piracy is the only extant form of media preservation that exists in games right now, you might find it morally reprehensible but there is literally no other institution that will keep games alive in 25, 50 years' time

Explore the great indoors this summer through the Designed in the DMV newsletter. We publish a monthly calendar of events involving game designers in DC, Maryland, and Virginia: dmv-designed-games.beehiiv.com/p/tabletop-g...

This month's Explorateur kicks off the design curation with 10 thoughts too small for their own posts! Thoughts like: The path to greatness is paved in cringe. Kill Luke Skywalker as soon as possible. Let Frontier airlines test your book. Your manifesto needs manifestation. Thanks for reading!

D&D is an asymmetrical game, and a lot of design failures result from trying to treat it as symmetrical. It’s an easy mistake to make. In theory, players and monsters have access to similar rules. But in practice, many things that are awesome for players will SUCK as monster abilities.

I wrote about the Prairieland defendants and the urgency of opposing the extreme sentences handed down on Tuesday. And they likely will not be the last.

There were a whopping 80 blog posts for the latest Random Blogwagon! I round them all up into a rollable table here: #osr #ttrpg #blogwagon

Hey, you! Are you making a neat little ttrpg for a game jam and need a cover? I gotchu. ✨And they're free✨ ko-fi.com/alderdoodle/...

Zedeck is a genius

Sparse basaltic conifer woodland and mixed grasses

I wrote a post for the Random Blogwagon from @prismaticwasteland.com! I rolled on the included tables, and in trying to shame Knight at the Opera via post length while also being inspired by Gothridge Manor, I made 10 random tables for non-gaming inspiration radiantlands.blogspot.com/2026/06/rand...

it's basically the number one rule to any medium ; you can't just tunnel-vision and pigeon hold yourself into a corner. that niche may feel comfortable but it's stifling and prevents you from seeing "the bigger picture" in any sort of artistic/cultural context

Any object that leaves a dungeon becomes Dungeonseed. Every coin, every nicked blade is a century of germination away from sprouting into a dark labyrinth, sprawling from kitchen closets and merchant purses, uncoiling from basements and vaults across the land. Our lands were alive, once.

End discourse forever with this one weird trick! magnoliakeep.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-...

Bowman

Two details about this strip that really hit for me: - Hobbes isn't in this strip because it's not from Calvin's POV - By extension, a beautiful little detail is how his dad is drawn (in a VERY Hobbes-esque pose) when he's out playing with Calvin in the snow

The Appx. N Jam 2026 page is live! Sign up to participate! @itch.io #gamejam #osr #dnd #pulpfantasy itch.io/jam/appx-n-j...

Why let a good controversy go to waste? An addendum to “An Illiterate Hobby”. rolltodoubt.wordpress.com/2026/06/09/p...

A novel worldbuilding method for generating interesting religions by focusing on the behaviour of the believer first. Inspired by the writing of @mindstorm.bsky.social and for @prismaticwasteland.com's Random blogwagon. foreignplanets.blogspot.com/2026/06/deus... #osr #ttrpg #worldbuilding

I've been thinking about dungeons (again), particularly dungeons in video games. Mainly "can they be as good as well-designed OSR dungeons"? To answer that question, I built a 100 point rubric for grading all sorts of digital dungeons radiantlands.blogspot.com/2026/05/delv...

I've been thinking about dungeons (again), particularly dungeons in video games. Mainly "can they be as good as well-designed OSR dungeons"? To answer that question, I built a 100 point rubric for grading all sorts of digital dungeons radiantlands.blogspot.com/2026/05/delv...

The best advice I ever got when I started freelancing was, if you have to turn down work, always suggest someone else who could do it. I have been so lucky to benefit from that over the years.

There is (was, maybe I'm late) a sex blog bandwagon going on, so here is my submission: six sex spells for your game #osr #ttrpg

so like lemme weigh in on this as someone who is more financially comfortable than many in my generational cohort: everything I have gained seems precarious and temporary because I know the people with real money will take it all from me the second they get an opportunity and no one will protect me.

Just today I was telling someone that it's okay to have or start an infrequently updated blog, if you make an interesting post twice a year or whatever that's awesome, just don't apologize about it and I still think never explain or apologize for your posting schedule is my best piece of blog advice

Thinking about Phil Hale and that weird series of paintings he had where some guy would be fighting with unseen robots, in what I think is some fantasy California

Many well-known TTRPG folk (indie, freelance, and more) perch in shit apartments, eat on a tight budget, and work furiously and not always successfully to keep their heads above water. I don't know percentages, but it's not a *small* slice.

Have you seen light used in a TTRPG or board game before? I mean literal light, like from the sun, a flashlight, or maybe a candle? In this post I dive into one of my favourite mechanics: monkeyslunch.com/fav...

Someone did the yeoman's work of making an interactable hexcrawl dashboard for the Middle-earth Hexcrawl Project! Check out their incredible work:

Hey make your voices heard. Tell the FCC that Queer folks are people not some thing that needs a fucking warning label. Don't let them demonize us. Make a difference.

I was in the middle of explaining this to someone who asked at PaxU last year when someone else in the room interrupted me to change the conversation. If you’ve ever benefitted from this city’s love, you need to know this.

I really love this, in part bc it harkens to the human relationship with storytelling (something I'm *constantly* thinking about). We're drawn to telling and hearing stories, and everything we interact with (including chess!) can become fertile ground for storytelling

Hectic day but it's almost done😌

Happy Monday everyone here's this week's ttrpg it's about writing a history of all the important people in the tabletop hobby and then like maybe putting it onto a website or something kumada1.itch.io/a-total-and-...

So, these guys are actually comic book mustache twirling evil. I messaged them on Instagram last night encouraging them to respect the wishes of the people asking to be removed from their site. They gave me a canned response, and then ADDED me to the website.

I think that the TTRPG industry has just experienced (and still is experiencing) a fairly strong anti-slop radicalization event.

Four Pillars Gaming published hundred of AI-generated profiles over the past four months and when people asked to be taken down, they doubled down, defended their process, and refused. The ramifications of hallucinatory LLM "histories" threaten to erode truth and destroy the historical record.

Sure, everybody wants to befriend a crow (we do!) But if your TTRPG / D&D character wants a bird familiar or a feathery animal companion, there are WAY more options to consider. Here's our guide to best birds for your TTRPG class! 🐦‍⬛✨ www.doubleproficiency.com/post/bird-fa...

In which the fate of the OSR+ and artistic salons and electrocuted squirrels are pondered…I accidentally posted a draft last night, so this is the finished version with a better ending. dreamshrike.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-...

You might be thinking, 'I make normal games so I'm fine' but, uh, you don't get to decide what 'normal' is – they do. Put any description of queerness or sexual trauma in your game and you've given them cause to boot you from their platform. Voidheart wouldn't pass these guidelines, I think.

example one bajillion of how graphic design makes or breaks your tabletop rulebook

I think this is true for all creatives but I especially try to give this advice to folks who want to go into games media, because we're already swamped with folks whose literal only interest in life is video games and all their writing sounds the same.

The best proof of the small and irrelevant nature of the TTRPG industry is that Bethesda, which has contented itself to re-re-release Skyrim in every conceivable form for the prior 15 years, has never licensed a Skyrim TTRPG (compatible with 5e, of course).

🦉Birdwatching is now the second fastest growing hobby for Gen Z! Among millennials it has risen by 216% alongside a 66% increase in gen X birders. Welcome to a world of wonder! www.theguardian.com/environment/... #nature #birds

Absolutely devastated for these lovers separated from each other two and a half millennia before i was even born. From the book, "Cut These Words into My Stone: Ancient Greek Epitaphs" (Wolfe, Michael)

I think my favorite bit this conversation is that I've been writing a zine about how and why to make small journaling games, which will include one I made inspired by a quote that's been stuck in my head my whole adult life, and from the presumption that ...

This guy, again! White Plume Mountain is one of the best modules ever. This is undisputed. Doing an homage with Pokémon?! So good.

In which I make an argument for leaving blank hexes on your campaign map - table46.bearblog.dev/hex-maps-nee... #rpg #nsr #osr #posr

This is, I should note, also one of the great paradoxes of designing games. Translating interpretation to fiction is one of the most powerful techniques to *do*, but one of the hardest to explain because those interpretations are so very much a matter of CONTEXT.

The Toa Mata Finished up the Original #bionicle Toa crew and wanted to put them all together in one place. This was a really fun side project! (1/2)

I forgot to post it (again) but I DID finish another week of city26. This one is just some streets in the Terra Nova district. I think they could do with a little more spice, but its not bad for a first pass radiantlands.blogspot.com/2026/04/city...