I don't always agree with Hank Green but I do quite like what he's saying here. "When we can't find anything we can believe in, the humanity leaks through the drywall and says 'I AM STILL HERE! [...] I AM WEIRD, AND I AM HUMAN, AND I AM NOT FOR SALE!'" www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMWP...

I wrote something about the DCC discourse in which I: - Summarise the story so far - Attempt to synthesise two contrary module styles - Praise @zedecksiew.bsky.social with a small cameo from my Oma's Nasi Goering dannyfi.st/posts/Doing-...

One of the weirdest people to ever exist

Quick response to @orthopraxy.bsky.social's excellent "Eating the Book--a response to 'We Need to Talk About Goodman Games'" to test my extremely cool new URL: dungeonmerl.in/3mcasvels6s2m (DM... get it?) #ttrpg #osr #blog

Slightly diminish a game: Mausknappe

Slightly diminish a game: Line Agency

Slightly diminish a game: Pile of Rocks

If you like reading adventure names as much as I do, @adventurenamesbot.bsky.social is the bot for you!

Between this and Blades '68, 2026 seems to be the year of RPGs specifically targetted at me. Now who wants to create a Deadly Premonition RPG for me? Northern Exposure?

Gonna steal this format this year.

Important empirical work, but it's absolutely insane that this isn't immediately clear to every single adult human being. You have to be completely ignorant of any form of education, critical thinking, or experience to not intuitively get this. "The map is not the territory" is 101 stuff.

This is good stuff!

Computers & Sexy – A Halt and Catch Fire hack of Lasers & Feelings

four books to get to know me

Personally I think there's significance in the fact that Mr. Rogers doesn't try to claim that his drawing is just as good as anyone else's, and instead he's honest that it's *not* a good drawing, and affirms that it's worth doing anyway. I think that's important.

I wanted to share this funeral photography I captured in 2019 for a woman whose beloved Friesian mare had passed away. I still think about this experience often, it was such a privilege to be part of that moment. There was deep sadness, but also an incredible amount of love and even laughter.

Just added the first pattern written by someone else to the OSR Adventure Pattern Language. It's "One, Two, or Three Exits" by @samseer.bsky.social, and it's a really good one! #ttrpg #osr ttrpg-pattern-language.vercel.app/one-two-or-t...

You've started something, you mad wizard. My contribution is below. [An OSR Pattern] One, Two, or Three Exits sam-seer.blogspot.com/2025/08/an-o...

ttrpg-pattern-language.vercel.app/npc-quotes/ #ttrpg #osr

"You can't strike, you're too important" from a judge or government should instantly make you side with the people striking. They're *that* important but they get treated like shit? Nah. Naaaah. Let the government force better conditions.

Yo, you, stop what you're doing. I just learned that there's a version of the Hobbit illustrated by Tove Jansson!

There's a genre of advice that's basically "if you want to do X, read/do things outside of X," which I feel gets misinterpreted a lot as "don't read/do X". But the advice really is that you should read/do things both inside and outside of X. So... read/do many things is what I'm saying, I guess.

I think understanding the existence of, and differences between, playstyles should be one of the earliest concepts to learn when getting into TTRPGs. This video does a great job of summarising and expanding on The Retired Adventurer’s post on the topic!

This post is a thought experiment, but one I would love to see explored further and for other gameplay styles. It would be incredibly interesting to see what a work based on this model looks like, and even more so as points of comparison between pattern languages!

A wrote a few words on what A Pattern Language for TTRPG/OSR adventure design might look like. dungeon-merlin.leaflet.pub/3lw2nzp6yls2y #ttrpg #osr

My recommendation is, very strongly, that you learn to code if you want to and think it'll be fun, because in 20 years you'll be one of a dwindling number of people who actually know how anything works.

Why is everybody always talking about Huizinga's magic circle and whether it's a good or useful concept, when they could also talk about the fact that the opening of the book fucking rules?

Hex Kid progress report #003: basic grid in place, including offset and orientation selection #ttrpg #osr

Why am I reading portrait PDFs on my landscape monitor? RPGs could embrace digital-native design with tooltips, integrated dice rollers, and responsive layouts instead of treating screens like worse paper. dicegoblin.blog/why-the-fuck...

Hex Kid progress report #001: elegant hover animations ✅ #ttrpg #osr

“Nobody loved the library more than Dan.” A meticulous list kept by Dan Pelzer from 1962-2025, cataloging all the books he borrowed and read from the Columbus Metropolitan Library, shared by his daughter. I could not could not love this more. Dan's book list (all 109 pages) at what-dan-read.com

This week for @leaflet.pub's summer pub club, I let @bastionland.bsky.social's Mythic Bastionland inspire me create & publish an early version of a set of hex tiles based on paintings from The Met collection: jonasmerlin.itch.io/the-met-coll... #ttrpg #osr

My timeline's friendship with holes ended. Now small flying creatures holding staffs are its best friend.

Dreading that feeling of having to come up with a sweet mobile lair concept on the spot? Not anymore! #ttrpg #osr dungeon-merlin.leaflet.pub/3lt6dz5j5bc22

New month, new Carouse, Carouse! This time, I'm getting spicy about subtweeting (and a lot of people write more interesting things). www.carouse.blog/july-2025-ju...

Explorateur #9 is live and over encumbered with design links. www.explorersdesign.com/the-explorat... I'll share some of the standouts here on Bluesky...

Instead of penalizing being overencumbered, what if there was a reward to carrying fewer items than your capacity? Would this make encumbrance tracking something players want to do instead of a chore? Read the thought experiment #osr #ttrpg

Just released my first little TTRPG thing: jonasmerlin.itch.io/robot-bee-be... It's a science-fantasy themed character background for Cairn 2e, inspired by this great jam, which has a whole bunch of super flavourful backgrounds: itch.io/jam/cairn-ba... #ttrpg #osr

My friend Yannick is building the ultimate version of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe over at @bejofo.com If you like having fun, like... at all, you should give it a try. Or, play against me: bejofo.com/ttt/HuQ1PqH0 But be warned: I'm very, very bad!

What's a poster you had up in your room growing up? ... 🤷‍♂️

Hey, look, it's my hometown, and it never looked so cool! (Really. It hasn't. Ever.)

Turned Doctor Curious, VII's semi-official, @idlecartulary.itch.io approved #zungeon Table into a small webapp to quickly roll a theme: zungeon-theme-generator.vercel.app

Kinda want to build a service that sends you a printout of an RSS feed or a Blue Sky account's posts once a week or month via real world mail...

Please stop attacking me.

If you're looking for a weekly newsletter about the technical aspects (mostly) of creative coding, @gorillasun.bsky.social is basically all signal. Recommended!

Just finished reading "A Wizard of Earthsea," and while my edition's illustrations by Charles Vess are beautiful, in her afterword, Le Guin writes that for her, the first edition cover by Ruth Robbins – depicting a Ged with "copper-brown skin" – was the definitive one. And I kind of have to agree.

I wrote a thingy about ideas. @jonasmerlin.bsky.social wrote a response to it. And this is my response to that response. It is my response response. https://www.todepond.com/wikiblogardenite/how/change/happens/

I started aggregating my media reviews from different services on my website and haven't automated that process yet, so I add them manually using my editor. This has led to the very bizarre feeling of seeing Copilot come up with whole reviews in my voice, incl. which movie it thinks I have watched.

Felt it might make sense to explore my thoughts on this a bit further www.jonasmerl.in/blog/what-i-...