissions for the wheel will be closed until the next time the wheel comes out to play.

To kick the event off, we'll be starting on October 8th in our usual Sunday timeslot (2pm EST) on Twitch by playing Scarlet Hollow by Black Tabby Games. The game is a horror game, unlike a lot of our usual streaming fare, and each episode of the game has some very specific content warnings. I want to be sure you all look out for your mental health, so much like we had for our 2022 Horror Extravaganza, we are going to have the content warning command active while streaming this game so you can judge for yourself if you need to tap out. You can find the entire list of content warnings for each episode of Scarlet Hollow here.

If you need to duck out for whatever reason, please remember that you do not owe me or anyone else an explanation. As much as I appreciate that you want to support me and the community and the fundraiser, I am never going to fault anyone for looking out for their mental health. Please take care of yourselves. That would make me happiest.

And that's it for now, folks! I hope all of you are as excited about this as I am.

Thank you all very much for your time, and have a happy October!