Industry thoughts for September

Kindness is business. Kindness is life.

Avoid the angry, the unlucky, and the cruel. They're dead ends—professionally, socially, and creatively. Every couple months I see a malcontent complain about their overdue success, unaware they've been quietly labeled persona non grata for bullying and hawking insults. Fred Rogers once said, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." I don't think it's a coincidence helpers are often well regarded and accomplished in the space. People support people who care for other people. Share your time, promote others' work, and be nice. Dododecahedron's latest post on Positivity hits a similar note.

Discourse terms have no masters.

I've decided Blorb, Rules Elide, GNS, OSR, POSR, and other terms are like a jar of bees. No matter how much I think I understand them—they're not going to serve me when I release them out into the internet. There are too many headline interpreters, bad faith debaters, and Nice Guy devil's advocates waiting to make them meaningless. I've resolved to never use these terms except in bird cage lining, energy vampirism, and viral marketing—where I can make money caning my shins and ranting about woke elves. If I use any of these terms, understand I'm using them with the same care and discretion as bagpipes in a baby nursery.

About that $5 we're all passing around.

You might have heard the line, "Tabletop rpgs is a hobby pretending to be an industry. It's the same dozen creators passing $5 around." I hate to say this, but passing the same money around for goods and services is called trade, and it's part of how economies work. Some would argue its the biggest part. Before we start discrediting creators for losing money on their rpg side hustle, I feel its important to remember that many of today's biggest companies lose billions of dollars every year, make nothing, and are run by man children. If they're legitimate, us geeks deserve a pass for our modest ambitions for failure.

Explorers' Loot

• Religious by Design. This month, I looked back on my Catholic upbringing and interrogated why religions in tabletop rpgs often feel too clean to play with.

Quests & Rumors

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

• ❤️ Mothership Month Returns! Check this out: A new Warden's Program, Writers' Grants, and Mothership Select—a hall of fame for 3rd party products.
• Vaarn Summer Jam '26. Make something for Vaults of Vaarn, a science-fantasy rpg, inspired by Dune, Hyperion, and Mobieus. Jam ends Sept. 30th.
• Chainlinked Game Jam. Create your own content for the semi-cooperative dungeon-defying rpg, Chain×Link. Or make a hack of it. Jam ends Oct. 4th.
• Minimalist TTRPG Jam 5. A jam all about primal, elemental, close-to-the-metal TTRPG creation! No pictures, no layout, all killer, no filler. Ends Nov. 1st.
• 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.

• Wages of Sin Gave Me a Midlife Crisis by Valeria Loves. "Which raises the question: at this point, why do I even run games that aren’t Mothership?"
• Into the Oddish is a Stupid Idiot Game (affectionate) by Valeria Loves. If other games were drinks, Into the Oddish would be Baja Blast.
• Bathtub Review: The Doom of the Dark by Idle Cartulary. Patrick Stuart (Silent Titans) and Amanda Lee Franck (Garbage Barge)? Call me enthralled.
• A Quick Look at a Big Book: Troika! by Personable Thoughts. As time passes, Troika's influence wanes, a sad reality as it remains Certified Weird™.
• Thoughts on Ultraviolet Grasslands by Familiar Waves. A look ultimately at how UVG plays. "UVG really focuses on what I would call ‘logistics dnd.’"
• 🎙️ Expedition to the Barrier Peaks by Between Two Cairns. Special Guest A.G. Cook! The degree of separation between B2C and Charli xcx narrows...

Spotlight & Best-iary

The spotlight section showcases interviews, design examples, and projects.

• ❤️ (DND) RPG Discourse Terms 2027–2032 by Phlox. If you're like me, constantly online and painfully aware of the latest discourse, you'll love this bit.
• No One Can Take Your Game From You by Bare Nuckelavee. What are rpgs free of consumerism? A person who played them in prison would know.
• 📺 Show Me Your Moves w/ Avery Alder by Plus One Exp. One of my favorite chats from Plus One Exp. If you like story games, give it a watch.
• 🎙️ Mausritter & Flail by Ship of the Dead Podcast. Luke sits down with Andre Novoa and Issac Williams to talk about their popular games and process.

Theory & Craft

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

• Building a Better Vocabulary for Maps Pt. 1 by Skeleton Code Machine. This series is about maps in the abstract as experiences and data.
• Converting Game Maps into Graphs by Skeleton Code Machine. Part 2 in Skelly's map series. Converting maps into point crawls to surface insights.
• Abstraction in Adventure Design by Murkmail. Some side-by-side comparisons of adventures and their keying through the lens of abstraction.
• 🎙️ Making Games: Business Time. Accounting, taxes, regulations, contracts, invoices, and other things you do as a level 12 rpg business owner.

Inspiring & Non-roleplaying

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

• 📁 Future Fonts. Finished typefaces are usually exorbitantly expensive, but not here—because these typefaces are not done. Buy them like volatile stocks.
• 📁 Brandon Nickerson Fonts. You've likely seen some of the display typefaces from this designer. Fun fact: His newsletter shares free fonts often.
• How Do You Find Your Style as an Artist? by Georgia Perry. Some sage advice about finding your style as an artist when you're just getting started.
• From the Desk of Idle Hands. This repository of articles from two-person shop, Idle Hands, is a good intro to brand design. Something I do for a day job.
• Wiki Spy by Neal Fun. What if Wikipedia worked like the kids book, Eye Spy? This link has the answer. Is it useful? Not really. Is it fun? Absolutely.

Design Archive

Old, missed, famous, and overlooked articles for the newsletter.

• The OSR Onion by The Dododecahedron. Its been almost a year since this Great Unified Theory for OSR was proposed. I still think its one of the best.
• Blorb Principles by idiomdrottning. The post that launched a hundred rebuttals. It's a good one. Straightforward. Positive. An idea. Not a warcry.

Missed the last issue? Read it here.

The Explorateur: Issue #22

Monthly jams, critique, theory, and resources for rpg designers.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

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