The Explorateur: Issue #3

What's in a golden age?

I remember thinking I was in a golden age in 2012. I was an avid board gamer at the time, heading a geek organization, co-running a game convention, and playing a lot of games that weren't Monopoly. Shut Up & Sit Down was a year old, modern classics were coming out every week, and new designers were popping up everywhere. Every scene has its moment—and I was certain I was in one.

I felt the same way in 2011 when I was lurking The Forge. And I remember feeling one with the arrival of Fifth Edition D&D and the rise of Critical Role (even though it wasn't my golden age). And I remember a golden age when the fledgling Old School Renaissance splintered into a dozen competing OSRs, and the DIY one—the "Open Source Roleplaying" of 2015 (my term)—flooded the rpg world with zines, blog posts, and ideas that led to Old School Essentials, Mörk Borg, Mothership, Trophy, Shadowdark, and others.

Back then, I didn't realize I was in a golden age until most of it was over. How many came and went without me? And how many are happening right now? In the back end of 2024, I started to feel something familiar. The collapse of Twitter. The end of the OGL. The powering down of Dungeons and Dragons 5E. The resurgence of blogging. The Elusive Shift. Influencers like Matt Colville, Ginny Di, and others describing the OSR in all ways but name. There are lots of uncertainties coming in the new year, like the American tariffs and EU regulations, but silos are breaking again, streams are crossing, and the ground is changing beneath our feat.

What else can I say except that I'm excited for 2025?

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.

• Apply to the 2025 Ennie Awards. Anything published between April 1st, 2024, and March 31st, 2025 is eligible. When in doubt, submit early.
• Share your recent launch on Itch. Every two months, Thomas Manuel shares 10 itch releases on the Indie RPG newsletter. Submit and subscribe.
• Feminomenon Jam. Explore, investigate, expand, and discover what femininity means to you. This jam has me excited. Ends February 11th.
• Cloud Empress Winter Jam. What does winter look like for the Land of Cicadas? Bookmark this. Submissions will be gorgeous. Ends February 2nd.
• Enter the Zungeon. Zines in 2024 came to mean something more than a zine. This jam throws down the gauntlet and says, "Let's change that." Make something fun for 2025. Nova, the organizer, presents the Zungeon Manifesto.
• Hexcrawl 25. Inspired by Sean McCoy's Dungeon 23, Matlock created this. A year-long project to build a fully connected campaign setting and hexcrawl.

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?"

• Idle Cartulary's Critique Navidad. Nova did a review-a-day this month. Lots of reviews for incredible (and unexpected) games here...
• D&D Fifth Edition 10-Year Retrospective. Dwig shares his in-depth, incisive, and personal examination of D&D 5E in a three-part series.
• Under the hood with TORQ. Skeleton Code Machine explores the use of fixed-perspective maps in TORQ, a (very good) rallyraid roleplaying game.
• What Makes a Good Splatbook? Heck yes. My kind of review. Nothing beats a deep dive like one with a thesis and some advice.
• Slugblaster's Bite is a built-in tutorial. Hendrik Biweekly examines Slugblaster's bite mechanic and frames it as training wheels for new GMs.
• Gatorbarge: A Secret Santa review. Prismatic Wasteland's discord hosted a different kind of Secret Santa*. I like the format of this one. Brainblast!

Rumors & Bestiary

The never-sponsored section of the newsletter. These links are the treasures I found while wandering the internet wilderness.

• The 1E Manifesto. "Done is a myth. Complete is a joke. Perfect is impossible." If you're struggling to publish, read this manifesto right now.
• The Indie Game Reading Club's 2024 Roundup. You will not find the usual suspects in this list, unless your usual is artful and innovative...
• November Crowdfunding Retrospective. Every month, Nico unpacks crowdfunding with data! (Imagine: 35% of all November 5E campaigns had AI.)
• Bull Press Games. Despite their popularity in prisons, most tabletop games are banned there because of their design. Bull Press is working to change that.
• Sam Made a Book (And So Can You!). Aim short and enjoy the process. Sam shares some insights after publishing in his latest zine, Dice Forager*.
• Talking Shop with FariRPGs. René-Pier Deshaies has been on a tear lately. Internationalization, licenses, pitching, designing mechanics like buttons, etc.

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.

• How I do Play by Post. Play by Post veteran, Yochai on New School Revolution, shares his process and tools for playing games asynchronously.
• A Moderately Tested Theory of Fear. How do you design a horror game? Knight at the Opera is back with a treasure trove of observations and advice.
• Baseline Worldbuilding. This post describes one of my favorite underrated parts of designing a fictional world—what's the baseline? What can we assume?
• How to End Things. Learn how to end a scene and get more out of your sessions. This Bully Pulpit essay needs to sneak its way into some rulebooks.
• Forsaken Easter Egg. You know those solutions to puzzles that are impossible to discover? Nova on Idle Cartulary gives it a name and solution.
• Just One Thing per Hex. Hex crawls: The blogosphere loves to hack away at them. This approach from Fail Forward happens to be simple but effective.
• 10 Things I Hate About Your Adventure. The Dododecahedron is back with a fun list of ten things you shouldn't have in your next fantasy adventure.
• Three Notes Make a Chord. Designing npcs can be challenging, this three-note method shows serious promise.
• No More Peasant Armies. I'm privy to a lot of counter arguments, but I cannot deny how much I enjoyed this re-examination of Medieval warfare.

Design Lore

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

• Copy and Pasting Designs. Board games are no stranger to copying each other—but what is inspired vs copying? Geoff Engelstein offers insights.
• Halftone Hospital. Open source tools for comic artists, cartoonists and zinesters. This collection is gold. Kudos to Erika for sharing this in the discord.
• Risotto Studio. Interested in riso printing? This website might have some of the best resources (and eye candy) for the uninitiated. Check the print bible.
• 25 Popular Graphic Designers. Check out the work of Creative Boom's 25 most popular graphic designers according to other graphic designers.
• 8 Things Agencies Look for in Illustrators. Aimed at illustrators looking for work with agencies, it's actually great advice for standing out in general.
• The 100 Best Novel Covers of 2024. Print Magazine serves up a buffet of inspiration with this list. Pay special attention to the typefaces used.

Missed the last issue? Read it here.

The Explorateur: Issue #2

Monthly discoveries for tabletop roleplaying game designers. Vetted. Looted. Curated.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

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