The Explorateur’s one year review.

After a year of curating monthly design links, it's time to reflect on how The Explorateur's been doing. Personally, I've had a lot of fun making it. I started the project last year as an excuse to get more involved, exercise my curiosity, and put a little distance between myself and the algorithms. So far, so good.

But what about the numbers? How is The Explorateur doing as a newsletter?

The Explorateur by the numbers...

• Current subscribers: 1,048
• Open rate: 61% (All-time low: 51%)
• Link click rate: 23% (All-time low: 20%)

It's a relatively small following, but The Explorateur is a niche within a niche. It's a great start. And the open rate? Fantastic. Most newsletters are lucky to have anywhere close to around 30%. As the newsletter grows, it'll get closer to that number, so I'll need to stay selective about what gets featured.

Planned changes for The Explorateur...

• Overhauling sections. I renamed some of the sections, shortened their descriptions, and made slight adjustments to how everything is sorted.
• Experimenting with the artist and agency showcases. This was an addition meant to buff up the non-rpg section, but it's too broad and random.
• Summarizing Explorers Design. The Explorateur officially has more subscribers than Explorers Design, but I'd hate for you to miss the good stuff.

Questions for Explorateur subscribers...

• What do you want to see more (or less) of in future issues?
• How do you consume the newsletter? Email? RSS? Social?
• What was your favorite find in this last year?

That's all for now. Let's get on to last month's discoveries...

Explorers Loot

• The Awards Debrief. This 4-part series is all about rpg award shows, how they're designed, and what they mean for our industry. More importantly, it's also my behind-the-scenes breakdown and critique of the Ennies.
• How to Promote Your Work. If I knew Matt Colville was going to make a video about it, I would have saved myself the trouble—but hey—here it is. An emphatic call for other creators to promote themselves like normal people.
• What is Bleed and Slug? A short and sweet article with two user-friendly definitions for tabletop rpg designers. How important is bleed? And what the heck is a slug? (Honestly, I had to ask better designers to find out.)

Quests & Rumors

Game jams, contests, and opportunities. Drop me a line on Bluesky.

• Puzzle Dungeon Jam. My favorite kind of dungeon. It's not just packed with puzzles, the dungeon is the puzzle. If you liked the APPX N jam from July, you have to participate in this one. Jam ends December 15th.
• Mausritter Month Companion Jam. While the official BackerKit event is underway, the swords-and-whiskers game is inviting everyone to participate via Itch. I highly recommend this jam. It ends December the 11th.
• TTRPG Tools Jam. Make something for your favorite indie game that helps new people get into it. Spreadsheets, infographics, tutorial videos, and databases are all on the table. The jam ends November 16th.
• The Onegeon Manifesto. 2025 has been the year of manifestos. This one by Cats Have No Lord, challenges designers to make singular rooms interesting enough to slot onto other dungeons. The jam ends December 3oth.
• Enter the Zungeon. Bash together a quick dungeon. This long-running jam is getting close to the finish line, but you still have plenty of time. Check out the Zungeon Manifesto for inspiration. Jam ends December 30th.

Reviews & Critique

Critique and examinations of tabletop rpgs, adventures, and more.

• Mörk Borg and the Gospel of Doom Metal Design by One Man and His Dice. “We often talk about ‘rules as text,’ but Mörk Borg introduced the idea of layout as meaning… it’s graphic expressionism… the book is the setting…”
• I Read Spine by Idle Cartulary. Spine is one of the most interesting solo games I've ever read. Easily entering my top five of all time. I won't spoil the review, but I think it's safe to say we'll be hearing a lot about Spine.
• Bathtub Review: What Ho, Frog Demons by Idle Cartulary. I consider Frog Demons to be a classic. Its setting, cover, and frogs are iconic. But the layout? Challenging. Tantilizingly so. A flawed classic begging for a remaster.
• Mythic Bastionland by Dungeon Craft. Video. A great little walkthrough of Chris McDowall's colossal hit with some great callouts. "It's a work of art. A seamless blending of mechanics, worldbuilding, and artwork."
• I Killed a God with the Power of Good Graphic Design by Chase Carter. Paywall. Hinokodo's Miru is a beautiful little game with great functionality under the hood. After all, good design isn't just for looks.
• VR_DEAD w/ Waco Matrixo by Ansible Uplink. Podcast. Ansible Uplink is a new podcast that reviews sci-fi modules from Traveller to Mothership. This inaugural episode has a great module and guest.
• Kindomites: Brutal Frontier by Wayspell. As I shared in last month's Explorateur, Hodag is the king of DIY nostalgia—and Wayspell's recent review of Brutal Frontier only intensifies that assessment to me.

Exhibits & Best-iary

The never-sponsored section of the newsletter full of design and industry loot.

• Community by Matthew Colville. Video. A topic that’s close to my heart. This video is all about being a creator, finding community, promoting yourself, and creating a healthy community. I had similar thoughts on self-promotion.
• Spine & Text-First RPGs by Backwards Tabletop. Asa has a whole series of interviews and essays for the launch of his game, Spine, including one with Jay Dragon, Liz Little, and myself. It's a brain-burner of a series. Read it.
• News from the Grid by Jean Verne. An rpg graphic design newsletter with type explorations, advice, and awesome resources—it's basically this newsletter but different, maybe even better!
• Artist Showcase: Daniel Harila. If you like idiosyncratic work with a strong vision and tone, follow the illustrator/writer/designer combos. Daniel Harila’s Duginthroat Divided looks like a classic example. Check it out.
• Mad Dungeon Podcast by Epic Level Rap Gods. This podcast flew under my radar despite having creators like Andrew Bellury and Steve Albertson as hosts. This episode features Brad Kerr, prolific module writer and duck fan.
• The Mecha TTRPG Newsletter by Backwards Tabletop. If you like mechs (the fighting kind) and their pilots (the crying kind), you‘ll like this monthly newsletter packed with new releases, interviews, and other nuts and bolts.
• RPGs Don't Make Stories... by Reading D&D Aloud. Video. This is an illuminating chat between three people I wouldn't expect, Jay Dragon (Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast), Watt (Cloud Empress), and Ben Riggs (D&D Historian).

Theory & Advice

Design tools, theory, and inspiration for rpg designers from rpg designers.

• Designers as Poets by The RPG Gazette. Instead of framing designers as "engineers of the imagination," this article shines the spotlight on something unsung in many rpg designer's work—the use of literary voice.
• The Ten Types of Special Rooms by Traipses. Every old-school dungeon has its fights, traps, and treasure, but sometimes you get a weird one. This article describes 10 like meta categories. You can sink your teeth into this one.
• Multi-Purpose Maps by David B. There's something about the structure and cadence of a map that can give it an almost built-in sense of narrative. David B (ECO MOFOS!!) takes the five-room dungeon and blows it up.
• Reviews: What are they Good for? by Dododecahedron. What separates the good reviews from the okay ones? I think Dodo has the answers. I'm especially fond of the fourth reason: enhance the audience experience.
• Making Hacking an OSR-Style Problem by Goblin Zone. Hacking is surprisingly hard to make fun without reducing it to a skill check. This post is the latest in a long saga of designers trying to hack in-game hacking.
• Puzzle Dungeon Design: Themes and Gimmicks by Puzzle Dungeon. Gimmicks get a bad rap in rpg design. Done well, they can tie a whole dungeon together, like a nice rug in a shitty Los Angeles apartment.
• The Ancient Game of Riddles by Jack Edward. Like hacking, solving riddles is hard to make satisfying in games. I can see this abstract mini-game being really fun in games where authorship is spread across the table.

Strange & Familiar

Design tools, theory, and inspiration from the world beyond tabletop rpgs.

• 📣 Affinity Studios. A month after the tease, we finally know what "creative freedom" means. A new platform with photo, design, and layout all built into one suite for free. It has the usual red and yellow flags, but only time will tell.
• The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola. A whole book, published by MIT, publicly accessible, and immensely educational. Required reading for serious designers.
• Logo Histories. Do you like looking at old logos? Of course you do. You're reading this newsletter. This blog covers a lot of logos with analysis, backstories, and a little extra.
• A Wholesome Plane has Hit the Second Cozy Tower by Gio. "Cozy games" are on the rise. It's often an aesthetic, or a marketing strategy, but somtimes it's dangerous. An article all about when cozy becomes dangerous.
• The Case for Optimism in the Age of AI by True Grit. It might be a perverse kind of optimism, but AI is getting a little wheezy running around trying to find problems for all of its rumored solutions.
• Beep! Mega Drive Magazine. For a brief moment in the 1990s, Japan was blessed with the bright explosive magazine covers of Beep! Mega Drive Magazine. I would like to see an rpg with this bombastic look and feel.

Design Archive

Old articles, famous and the overlooked, resurrected from the dead.

• The Nine Forms of the Five-Room Dungeon by Matthew J. Neagley. We've come a long way from just nine forms and Quantum Ogres, but the five-room dungeon, as an exercise and one-shot, persists.
• 10 Tangible Tips for Editing Your RPG Manuscript by Sam Sorensen. Is it a little prescriptive? Yes. Do I think most games would be improved by some Elements of Style-level editing? Also yes.

Missed the last issue? Read it here.

The Explorateur: Issue #12

Monthly design discoveries for tabletop rpg designers including jams, critique, theory, and tools. Vetted. Looted. Curated.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

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