My DM philosophy in a short: youtube.com/shorts/mXakn...

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden or Alice In Chains.

It's been a relaxing year of reading. The days of reading on average 2-3 books a week are gone as I relax from the philosophy and into leisurely reading. Top categories were science fiction, historical fiction and non-fiction. I don't track TTRPG books on Goodreads otherwise reckon that'd be win.

If “post-apocalypse but no guns, just spears, pine forests and reality glitches” sounds like your thing, you might want to look at After. a review digging into the stonepunk setting, the OSR-ish rules, and how it compares to my other rebuilding-after-the-end games. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/12/26/a...

How I actually run Session Zero these days: what we talk about, how I handle safety tools, and why skipping it has bitten me more than once (especially online). blog.monkeyx.games/2025/12/23/h...

Voted for my three most anticipated RPGs for 2026: 1) Land of Eem: Dungeoneer Adventures (Exalted Funeral) 2) Invincible Superhero Roleplaying (Free League) 3) Hot War (Handwork Games) A few entries on the list already in my hand so couldn't really say they were anticipated.

The #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go… (better back that Toon 2nd edition KS I guess)

Dolmenwood review up: pixie boots on firm old-school ground. Simple d6 checks, rich travel/exploration rules, and 200+ pages of hexcrawl content. Less “generic toolbox,” more “campaign with a pulse” Verdicts, comparisons to OSE, vibes. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/12/19/d...

This is pretty cool - a hack of Mythic Bastionland for a sci-fi setting. Makes me excited for Cosmic Bastionland when it drops. www.revenant-quill.com/2025/12/hack...

I love Call of Cthulhu’s idea of chases way more than I love running the actual rules at the table. So I stole some tricks from other systems and boiled it down to one simple track and two rolls that actually keep things moving. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/12/16/c...

Hunger meets consent

Cosmic Dark: run-tonight space horror with a clean investigate roll, personal corruption (“Changed”), and a Golden Thread campaign that actually ends. Guided, eerie, humane GM tools. If you want story over spreadsheets, this is it: blog.monkeyx.games/2025/12/12/g...

I did a quick review of this a little while back so worth sharing again: blog.monkeyx.games/2025/10/27/w...

Excited to read this from @ickbat.bsky.social Layout + art are hitting the spot. The theme is derived from one of the best novellas I've read in recent years. Never played an epistolary RPG before (although no stranger to pbp) so going to be interesting finding a collaborator to dive into this.

Once again a fantastic review from Seyed. I’m really grateful for any review who takes this amount of time to engage with what’s there in the book, understands mechanics very well, and even considers the creator’s intention as they perceive it. Along with loads more. This is contentful reviewing.

You will be visited by three spirits.

Some nights I have node graphs. Some nights I have 3 names and a dream. New post on getting comfy with GM improv, keeping it coherent, and forgiving yourself when it wobbles. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/12/08/h...

Great listen and great magazine. Please support them by buying their entire back catalogue. Totally worth the price! shop.wyrd.science

Muck, myths, and mutual aid: my a|state 2e review. Come for the art; stay for the Hope track, nasty consequences, and sandbox corners worth fighting for. Not for power fantasy; perfect for crews lifting a neighbourhood. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/12/05/a...

I've come across entire tables where only the GM knows the rules or even worries about the character sheets... so the players can focus on the roleplaying! Imagine if that happened with board games... "Nah bud you don't need to put your meeple down... I'll do it for you... you just vibe!"

This looks like an interesting tool for online investigation RPGs www.patreon.com/posts/murder...

Inspired by @thegrognardfiles.bsky.social podcast on Spotify... Everybody’s grumbling ’bout Crit-tables, fumble-tables, spell-fail, wound-labels, Chart-ism, part-ism, elf-weight, pack-prism, Page-flipping, math-dripping, pace-killing schism…

"Will AI take my job?" (or a common variant, ""Will AI take child's hoped-for job?")

A bit of GMing advice on how I prep published adventures depending on the type of module I'm dealing with. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/12/02/h...

Found this - really interesting way of running a game againstthecultofthecommodity.blogspot.com/2025/11/how-...

Everyone’s asking if AI is going to replace writers, artists, musicians etc I wrote a piece that puts that fear next to older automation and asks, with a little help from Existentialist philosophers what’s really at stake for human creativity. It’s not just “AI bad, art good”. It’s messier.

I reviewed Heart (City Beneath) and Spire (City Must Fall): stunning art, tight d10 pools, stress/fallout that makes wins messy. One’s revolution, one’s obsession. Sample play, who should run them, and my verdict. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/28/b...

The second campaign log of our Dragonbane campaign. Warning: Spoilers. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/26/d...

this is mesmerizing

Sometimes VTTs feel like they’ve taken us backwards. Gorgeous maps, animated tokens, chunky automation… and somehow I’m less in the scene than when we used badly drawn dungeon maps on scrap paper. 1/10

I ran a Hogswatch Discworld one-shot where belief nearly went missing and a broom saved the night, so wrote up my thoughts on the Discworld RPG (Adventures in Ankh-Morpork). blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/23/p...

On this gray Saturday afternoon, with the kids and misses otherwise occupied, I'm having an enjoyable re-read through @wyrdscience.bsky.social mack catalogue before I get to the latest issue that arrived the other day.

Wrote about Salvage Union: a scrap-punk mecha game where community and consequences matter more than perfect build math. Less Gundam, more ABC Warriors with feelings. Plus me rambling about why we keep chasing “the mech-siah” RPG. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/21/r...

Wrote a bit of how I try to tackle TTRPG books to get them to the table: blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/18/h...

Hi Friends. If you are interested in Pulp Cthulhu campaigns, my Agents of Excalibur pdf is now available on Drive Thru rpg. Set in London of the 1960's, characters are agents of the MI5 security service in Excalibur Branch. It's also on sale. Please have a look. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

Fourteen years after Skyrim launched and there’s still nothing quite like spending 300+ hours in it, finishing every guild, the DLCs, and sixteen cheese collection side-quests… but somehow never the main quest or the civil war. 1/10

I grew up on Gibson and now work in the bit mines. I wanted Snow Crash vibes, not catalogues. My review tests today’s cyberpunk RPGs for politics with teeth and team-first netrunning. Winners for 3 playstyles inside. Mild philosophy, mild jokes: blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/12/s...

If you want to get into Warhammer the Old World in 2026? Then this is the video for you. Please Share youtu.be/gsIA8bp8KQE

Mythic Bastionland: the knightly game that finally scratched the itch Pendragon never quite did for me. Loose, dreamy, lethal, and full of possibility instead of railroads and tourney tables. If you like myth, not minutiae, this one’s for you. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/12/m...

I ramble about gothic urban horror RPGs (Urban Shadows, Buffy, Liminal, Monster of the Week, Vampire) and why awkward 90s kids like me keep coming back to sad monsters in cities. Part review, part therapy session. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/11/g...

Wrote about my Humble Bundle haul (GI Joe, Transformers, Power Rangers) and what it says about licensed RPGs in an age of too many games. Do they shine, or just sink into the pile with my soul? Philosophical rambling within: blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/09/m...

The lengths ChatGPT will go to to lull us into a false sense of security

Tried to love 5E Doctor Who. It’s still 5E, just wearing a long scarf. I explain why I flogged the bundle, why Vortex fits better, and, yes, a little grumble about the TV era that cured my urge to run it. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/07/p...

I've gone on a TTRPG reading splurge. Come to the conclusion: TTRPG hobby in 2025: we don’t have “a game,” we have a backlog. Steam, but for feelings. We run a campaign, think seriously about a second, & own PDFs for about forty-seven more we “might” play when time and friends stop being finite. 1/8

I read After the War through the lens of Apocalypse World & Mutant: Year Zero. It’s all about one fragile settlement, messy relationships, and memetic horror on a refugee world. Fewer beans to count, more people to care about. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/04/a...

Back to writing some campaign blogs by catching up on our Dragonbane campaign we started in September: blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/03/d...

FiveEvil – A Quick Review, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Fear 5E Again blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/02/f...

A quick review of Monolith's new Conan the Hyborean RPG with comparisons to the usual suspects blog.monkeyx.games/2025/10/31/c...

I read the Warhammer Old World RPG books over the weekend. Here is my quick review: blog.monkeyx.games/2025/10/27/w...

My copy of the ALIEN: Evolved rulebook arrived yesterday. I did a review of it on my blog with an end note comparison with Mothership. blog.monkeyx.games/2025/10/24/a...