Explorers Design in Review
A 2024 retrospective, the best Explorers Design articles of the year, and plans for the future.
It's been a good year for Explorers Design.
This year started with Explorers on Substack and ended with it hosted independently through Ghost. It was the first year since 2016 I posted with semi-regular frequency—at least once a month. It was also the first time I enjoyed the process of writing for my blog. Prior to Substack and Ghost, I mostly hated it.
Here's how I stopped worrying about the clout and learned to love the blog:
- Wrote what interested me. Abandoned drafts often. Embraced the slush.
- Found other active writers and designers to share my work with.
- Wrote about other people and their work. Regularly wrote in response to it.
- Told myself I loved the writing more than the readers. Pretended to hate them.
- Used performance enhancing drugs, like coffee, jazz, and bird watching.
Explorers Design's 5 Best Articles
Naturally, this is subjective. None of them have anything to do with performance metrics. If that were the case, my "best" would be drastically different. Instead, the best articles, are the ones I loved the most...
1. Design the Dungeon with Numbers
This post is my most groggy post of the year. Mostly because it's about doors in dungeons. What does it implicitly mean when you present a choice of two doors in front of players? What does it mean when you give them three? Four? Five? There's a lot to be said about how we convey information, in this article, I strip that theory down to the atom.
Clayton Notestine
2. The 1 HP Dragon
The problem with the 16-HP dragon and all the other theories that try to narrativize combat is that they leave the ruts in the dirt for players and referees to fall back into. Dungeon World was never going to be a fast, feast of fiction so long as the combat roll and hit points stuck around. Same for all the other heartbreakers. This article removes the safety nets and goes full Free Kriegsspiel without spending a single sentence explaining Prussian military academies.
Clayton Notestine
3. The Art of the Cover
Dwiz over on Knight at the Opera showcased his love for the Traveller cover, and it inspired me to break out a murderers row of rpg book covers. What makes them so good? I give some top-level notes with a treasure trove of examples. This was easily the most fun article I wrote because it let me nerd out on covers.
Clayton Notestine
4. Mörk Borg Layout Exhibit
The layout everyone describes as "chaotic" is far from it. Reviewing tabletop rpg layouts is a miserable business. Half the time no one notices, and the other half of the time you get rotten vegetables thrown at you—but this article found an audience. I was terrified I'd look like the Zodiac drawing all over Mörk Borg's pages. But for a lot of folks, it gave them the same appreciation I have for the work.
Clayton Notestine
5. Hacking the Mothership
In the wise words of Quinn from 200-Proof Games, "Done is a myth. Complete is a joke. Perfect is impossible." This article is my sneaky ashcan release of a Mothership demake and Traveller reboot—Troubleshoot. It scrapes all the knick knacks off Mothership's hull until there's nothing left but the warp drive. Expect a Troubleshoot 0E in the year 2025 CE.
Clayton Notestine
Honorable Mentions
- What is an RPG? Doesn't matter. - The final word (right?) on the "Should I explain what an RPG is in my book?" debate. The answer: No. Heck no, dude. Your game Glorbo isn't just another RPG, it's Glorbo, dude. Define Glorbo.
- 2024 Gifts for RPG Designers. My backdoor pitch for holiday-themed mutualism. I like to think it sparked a lot of awesome reviews and lovely discourse around supporting other designers. Next year it's a Funko Pop shopping list, so I hope you enjoyed the good vibes while they lasted.
- Killing Good Games with Bad Titles. Another excuse to nerd out about other people's games. It was fun to write. And I stand by my words of caution. Good games deserve good titles. A lot of designers want to distance themselves from their baby by naming it Donk. Don't do that.
- The Explorateur Issue #3. I told myself I was going to read more blogs in 2024. I'm happy to report I must be reading close to 500 or more a month. It has given me an unbelievable appreciation for other people and their work. I highly recommend making a round-up newsletter just for yourself.
Explorers Design's Takeaways
My least favorite article of the year was...
My introduction to accessible design and the accessibility checklist. I worked on it off and on for about three years. I read a number of books for it, watched a lot of videos and panels, and dusted off my old design textbooks before attempting to write it. It was not a fun experience and I wrote the whole thing paranoid.
In the end, I had to defend my lived experience as a disabled person and reason for poking my nose into accessibility design. I ended up blocking and muting a dozen or so baiters on social. In the end, I'm proud of what I wrote. And I thank everyone who gave me feedback. Everyone has a responsibility to normalize accessibility, and share their notes, but I think I narrowly dodged a pile on.
My favorite kind of article of the year was...
Tied between showcasing other's work and sharing my own game designs. You might have noticed that "educational" or "guides" isn't in either of those. I think after several years of writing them, I've grown a little exhausted by it. I thrive on dialogue and challenging myself, and educational content doesn't drive a lot of that. In the coming year, I plan on exploring design by digging into individual games and my own design practice.
This is the year I publish an adventure.
I have a few drafts in the works. My PTSD from a life in advertising means it's a slow writing process, but I'm determined to make this year mine. I have three adventures in the hopper, which I will expose now:
All Gods Burn. An agnostic/REDACTED/Mausritter adventure about a monastery that runs out of an old derelict farm tractor.
Trouble at Station Tau. Haunting of Ypsilon 14 de-made and re-made for my home game, Troubleshoot. Haunting was practically made for the 1 HP Dragon.
Untitled. I have this very silly, very leftist fantasy adventure I've run a few times set in a prison where monks turn their inmates into stone for safer keeping.
This is the year I publish alpha versions of my games.
I have at least three games I want to release alpha versions of. That's right, I'm not even confident enough they're ready for beta. I'm going the Mothership route and calling these ugly ducklings "alphas."
Troubleshoot. My faster-than-light science fiction game of high-concept problems and working-class solvers. Star Trek meets Alien meets Dieter Rams.
Whisker Kings. Play generations of mice, rats, and other critters as they go on quests to defend their warrens, build community, and slay tyrants. No magic.
Murder Mystery Theater. A murder mystery game that combines the best of games like One Night Werewolf and Deception: Murder in Hong Kong with Fiasco.
This is the year I go to a convention.
Likely GenCon. I'm a judge for this year's Ennies and it'll come right when my PTO rolls over (a dystopian series of words). I haven't been to a convention in five years. When I finally attend, I'll get to show how tall and misshapen the pandemic has made me, meet some internet fellows in person, and fight Prismatic Wasteland in hand-to-hand combat.
Final Thoughts on Explorers Design
This year has been one of my best in rpgs so far. I owe a lot of that to other people. It can't be understated how important it is to find company outside of social media. My blog is in many ways one of those. Discord is another. Maybe this year I'll find a third space in the real world.
Until then, never stop exploring.
