The Explorateur: Issue #12

The importance of being earnest.

This isn't about Oscar Wilde's play (unfortunately). This is about the thing I want most in art. Sincerity and conviction. For the last year, I've struggled to articulate what it is I find dissatisfying about certain games, designers, and communities. I like to think I'm normally fine with that mystery being unexamined, but it was starting to spoil my curiosity. I was becoming cynical.

What is it about certain designs, names, discord posts, and blogs that irks me in the same way? How could all of these disparate things poke me in the same spot?

I realized it was a lack of earnestness. Too much irony, sarcasm, cynicism, or plain old contagious boredom. I was tired of the "LOL SO RANDOM" posts on Discord, the meme-y game names, the sea lion discourse, and the copy-and-paste emails and DMs asking me to play their game on my stream (I don't have one of those).

But mostly, I realized I'm motivated by learning, understanding, and connecting with people. The kind of interaction apathy destroys. Earnest is personal. Earnest takes risks. Earnest is art.

The work can be scribbles or a book-length manifesto. A love letter to something silly or a grave threat to the social order. Hell, it can be another heartbreaker, so long as the heart's still in it. Point is, I want things to mean things.

I was dissatisfied because I had forgotten the importance of being earnest.

Let's get on to last month's discoveries...

Quest Givers

This section shares any game jams, contests, and collaborations. If you want to share a community event, jam, or project message me on Bluesky.

• Mörktober 2025. Exuent Press is back with thirty-one prompts for your Mörk Borg creations this October. Make an item, weapon, omen, dungeon, or anything you like in whatever medium you wish. Ends October 31st.
• Sci-Fi Derelict Jam. This jam is all about making my favorite thing in sci-fi rpgs: derelict spacecraft, stations, outposts, and other abandoned places. It's a great excuse to write a one-shot or drop-in adventure. Jam ends November 3rd.
• 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.
• Minimalist TTRPG Jam 4. No pictures, no graphics, and no layout. This jam is all about writing a game with nothing but words and ideas to carry it. If you're looking for a challenge—this one's it. Jam ends November 1st.
• Mecha Mini-Games/Firebrands Game Jam. If you don't know the game, Firebrands, it's Meguey and Vincent Baker’s family of mini games with big-ass robots and human-sized pilots. The jam ends October 31st.
• 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. I'm resurfacing this competition now that we're entering Fall. Kludge together a fast and weird zungeon zine. Oh, you forgot know what a Zungeon is? Check out the Zungeon Manifesto. Jam ends December 30th.

Reviews & Exhibits

Critique and examinations of tabletop rpgs, adventures, and more. I try to share exhibits with something to say other than the usual, "Is this worth buying?"

• Quinns Quest: Triangle Agency. This review made a big splash and generated a lot of heated discussion. Triangle Agency is an ambitious and inventive game—but is it too big and challenging to connect with most tables?
  • Interview w/ Sean Ireland & Caleb Zane Huett. This interview with the designers of Triangle Agency is a good companion piece to the video. It showcases how a lot of the tension Quinns experienced was intentional.
• The Ghosts of Zoazanna Mountain by Between Two Cairns. Podcast. Yochai, Brad, and Sam are back with one of their best episodes to date. Inside: How to promote your work and an in-depth look at a challenging piece of art.
• Teeth: False Kingdom by Old Men Running the World. This isn't here just because it says the Ennies judges got one right. It's listed because it captures, through analogies, exactly how fantastically absurdist this game is.
• Bathtub Review: Orestruck by Idle Cartulary. The latest Cairn 2E adventure by Amanda P showcases clear keying and choice writing in the service of tone. I like what Nova sheds light on in this review.

Rumors & Best-iary

The never-sponsored section of the newsletter. These links are anything I think are worth exploring, but might not fit in any of the other categories.

• APPX Jam Winners Announced! 1st place The Eldritch Staff, 2nd place The Eternal Empress, and people's choice The Knight Errant. Check out the stream. There were a lot of honorable mentions worth exploring.
• Chris McDowall's Career Retrospective. What does success look like? Mythic Bastionland's designer offers an answer. It's a long road. Bigger than most of us can imagine for ourselves, but smaller than you'd think for him.
• Bandwagon Roundup: Appendices N by Prismatic Wasteland. For the uninitiated, an "Appendix N" is a list of influences in the tradition of AD&D's list of the same name. In this latest blogwagon, over 69 creators posted.
• What do Critics Owe Us? by Idle Cartulary. A great little essay about the role critics play in our little design ecosystem. I especially like the emphasis on transparency—the one thing you need to read and appreciate a critic critically.
• Support Your Library. Dungeons & Possums wants more people to use libraries. Just look at the books (and layouts) they bought and shared in this blog post. The library even lends some of these for free, the suckers.
• Rascal News interviews Laura Lang. The full title is, "Laura Lang brings user-experience design to craft an adventure for new players." If that's not exactly the kind of article The Explorateur wants to share, I don't know what is.
• Inside Heroes of the Borderlands by Mastering Dungeons. Podcast. This interview with Justice Arman on creating D&D's new starter set offers some great insights into how they borrowed from board games and past experience.
• Mothership Month is Landing! Mothership Month returns October 14th with more creators, nightmares, and community events. This year's sci-fi event is all about Pound of Flesh's space station, The Dream. It ends November 11th.
• Mausritter Month is Coming! Starting November 4th, discover all-new mouse-sized adventures by creators from all over the Mausritter community. I'm excited by Tales from Pwyll and Soul Food. The event ends December 4th.

Theory & Advice

Any ideas, guidance, and tools that make playing and creating in the tabletop space more engaging, meaningful, and rewarding. This is the catch-all section.

• The Expressionist Games Manifesto by Jay Dragon. There's a genre of games that revel in the bleed—the tension between our world and the game's. Those games now have a name and definition: Expressionist games.
• Appendix N: The OSR of the 1st level of Deus Ex by Pointless Monument. Deus Ex heads rejoice! 25 years after its release, this game is still showing off its impeccable sandbox level design. Pointless Monument mines it.
• Timelines and Choices by Murkdice. "One of the best things we can do to make a scenario feel alive is to evolve it." There are some good examples in this article. Murkdice's other article, Encounter Tables with Memory, is a good pair.
• Encounter Tables with Memory by Murkdice. This encounters table is an elegant piece of tech that builds on other tables with sequential results (I'd love a name for this type). This would work well in claustrophic locations.
• Why Megadungeons? by ICastLight! If you're planning on running, designing, or subverting a megadungeon—this latest answer to the perennial question is a great primer for what makes them engaging today.
• Can I Make the Perfect RPG? by JP Coovert. Video. One of my favorite designers wrestling with the fantasy heartbreaker dilemma? It's always a fun exercise to me, and an illuminating one I think everyone should try.
• Making Photos into Mockups by Graftbound. Never buy a mockup. Use the free ones online, or better yet, make your own with photos that perfectly capture the look and feel of your work. (Also, check out Glatisant.)
• ADSR for GMs by Grinning Rat. Inspired by designer, Elliot Earls, Nate applies synthesizer logic to running a game, but could just have easily applied it to capsule game or adventure design. I would love to see this idea more.
• Wandering Monsters Never Sleep by OSR Rocks! Pacing is a hard skill to learn for many GMs, but not all systems leave it to the players. Some games mechanize their pace-makers. This article showcases some examples.
• This Sword has a Story: How Heroes Carry Things by Orbital Crypt. What if an item's number of uses was tied to the role it plays in the character's narrative? I like this exercise as it showcases how items work in fiction.
• The Star-Pattern: a Pitfall of GMing by Ars Ludi. There's good gameplay advice here, but I share it because it also looks like a design challenge. Are there mechanics or procedures that unintentionally encourage star-patterns?

Design Lore

Design inspiration from beyond tabletop rpgs. I share them when I find them.

• 50 Popular Fonts for 2026. Let it be your inspiration or a warning. These 50 fonts are shaping up to be popular choices in upcoming projects. More than a few of them are affordable and usable via subscriptions and Adobe.
• Alan Berry Rhys Interview & Tutorial. I keep sharing articles from True Grit Texture Supply and that's because they're really good! This interview ties well into recent discussions about using our inspirations. Plus, a tutorial video.
• Game Design Deep Dive Podcast. Podcast. Need more game design podcasts? Here's one. Dan Bullock interviews game designers with a focus on the challenges of historical board game design. I'm enjoying it so far.
• Use Inductive Reasoning to talk to Aliens by Skeleton Code Machine. What's the different between deductive and inductive reasoning? Friend of the blog, Skeleton, is back from the board game mines with some examples.
• Game Design Lessons from the Emmy Awards by Game Tek. This year, in an attempt to keep acceptance speeches on time, the Emmys "gamified" the experience with a negative consequence. Its reception was not positive...
• Resource: Fonts in Use. This is a classic resource for typography inspiration. You can find everything from old 1970s albums to current UI in video games. The best feature of FontsinUse is the ability to search by typeface.
• Studio Showcase: Stranger & Stranger. Content warning: Alcohol. Few bottles have better typography, color, texture, and product design than the ones distilled by this specialist design studio. They're also hiring in London.
• Artist Showcase: Hodag. I'm not sure there's a more genuine, less pretentious illustrator and design working in rpgs right now. You can find Hodag's bushy, DIY style in everything from his blog to his Bluesky.

Design Archive

Sometimes I miss something or want to bring it back from the dead.

• Jim Henson's Labyrinth: the Adventure Game Review by Knight at the Opera. Dwiz resurrected this review after years of dormancy Bones of Contention. It's a great reminder that the sum is greater than its parts.
• A Small Rant About Investigation in RPGs by Failure Tolerated. We have no shortage of techniques for running investigation rpgs, but the thing that gives this post staying power is that it facilitates play with graphic design.

Missed the last issue? Read it here.

The Explorateur: Issue #11

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

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

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