This category includes advice for play, prep, publishing, and more.

🏆 Writing Rooms in Pairs
Leonard Cohen's Advice for Novice OSR Referees

Got no game: Should your module be system agnostic?
Ten Intangible Tips for Development Editing Your RPG Manuscript

A Lock With No Key: Designing Obstacles for OSR Play
Don’t Write Lore, Write Tables

Pocket-Sized Powder Kegs
make better mind pictures

How to Replicate Over/Under
In Praise of Prep

Look Before You Leap
Just Tell Them What They Need!

How I Do Play by Post
Action-Oriented Interaction

Obstacles Support Exploration*
Treat Illusions As You Would Any Other Lie: No Rolls

*This blog post was originally titled Less Combat… More Obstacles in the competition but that title was incorrect. I waited until after the competition to fix the name so that the name change didn't impact the voting and conversations supporting it online.

This category includes critical analysis of books, games, and more.

Barkeep on the Borderlands: A Review
Mausritter, Wargame

Playing the Chaplain's Game
The Isle: The Review (Mostly)

Doing a Cool Move
Review of Initiative Methods

B1 and Toyetic Dungeon Rooms
The D&D 4th edition renaissance: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

Monster, Maiden, Madonna, Medusa
Expressionism in Practice: A Case Study of Triangle Agency

🏆 How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design, Part 1: Pre-Jaquays Dungeons
Who Up Tunneling Them Trolls?

The Combat Conundrum: how violence actually works in mothership.
Arthurian Mysticism and Violence: a Mythic Bastionland Analysis

Review: The White Horse of Lowvale
I Read Spine

This category includes ready-to-use rules, monsters, and more.

A mental inventory for occult horror campaigns: an HPless system
🏆 RANDOM ENCOUNTER TABLES AS ADVENTURE RAM: Adding “Memory” To Encounter Checks

Scooby Doo as Post Apocalyptic RPG Setting
Stacking The Deck – Mining Fallout: New Vegas for TTRPG Setting Ideas

Promises - a Mythic Bastionland House Rule
Leverage & Rapport: A Simple Social Mechanic

Let’s Make a Forest
Generating Jaquaysed Dungeons (1.5)

1d20 Diegetic Rules, 1d20 Hypo-Diegetic Rules
What do people know about the Mythos?

Just Use Bears… Or Wolves, Dragons or Spiders
Wilderness Stocking - Expanded

Castle Claus: The Keep on the North Pole
Anti-colonial Dungeon

[HMTW] Using Divination to Generate a Character
The Elemental Plane of Plastic

This category is all about systems, mechanics, gameplay, and more.

Baseline Worldbuilding
🏆 WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives

Everything is Pointcrawl!
Making Hacking an OSR Style Problem

Why Orcs? Or, Why Do I Love Orcs?
Why I Like Binary Resolution Systems

The Star-Pattern: a Pitfall of GMing
Books [Verb] Play

Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole: The Case for Pitcher Plant Dungeon Entrances
The 10 Types of Special Rooms

The Languages of D&D Imply a Specific Setting
There is a point to Tom Bombadil (or how I approach lore)

Conflict as Motivation and Resolution
Combat As My Balls

Does Super Mario Bros. (1985) Have Rules?
[An OSR Pattern] One, Two, or Three Exits


Update 2/9/26: How Do You Handle the "Inside" of a Hex? was removed by author request and replaced with Books [Verb] Play.

An all new category for ideas about taxonomy, creativity, and beyond.

🏆 Mapping the Blogosphere
Reviews: What Are They Good For?

The OSR Onion
What is an OSR?

The Expressionist Games Manifesto
The 1E Manifesto

A Mask That Eats Into Your Face: Honesty in the Work
Don’t wait to create, don’t wait to learn

Close and Distant Playstyles
6 Bluey Episodes Every Game Designer Should Watch

Faggot Games: An Urgent Warning
On Categorization, Rule Buckets, and Diegesis

Sam’s Three-Question Taxonomy
the default dungeon is colonial

Thinking About Actual Play as Non-Fiction
The Five Laws of Roleplaying Games

• Valeria Loves
• The Garden Below
• To Be Resolved
• This Vorpal Coil
• Afraid of Encounters
• Dungeon Scrawler
• in lowercase
• fluorite guillotine
• The Play Reports
• Birdmilk’s Cafe

• Dungeon Room Index
• Middle-earth Hexcrawl Project
• The AD&D Series
• Designing Dungeons Course
• Shiny TTRPG Links
• Cataphracts Design Diaries
• Seven-Part Pact
• Goin' Through the Fiend Folio
• Books in TTRPGs
• Critique Navidad!

• Writing Rooms in Pairs
• How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design, Part 1: Pre-Jaquays Dungeons
• RANDOM ENCOUNTER TABLES AS ADVENTURE RAM: Adding “Memory” To Encounter Checks
• WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives
• Mapping the Blogosphere

The five primary categories are decided via single-elimination tournament. The bonus categories are decided by a much simpler ranked-choice vote.

Tournament Categories:

• Advice. Advice for play, prep, publishing, and more.
• Critique. Critical analysis of books, games, and more.
• Gameable. Ready-to-use rules, monsters, and more.
• Theory. Thinking about systems, settings, and more.
• Meta. Ideas about taxonomy, creativity, and beyond.

Bonus Bloggies Categories:

• Best Debut Blog. Recognition for newcomers that make a splash.
• Best Series. For outstanding series that cover an overarching topic.
• Best Overall Post. The final showdown of The Bloggies.

We had a lot of great manifesto, taxonomy, and industry talk this year, but it was quickly crowding all the other categories—so rather than omit good posts, we siloed them to their own spotlight in the Bloggies. (I know I keep writing "we" but it really is mostly me floating ideas to friends and family before jumping in head first.)

The Bloggies primary categories are a single-elimination bracket-style tournament. The bonus categories are a simple ranked-choice vote. You can find the whole breakdown in the explainer article here.

The Bloggies' schedule is always in flux. This year, the plan is to run all five category tournaments in just one week. We're not saying you should take time off, but maybe be prepared to read a lot. The following week will be voting for Best Series and Best Debut Blog.

Anything published between December 1st 2024 and December 31st 2025.* I'm staying out of this year's competition while I borrow the crown, cape, and scepter. Anything submitted last year is ineligible this year.

*Last year's cutoff was November 31st. The overlap grandfathers people in.

We want to avoid audience attrition. The longer the competition lasts, the fewer people that vote when it matters most. This blitz-like approach will put a greater emphasis on pre-reading and campaigning for individual posts, which we hope increases the competition's reach and overall impact.

Yes. It's encouraged. But there's a golden path to Bloggies greatness—boost another post at the same time. If you fail to uphold this rule, your URL will be cursed with inane comments, typos, and long load times for all eternity.