Where'd the time go?

I have no tips or updates this month. It's a miracle I got anything done. So, without further ado, here are my favorite design links from April.

Explorers' Loot

• What Cookbooks Can Learn from RPGs. For April Fools, I decided to flip the script and explore what cookbooks can learn from RPGs (a lot actually).
• 5 RPG Ideas from Urban Design. The art and science of spaces and communities is (not surprisingly) immediately applicable to fictional ones.
• Reviewing Rise of the Blood Olms. Yes, this is satire. The past year gave us a lot of great critique, but this glowing review pokes fun at the fumbles.

Quests & Rumors

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

• Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam. The theme this year is: "Side Effects May Include..." You can make adventures for any system you like. The jam ends May 31st.
• Old-School Essentials Month. Prepare your spirit for a collab project led by Exalted Funeral and Necrotic Gnome on Backerkit. May 5th – June 6th.
• Islands!! Islands!! Islands!!! Jam. Design weird islands for the game Islands of Weirdhope, a standalone expansion to Eco Mofos!! Ends June 1st.
• You Cannot Play This TTRPG Jam. This is a game jam for games that do not exist. They won't ever exist. They will never be playable. Ends June 21st.
• Make Moves Jam. Create or share singular Moves using Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) design philosophies. Jam lasts all year. Ends Dec 31st.

Reviews & Critique

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

• Mothership: A Useful Economic Baseline by Injector Seat. A quick look at how the economy in Mothership's anti-canon grounds its horror themes.
• Fatherfog: Flip Through by The Dolent Chronicle. Mothership's newest sibling from Tuesday Knight Games is a fairytale horror with its own style.
• Echo Brine by Idle Cartulary. The Shadowdark community is productive and remarkably consistent with its visual design. This review covers a standout.
• Dungeon Inc. by Patchwork Paladin. Another Mushmen production. This review is a first look. The game's premise, "What if the PCs ran the dungeon?"
• The Monster's Overhaul by Seed of Worlds. This review cuts to the chase: It's good. Get it. Few books have this much content organized so well.
• 📺 Kala Mandala Zines by Questing Beast. Munkao is a gifted artist, worldbuilder, and writer. Ben from Questing Beast gives a glowing walkthrough.

Design Examples & Best-iary

The spotlight section of the newsletter full of showcases and projects.

• Map Blog Bandwagon by Prismatic Wasteland. The latest blog theme was maps! Over 50 different blogs participated with theory, advice, and more.
• Lore: A Lord of the Rings Adventure Game Retroclone. This is a staggeringly large project paired with Rise Up Comus's Middle Earth Hexcrawl.
• Fatherfog OE Out Now. Tuesday Knight Games, publisher of Mothership, has a new Fairytale Horror Game. You can snag the pdf for free right now.
• Vaults of Vaarn 2E: Public Preview. Over 60+ pages of updated rules, options, and more. It's surprisingly polished for being a work-in-progress.
• Interview with Stonetop Creators by Chase at Rascal News. Jason Lutes and Jeremy Strandberg talk Stonetop and its many design and production insights.
• ⚙️ Adapting the Nemesis System by Dice Goblin. "A proposed method to simulate that very addicting gameplay loop from a certain Lord of the Rings game."

Theory & Craft

Design tools, resources, theory, and advice for rpg designers from rpg designers.

• Module Writing Tips by New School Revolution. I like a good list and this one spares your work from simple technical mistakes. Clear. Functional. Good.
• Writing Modules for Cairn by New School Revolution. Oh? You want more tips but for Cairn specifically? Good on you. Here they are. I'd read both.
• Perils & Princesses Creation Guide by Ryan Lynch. This official guide provides guidelines, design principles, and materials for 3rd party work!
• Elements of a Key 4: Rules for Key-Writing by BAATAG. Misha's 4-part deep dive on keys and key writing concludes with this post of actionable steps.
• Designing Pamphlet Games (with Shitty Printers in Mind) by Crow's Corner. Make your fans' lives easier and give them something printer friendly.
• How to Talk About Difficulty by Knight at the Opera. What do we mean when we say a game is hard? Dwiz mines video games and more for the answer.
• You Should Publish That by Hilander RPGs. Solid advice for getting rpg stuff onto the page. "Write the shittiest version first. Make it better later."
• Fullstack Refereeing by Among Cats and Books. Normally I don't share GMing advice, but there's some design inspiration lurking in this post.

Inspiring & Non-roleplaying

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

• Fleurons, Mother of all Bullets by The Play Reports. Bullet points, like a lot of things in modern design, can be blamed on Microsoft. Some history...
• Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green by Beth Matthews. Color theory might be 1 part science and 2 parts occultism, but I love its work.
• Dargon by Anne-Dauphine “Ando” Borione from TypeTogether. Fans of Velvetyne will recognize this type designer's pro-grade, RPG-inspired fonts.
• 💡 State of Abandoned. Explore forgotten places from all over America with photography of crumbling and decaying factories, prisons, schools, and houses.
• 💡 Vintage Milwaukee Bus Passes. The collection features bus passes from 1930 to 1979. After which, I assume Milwaukee became forgettably drab.
• 💡 The Vault of the Atomic Space Age. Everything from boxy robots to groovy UFO-shaped houses. This would be good fodder for a sci-fi game.
• 💡 Calendar Design in the Archive. Letterform Archive has a stellar collection of design ephemera, this latest curation is just another on the pile.

Design Archive

Old articles, missed articles, famous or overlooked, resurfaced for the newsletter.

• Juicy Worms by Idle Cartulary. What motivates players to not only engage with an adventure, but engage with it in natural, diegetic ways? A new classic.

Missed the last issue? Read it here.

The Explorateur: Issue #18

Monthly design jams, critique, theory, and inspiration for tabletop rpg designers by rpg designers. Vetted. Looted. Curated.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

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