Love seeing more inventory Tetris stuff. I’ve been working on a system that has lots of inventory inspiration à la Mausritter and the Diablo games. Cool to see those things applied to Magic!

Y’all know I’m a certified hater of Vancian magic and always looking for a better option. And this option fucking rips! Gonna be thinking about this one a lot

Hey hey people! Got a new one for you. Jackian Magic! It's all about demons that live in your head and how to cast them by playing a tile game! Reminds me a lot of Seven Part Pact with how evocative its themeing is- I should really finish that video. Going live in a week! youtu.be/kPxS0BwZZBY

I'm just now seeing this post! Its fantastic. I love how we're all trying to slay the 1 HP Dragon (combat without HP/numbers). This is a really good system. My current drafts have similar ideas, but this one is so much more fleshed out. binarystar.games/posts/origin...

An alternate magic system for Cairn has entered the arena...

This really does get the brain design juices flowing. Imagine a moving inventory system. When objects hit each other, maybe they become damaged, maybe they get bonuses? Maybe far left has higher speed, maybe they make noise.

Sure, you know about Vancian Magic, but what about Jackian Magic? (Someone please finish this design.) www.explorersdesign.com/jackian-magic/

Throwing one more post on the pile before the end of the year. Enjoy binarystar.games/posts/origin...

I read The Elements of Style every year, and this year—I’m certain—this year, more than 5% of it will stick.

Making some roughs today between day job projects. That means no downloading fonts or trying to make the paper texture on this thing look real. What are good names for a classic Murder Mystery game? Daggerbacks? Murder Mystery Theater? Murder?

I said this about making art before and I stand by it.

All of my current game projects are either for my home table or so rough around the edges they need to be played with a hazmat suit. I should make a category on my Itch that's just R&D "no promises."

Here's a pretty great article for #ttrpg publishers (no matter how small!) explaining how important some design elements are in simple language. Excellent work, @explorersdesign.bsky.social, a benefit to the #ttrpgcommunity.

This is a great distillation of how to help guide people through your books. Fabulous work from Clayton.

Clayton has been on fire lately. This post is a must read for anyone doing visual design with games... not just TTRPGs, but board games too. I'd love to incorporate some of this into future public library classes I might teach. 🤔

I went and wrote it. Here are some things you can do as a ttrpg project manager to make freelancing fun and easy: barilleon.com/managing-ttr...

One of the updates to the songbirds book was to add signals and then hyperlink them for the pdf. If only I had Clayton's fucking adorable illustrations to help me in that process. GO LOOK AT THEM AND LEARN WITH ME

99% of rpg zines and books should have page numbers. And that's just the start. There's actually a lot of technique and intentionality behind things like page numbers, running headers, etc. Let me know what you think! www.explorersdesign.com/designing-si...

I played Dispatch and now I have to recover from it like a good book.

Here's a stocking stuffer I whipped up for the #TTRPGbookmarkjam . A little game you play after you read!

In a very special Bonus Episode of Between Two Cairns, @bradkerr.net and I interview @samsorensen.bsky.social about Over/Under, a massive wargame/LARP held during Mothership Month. This episode is only available to Patrons but will see a wider release in the future. www.patreon.com/posts/story-...

I'm not saying Sam's aiming for the Bloggies, I'm just saying he's like that guy from the olympics who competed without any gear because he didn't need it.

This is a cool opportunity. If you love reading and thinking about rpgs, I cannot recommend judging enough. It's a chance to spotlight creators, celebrate diversity, and reward great games and ideas.

Announcement time! I've gone and decided to move on from my google hosted Blogger blog, and instead do my own thing with my own domain. Check it out over here: personable.blog/new-blog-sam...

This holiday season, give your favorite creators the perfect gift: attention. A 5-star rating, a product review on Exalted, or even a share on Reddit. www.explorersdesign.com/critmas-2025/

Join us tomorrow night for our last Intrepid Merchants of the year w/@rowanzeoli.bsky.social. A NYC-based community organizer & cofounder of @rascal.news. Rowan will join us to talk about what stood out to us from 2025, what we are looking forward to in 2026 & other #TTRPG industry insights. 1/2

Out now: WHALE ROADS The chronicle of a year-long, 30+ player West Marches campaign of Wolves Upon the Coast by @lukegearing.bsky.social A 250-page "zine" filled with play summaries, original art, and Referee commentary. Available now, and it's 100% completely free. sulcata.itch.io/whale-roads

Gonna make one blog post and use big words just so I can win the bloggies and shut them down from the inside

So this happened… I am White Wolf’s new Lead Game Designer! I will figure out how to post the whole text here, but there is a picture with the announcement and the alt text has the full thing! #TTRPG #RPGLATAM #VtM #WoD #DnD #NotDnD #ShowYourWork

Starting thinking hard and getting hyped: the Bloggies are coming.

No disagreement here. As time passes, I'm more and more excited by good structure and information architecture over everything else in layout.

I come to you like Paul Revere on the back of a liger. The Bloggies are coming! Like, share, and subscribe. www.explorersdesign.com/the-bloggies...

All the good posts get published when I'm asleep or walking the dog. @dicegoblin.blog, this is a good one. The faction diagram should be copied to death. dicegoblin.blog/stacking-the...

In a way, all crawls are just pointcrawls with extra details. What's important is making those extra details meaningful. This is a great article. Required reading. Everyone should follow @exeunt.press if they haven't already. www.skeletoncodemachine.com/p/everything...

I had fun at PAX Unplugged! I played over 20 hours worth of games and went out to the local taverns every night. How did I do it all? That’s proprietary, but you can instead read all about the games I played #osr #ttrpg

I love the @rascal.news announcements It's pure gift to the community Lots of folks also fail to use it well Sure, you can tell people to buy/back/get your game It's better when you talk about what makes your game special @robbiaburns.bsky.social kills that here www.rascal.news/p/8aaf9647-0...

The Explorateur #14 is out now! The only newsletter designed to level-up your design skills (how's that for sales copy?). Please like, share, and subscribe. If you have any links you particularly like, drop a comment on Explorers Design or here. www.explorersdesign.com/explorateur-...

Two brave souls attempt to define the OSR — and succeed? Sharing two posts I found and enjoyed recently.

ive struggles for ages to explain my deepset love for OSR design tools to other ttrpg folks and im grateful someone has finally written a blogpost that so clearly elucidates how OSR play is built. required reading imo

This makes me bite my fist with envy.

Blades '68! It's all go! Here are some chapter openers I've been working on.

When Derek’s Cairn adventure, Stag Lord’s Sanctum, comes out, it’ll be my turn to gesticulate bigger, stronger, and more erratically. The adventure demands it.

Coming soon to IPR, after all the backer copies ship.

Read a lovely Rascal article on this - what a beautiful project. I'd love to see more like it (and funding for them) from lots of other places ❤️ www.rascal.news/carved-in-st...

If you're looking for more rpg-related YouTube channels that aren't actual plays, check out Weird Place. They remind me of PBS's Idea Channel from almost 10 years ago. Very relaxing, informative watches. www.youtube.com/@weird_place...

A 2nd blogpost for #MausritterMonth! A short review of the starter adventure that came with the original boxed set. The impressive proliferation of Mausritter adventures is part of what has made the game so successful, but what about Mausritter’s Keep on the Borderlands equivalent? #osr #ttrpg

I made significant edits to this to post to make it clearer what I'm exploring here. I'm not anti-mashup. I love them. This post explores what games gain by omitting the usual genre trappings found in ttrpg mashups. My personal musings on what designers cultivate by not adding Cthulhu or Dracula.

The Castle Automatic is a dungeon where you control the time of year, time of day, and the weather to solve puzzles, avoid vampires, and reclaim the world's most magical treasures. Be an Early Worm and back the preorder at a discounted price! www.exaltedfuneral.com/pages/the-ca...

Working on something fun for the Mausritter Month Companion Jam, hosted by @manarampmatt.bsky.social, @hlashbrooke.bsky.social, @gamesomnivorous.bsky.social, and @losing.games. Lost in the Wild, mysterious locations of treacherous adventure for #Mausritter. itch.io/jam/mausritt...

I love the genre mashup. Give me all the Golden Girls/Cthulhus and WWII/Draculas you've got. But I'm also looking for non-mashups. Sometimes it feels like the industry has an allergy. Westerns without magic. Drama without aliens. Detectives without Cthulhu. www.explorersdesign.com/one-genre-ga...