3, 2, 1, happy new year New Zealand!

It's Wallace Wunkle's Tragedy Factory! My new solo RPG where you play as a kid trying to survive a whimsically terrifying tour of Mr Wunkle’s flying factory. If you escape a horrible magic-realism-based punishment for some minor foible, you might just make it all the way to the moral at the end.

By publishing www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/507211/small-medium-at-large a minute after midnight in New Zealand on January 1, I snatched the DUBIOUS HONOUR of having likely put out the first TTRPG of 2025. I’ve made a dozen or so tabletop things since, from weird wizard zines to SCP bookmarks.

I've decided I ought to get one newsletter out before the end of the year. With news and discount links for a game I'm about to publish! If you'd like to receive my irregular newsletters, including this one if you get in quick, you can sign up at www.periaptgames.com

1999-2022: "Boy I sure hope we realise the dream of a Semantic Web, so that programs can parse every bit of data on the web and transform the information in useful new ways" 2023-: "Wait no no no oh god no"

I read 50 books this year! Here, in no particular order, are some really freaking good ones. 🧵

In case you missed it, I released a semi-cooperative dungeon-defying RPG this year. Your successes depend on each other. glyphtide.games/chainxlink/

Here's a simple, fair, game-agnostic procedure for adding little twists and surprises to action resolution. Because it's reasonable that sometimes you make a loud noise or impress bystanders or break a tool or need less holy water than you expected. periaptgames.blogspot.com/2025/12/comp...

I stretch out my gauntleted hands and offer you two pills: one red, one blue. (They are horse medicine tablets)

The headline doesn't specify what happened, but we can all sing along because we know the words by heart www.1news.co.nz/2025/12/27/n...

How I'm walking out of 2025

I stretch out my gauntleted hands and offer you two pills: one red, one blue. (They are horse medicine tablets)

If you're in the market for lovely handcrafted TTRPG art, I hope you've checked out @silverglass.bsky.social's Patreon or store! Sophie's been painting ALL the classic fantasy RPG spells, and has already made more than a hundred artworks for the project! I really like the symbolic, dreamlike look.

A random generator should be tightly coupled to its purpose, meaning each entry should be fit to that purpose. Is the table to be used for possible inspirations? Definite discoveries? Complications? Hazards? Plausible names? etc.

The bamboo stems I haphazardly rammed in the ground to train my tomatoes are now dangerous punji sticks hindering my attempts to pick off caterpillars A truly breathtaking act of betrayal

I'm taking a peek at the Fomoria RPG quickstart. That is some GORGEOUS illustration work! tania-herrero.itch.io/fomoria-quic...

Reading 'Plotted: A Literary Atlas' for the holidays. It's full of infographicish spatial visualisations of books and poems, with accompanying remarks. Just hit Andrew DeGraff's illustrations for Borges' The Library Of Babel, which is what I picked the book up for originally, and they're so good

Two heads are better than one…?

liminal week! liminal week!

You can tell that LotR was written by an academic because Gandalf disappears for like 20 years doing research to answer a single question.

🪄 You hear muffled sounds from a desk drawer. At the bottom you find a small gargoyle carved from jade. A crack runs down through its head and torso. It is intended to serve as a trusted advisor, but now the advice it gives is cracked too.

Not every game has a lava diving play procedure, or riddles. But you probably want at least one of them in a game with a lot of base-building!

Just got reminded about that caricature of acclaimed actor Nic Cage which Jan Matejko painted in 1890

Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google. My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence! go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

Few animals build megastructures. Ants, beavers, termites, and weaver birds are notable in this regard. As such, the citizenry has few chances to interact with these glorious edifices. But what if "rat dams" could be a feature of every major city? If this funding application is approved,

historians have finally found it. the original skeleton war recruitment poster

If you're new to Bluesky and into tabletop games, here's a few TTRPG types to follow go.bsky.app/VBdUQ9n

The Binding Of Isaac (Flash version):

You there, boy! What thread is it?

Merry Hexmas periapt-games.itch.io/hexmas-locat...

And to all a good night!

periapt-games.itch.io/the-verdant-... Deep in the dungeon there's a huge round cavity, smooth and green. Trapped within, a dangerous sludge waits for a chance to begin its expansion once again. If you open the door, it may bury the world in slime. Free on itch. Merry Christmas! #onegeon #dungeon

I'm so used to starting queries at specific sites like Wikipedia now, it really is remarkable how worthless Google search has become. Tried there because I didn't know what something was called. After two pages of ads I eventually found what I needed through a tvtropes link of all places.

It's maddening hearing folks talk about LLM use-cases within their tools that would seem to be so much more effectively and reliably addressed by simple domain-specific implementations of solutions.

Essential dungeon crawl monsters: 1. Big and dumb 2. Small but there's lots 3. Tentacles don't go there 4. Evil horse 5. Fun facts about mushrooms 6. Eye 7. Punchable child 8. Dude that looks like another dude 9. Hostile architecture 10. Capitalism allegory 11. Uncomfortable implications 12. Steve

Vespertine Inclinidia

In every century, cats is the same (written by Japanese Emperor Uda on 11th March 809; picture unrelated)

It's cool if you don't read my stuff! Most people haven't! But reading the outputs of a machine that lies about what I wrote actually cancels out some of the reading that another person might have done.

Have I talked loudly and persistently enough about Overzealous? It's a solo RPG of cartoon mayhem in which you just want to be a benevolent god but the cultists trying to summon you into reality are the traditional bloodthirsty zealots. Coming soon! www.kickstarter.com/projects/per...

You're telling me a seasonal affected this order?

Terror at 20,000 Feet

✨Happy Winter Solstice, and all the upcoming winter holidays! 🌟🎉✨

Kinda lacking on creativity at the moment

Some Trench Crusade fanart. #art #fanart #trenchcrusade

"New Years is the continuation of Christmas by other means" - Santa Clausewitz

I'm once again hunting artists 🔍 BAME and BIMPOC only please this time, for paid work! @hatchlingdm.itch.io and I are looking for those interested in drawing dragons, high-fantasy mechs, and nature vs. technology for our Daggerheart compatible sourcebook based on 'Dragon Dowser', the solo game!

Yeah of course I subscribe to FORBS

stumbled on a bunch of extremely niche professions that only have articles in Dutch Wikipedia (autotranslated in my browser)

I heard you! You took a deep breath, got real high, and yelled "What's going on?" Well, it's #selfpromosaturday is what's going on! You got cool #ttrpg and #writing stuff? Great! Share below!