#1 Until you can explain it simply, you don't understand it fully.

This is a good thing. It means you still have something to discover about the game, rule, or idea that you're trying to describe. I heard this bit of wisdom from an architect ages ago and I can't help but apply it to everything—game design, marketing, politics—you name it. Plain and approachable language doesn't mean a lack of knowledge, but the presence of it. Until you have that plain articulation, you don't have it figured out. Keep chipping at it. Sometimes the thing that unlocks everything else is the name.

#2 Separate your project goals from its table stakes.

I've been thinking about this lately after running design workshops at my day job. It's a common mistake. A project starts with a goal and it's a nothing burger. The equivalent of a restaurant declaring, "Our mission is to serve good food." Of course it is. Bad food puts you out of business. Good goals are unique and specific—they close doors and create focus. Stand for something. Banality makes a project weak, un-focused, and vulnerable to drift. Don't try to make a "good" game. Try to make a game that does specific things well.

#3 Consider putting that dividing line somewhere else.

Sometimes designers put a column-width line between their headers and its respective body copy. In most cases that's wrong. Controversial, but you should never sever the head from its body. If you want to underline the type, use the underline feature. Don't use a dividing line. You want the relationship between your header and body copy to remain connected. When you use a dividing line as decoration, you rob it of its function and risk creating confusion. Instead, put the line above the headline so that it separates it from other sections. For most projects, you don't even need dividing lines, whitespace does the same thing unobtrusively. Open a well-designed textbook or cookbook, and you'll notice that the space between a section's header and paragraph is smaller than the vertical space between the end of one section's body copy and the next section's header.

Explorers' Loot

• The Bloggies Concludes for 2026. If you somehow haven't seen the nominees and winners of this year's Bloggies, you're missing out.
• Designing Lore Blocks. I revisited the character schema designed by Zedeck Siew and Munkao in Reach of the Roach God, and retooled it into a stat block replacement for stat-free games.
• Explorers' UX Updates. I've managed to make updates to the website's code. I tweaked accordions, removed Google tagging, and added a floating table to the sidebar for desktop users. Please hold the applause until the end.

Quests & Rumors

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

• Old-School Essentials Month. Prepare your spirit for a collab project led by Exalted Funeral and Necrotic Gnome on Backerkit. May 5th – June 6th.
• Blog Carnival: Tiny Epics: Small Souls in a Big World! Blog about tiny heroes in a small world ala Mausritter, Pico, or Household. Ends March 31st.
• Blog Bandwagon: Maps! This blogging event, hosted by Prismatic Wasteland, is all about maps! Share all of your map ideas. Ends April 27th.
• Lean Green Zine Jam. I love any jam that supports tiny bursts of creativity. This one: Make it small. Make it green. Make it a zine. Ends April 20th.
• Total//Effect//Jam. Binary Star's hosting a jam to celebrate the launch of Null_Space, a sci-fi game with novel mechanics. Jam Feb 16th – April 30th.
• 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.

• Daggerheart - a Dishonest Review (full of Lies) by Valeria Loves. Another incisive review delivered in the style of an insult comic routine.
• 🎙️ Settlers of a Dead God by Dead Letters. Sam, Misha, and Walid give a crash course on setting guides before asking, "How does Settlers do?"
• 🎙️ Triangle Agency by Dead Letters. I couldn't share only one episode. Triangle Agency is a brain-burner. A sublime drowning of theory awaits you.
• 🎙️ Resonant by Ansible Uplink. Chris Airiau and David Kenny cover a lot of design ground in this review of Amanda P.'s sci-fi module. A long listen.
• 📺 Public Access by Quinns Quest. The Carved from Brindlewood system gets some love in this episode. We get some insight into Quinns' playstyle, too.
• 📺 Legends of the Mist by Deficient Master. This frenetic video covers one of my favorite games. If you like mechanics like FATE's, give it a watch.

Design Examples & Best-iary

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

• 🎙️ We Read the Bloggies. If you don't want to read the nominees from this year's Bloggies, I have good news: You don't have to. You can listen to them!
• Bloggies for Casuals by The Dolent Chronicle. A great primer for casuals who don't have it in them to read 80+ posts (you are likely not the audience).
• ⚙️ Armour for Lodestar by Rambled Worlds. If you like a more granular armor system, I think this multi-layered AP sub-system is particularly fun.
• ⚙️ Shoulder Tables by Bommyknocker Press. This random encounter/events table might look familiar, but I love the framing here. Finally a satisfying label.
• ⚙️ Be of Good Cheer by Goblin Punch. A fun GLOG-inspired system for healing that links to downtime activities like sharing meals and having friends.
• 📺 Gallows Corner RPG Readthrough by Bastionland. What a beautiful game to look at. This history-inspired game about peasants is worth the look.
• 💸 The Princess and The Dragon by Outrider Creative. I rarely promote crowdfunding projects, but this Perils & Princesses adventure is a gem.

Theory & Craft

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

• Product Photography by Graftbound Press. Another educational how-to post from Graftbound. This kind of effort beats mockups every time for me.
• Tyranny of the Form by Nate Whittington. "Is the zine throttling the creativity of the scene? I think, emphatically, yes." A thought-provoking read.
• The Visual Design of Blades '68 by Old Dog Games. Tim's one of the best designers working in rpgs today, and this sneak peek into '68 feels like a heist.
• TTRPGs Need Instructional Designers by The Play Reports. A call to action with links to Cognitive Load Theory and Working Memory articles.
• You Need to Describe Doors by Murkdice. Information leads to better decision making. So why do most adventures not describe doors anymore?
• Talking to the Dungeon by Failure Tolerated. How does a dungeon converse with its players? How does an adventure speak to interactivity?
• Writing things in Networks is Unreasonably Effective by Dungeon Merlin. I like how much this design truth is doubly true in analog rpgs.
• Pokemon is OSR by Prismatic Wasteland. I see some overlap. Dungeon delving, resource management, and party constraints—now with Team Rocket.
• Unblocking Yourself: Dungeonize your Home by Rise Up Comus. I love any creative technique, this system would work remarkably well for Mausritter.
• Navigation Games by Knight at the Opera. Answering the question: How do you run (and design) a dungeon that players navigate and explore diegetically
• 📺 The Layout Rogues Guild: ZiMo Workshop w/Mike Martens by Plus One Exp. This is an entry-level college lecture on layout, type, and design.
• 📺 Zine Planning Page by Page: A ZiMo Workshop w/Kyle Latino by Plus One Exp. I like this scaffolding approach to layout planning.

Inspiring & Non-roleplaying

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

• Communities are not Fungible by JA Westenberg. A sobering read that pulls ideas from urban design and other fields about the nature of community.
• A Comprehensive Guide to Book Cover Design Cost. Shout out to Lone Archivist who shared this with a few of us designers. A cool look outside rpgs.
• Overlay Fact Sheet. Another great find from designer, BESW. This one is all about those accessiblity overlays on websites (and why they're not ideal).
• 🗄️ Jules Vernacular. Take a tour through France and marvel at all of the immaculate signage, from blackletter-appointed inns to mid-century grocers.
• 🗄️ The Tenth Muse. 120,000+ artworks from museums and institutions — searchable by feeling, mood, atmosphere, era, and medium. (With a grid view.)

Design Archive

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

• The New Transparency by Jared Sinclair. An influential list of principles. They're idiosyncratic—aggressively so—which results in compelling results.
• Designing an Afrocentric Megadungeon by Alife Allah. I really loved the perspective on this post, it got my gears turning on how culture informs design.

Missed the last issue? Read it here.

The Explorateur: Issue #16

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

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

This newsletter uses the occasional affiliate link to support Explorers Design. If you notice any broken links, mistakes, or bad actors, please let me know.

Explorers Design is a production of Clayton Notestine. If you liked this issue, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing.

Ever since I read Reach of the Roach God by Zedeck Siew and Munkao, I've been fixated on one thing. For most folks it's the writing, art, and design—Reach of the Roach God is a sumptuous book, one of my favorites on my shelf—but for me, the real prize is on page fifteen. It's a "stat block" and write-up without stats.

Zedeck describes this creature write-up as a rigid schema. A kind of system-agnostic stat block. Except it doesn't have stats, so it focuses on the other details that give a character substance —things like relationships, actions, and reactions.

Since the book is almost impossible to get now, I'm going to share the magic behind this tidy little passage using Zedeck's own words.

How the rigid schema works.

#1 The FIRST WORD describes the power this character wields in the world:

• ORDINARY. Common folk; a wild boar; a venomous krait. (A kind of snake.)
• EXTRAORDINARY. Storied Heroes; a fearsome ghost; a demon.
• POWERFUL. Saint-kings; a city god; an earthquake giant.
• OVERWHELMING. Sea goddesses; world spirits; ancient divinities.

#2 The SECOND WORD describes the health of this creature:

• HALE. Muscular; vigorous, can take hits.
• FRAIL. Unhealthy; brittle, goes down quick.

#3 The THIRD SENTENCE is a list of three skills this creature is expert at. They should receive significant advantages whenever acting on or challenged in these things.

#4 The FOURTH WORD describes the creature's attack: the weapon or body-part they use to cause harm, or defend themselves. Can they be disarmed? (Remember this for later.)

#5 The FIFTH SENTENCE is a list of the creature's defenses: armor, or protective charms. Every item on the list offers additional protection. Can these shields be broken? (Again, remember this for later.)

Breaking down the rigid schema.

A few things about this schema stick with me. For one, it lends a lot of broad detail that traditional stat blocks might otherwise obfuscate, bury, or offload to tools. I always found it strange how often stat blocks open with a character's more passive features. This schema conveys those same details—general power and health—in relation to other things, which ties them to the world, dungeon, and setting. In a way, attributes do this, but the relationship is murky. For example, in Mausritter, attributes relate to other mice, but have no proportional scale with something like cats or snapping turtles. The same applies to games that have universal stats, like strength and dexterity.

Zedeck's relational "stats" might be inevitable, given the ultimate goal of translating these characters to a system—but I think we actually gain something in the exercise that wasn't there before: orientation within the world via comparison.

The second thing I like about this schema is how economical it is. Broadly, this schema has a lot in common with character write-ups in games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark. But it feels and relates to play very differently by the way it's written and tied to purely diegetic elements. I like how everything after the first and second word are actions and reactions. How it conveys information through natural speech. And I especially love its lossless translation to the fiction. These are words the characters might actually use to describe each other, there's no pidgin language between the players and characters. What's on the page and in the fiction is nearly identical.

After this rigid schema, character write-ups get Zedeck's characteristic stabs of prose. Characters come to life in their own words, signaling their motives, desires, and all the quirky details you might use to actually roleplay them at the table.

What can we take away from this schema?

The schema is an awesome innovation for adventure games disguised as a system-agnostic workaround. It's a shame I haven't seen it adopted in other adventures. It's fun to read, unobtrusive, and shores up the intrinsic qualities of the adventure and setting. What the schema in Reach of the Roach God choses to convey reinforces what the world is about, and creates a web of similarities and differences between characters.

For example, in one village, almost every character is labeled as unprotected. They have nothing shielding them from harm. It's so ubiquitous, you might think they're all defenseless. And then, just when the pattern is set, it breaks. A character gets charmed beads where unprotected should be. Then another character, the oldest and frailest of the bunch, gets a brass amulet. In a more traditional stat block, every character, even unprotected ones, might have some kind of AC, "Armor as Leather," or similar baseline, but in this schema the difference is starker. The beads and amulet mean something—they have to when the economy of words is so slim.

It should also be mentioned that the schema paints directly onto the mind, which means anything that provides additional imagery—like Munkao's illustrations—don't have to clarify or double-up on what's written. It can provide new information. The schema favors action and sensory details that can't be drawn, like sounds and smells. The art gives us visuals, textures, and even personality in the facial expressions.

If I was to adopt this technique in an adventure today, I'd think about the changes I might make to match my genre or themes. If it were a fantasy epic, I might add a third word noting a noble house, like in Game of Thrones. If it were a sci-fi game, I might add another word like organic or synthetic. This schema is flexible enough that it could accommodate a wide range of genres.

But, I can't leave it at that. I have a 1 HP Dragon to slay. A system without hit points, stats, or even combat in the conventional sense, and I think this schema or "lore block" is a big piece of the puzzle.

This next part is about Lore Blocks.

Introducing the lore block.

You can see the similarities. It's the same basic idea made for a game you can't play yet. If you haven't read The 1 HP Dragon, you might not notice the nuances here, but I'll walk us through it.

How the lore block works.

This lore block uses the same basic principles as Zedeck and Munkao's schema, but works with no conversion. In my current playtests, Whisker Kings (A swords-and-whiskers Arthurian epic) and Troubleshoot (A sci-fi problem-solving adventure game) player characters have to "solve" their enemies before they can defeat them. If they can do so with no risk of failure or harm—they don't have to roll. In the next installment of "Slaying the 1 HP Dragon," I'll eventually reveal how that works.

In the meantime, let's look at the pieces that make up lore blocks (look up):

The Opening Line

A1. The FIRST WORD is the influence this creature has on the world. It tells the game master how notable this creature is. How important are they to the larger narrative before the players potentially kill or promote them?

• COMMON. Ordinary folk; a pack of wolves; a bandit.
• UNCOMMON. Notable individuals; zombies; a bugbear.
• STORIED. Power players; a chimera; a famed bard.
• LEGENDARY. Faction leaders; a dragon; a lich.

A2. The SECOND WORD describes the power this creature has to inflict harm. It tells the game master how aggressive to play the creature, and the consequences for player failure. Less powerful creatures can take multiple rounds before they threaten harm, if ever. Powerful creatures put harm immediately on the table.

• HARMLESS. A non-dangerous, trivial, or powerless creature.
• HAZARDOUS. A creature that can create complications. Inflict harm if able.
• DANGEROUS. A creature that creates complications and inflicts harm.
• PERILOUS. A living complication. Harm is inevitable. Death is likely.

A3. The THIRD WORD describes the creature's kin. In fantasy this is their species, but it could just as easily be a political ideology, profession, or nickname. It depends on the game and how it interacts with the fourth word.

A4. The FOURTH WORD describes the creature's affiliation. If they have no faction, their affiliation defaults to the land or ecosystem they live in. Grouped with the earlier influence, power, and kin, this opening salvo communicates the consequences for messing with this creature. Do they have friends? Will they be missed? Will someone or something mourn their defeats and aid their victory?

The Personality Lines

B1. The FIRST SENTENCE is the creature's instinct, goal, or love. A really good line should color the creature's attitude and behavior. It should also give the GM and players something they can bargain or leverage (if they can figure it out).

B2. The SECOND SENTENCE is the creature's weakness, flaw, or hate. These tend to be a lot easier to write, they lend themselves to player interaction and incentive. They also tend to lead into the creature's armors (and how to circumvent them).

The Creature's Armor

C. The creature's armor is where the lore block is its most mechanical. In the fiction, a creature can have an almost infinite number of barriers protecting them. Most of them are common sense, like being in another place, out of reach, or a bear being immune to an onslaught of spoons. But the lore block's armor are narratively-significant. They indicate not only what protects the creature but what they do and how they do it.

• BARRIERS. Many armors are metaphorical walls, like plate armor, invisibility, or an immunity to slashing weapons. They're what keep the creature safe. Player have to find a way to either bypass, negate, or break a barrier.
• DETERRENTS. Sometimes the best defense is a promised stabbing for the trouble. Players have to describe how they avoid, withstand, or break a deterrent if they don't want to suffer it. Can they be disarmed?
• FALLOUTS. A creature with sizable influence will always leave lasting consequences in their absence, but fallout is immediate—it's an explosion, disease, or curse. Exceptionally prepared players solve for fallout.

The Creature Description

D. The last part of the lore block is its most open-ended. Mine usually include a quote, a telling description, and some loot. It's very easy to write when you're cribbing from JRR Tolkien. I did my best to match my inspirations, Zedeck, Gearing, Jonathan Gold, and Richard Stark.

How to design fantasy lore blocks.

Above are two lore blocks from my sword-and-whiskers game of Whisker Kings. The example on the left is an armed gang of bandits serving the Maine Coon Cat, Erebus—the dread queen. The one on the right is a common occurrence in New England made surprisingly horrific when seen from the perspective of a mouse, mole, or frog.

How lore blocks encourage exploration.

You might have noticed different symbols in the list of armors. That's because it uses DIY & Dragon's seminal post: Landmark, Hidden, Secret. Not all armors are immediately obvious to the players, some have to be discovered.

• KNOWN. This is indicated by an ordinary black bullet on the list. A known armor is like a landmark, it's automatic and free. It sticks out. The GM gives it to the players as part of the description. When I'm playing virtually, I type it out. When I'm in person, I tap the table and slide over an index card.
• HIDDEN. This is indicated by a hollow bullet on the list. Hidden information isn't automatic. Players have to ask questions to learn them. Sometimes they even have to pay a cost like time and resources. The sellsnouts, for example, take hostages to even the odds. A deft GM would signal this early and often.
• SECRET. This is indicated by a star on the list. Secret information is the opposite of automatic. It's costly. Player characters have to find the answer in the world through exploration, trial and error, or by finding out the hard way. In the case of the ticks, killing the body doesn't kill the head—just like in real life. The player characters can find this out the hard way, or they can learn it from NPCs, the world, or by baiting the swarm.

How lore blocks handle groups.

Individual creatures might have lore blocks, but as you can see from the above example, I like my groups contained to just one. Their leader might be separated, but for the average foot soldier, pack, or swarm—the group is another armor.

So, how do players handle groups? The same way they handle armor. They can try to split them up, effectively breaking them into multiple smaller lore blocks without the group for armor. They can fight them using superior tactics. Or better yet, they can bide their time, wait for an opening, or negotiate.

Particularly clever (or desperate) players might even come up with a plan to bypass or negate the group's armor. For example, a raving rabble of goblins can be tricked. A group barking orders can be thrown into chaos. And a flood of insects is mindless. They can't adapt to fire, water, or plain old evasion.

How to design sci-fi lore blocks.

Up until this point, I've shown how lore blocks handle fantasy and un-named creatures. Now, I want to show you how they handle non-player characters in a genre like sci-fi. These two examples come from Troubleshoot, a sci-fi home game about freelancers in a weird galaxy of aliens, corporations, and high-concept problems. Think Star Trek meets Alien. More adventure than horror.

You'll notice some changes in these lore blocks. Starting with the first line which no longer has a level of influence, in space, everyone is rare and consequential, so it's not as important to the setting. We still have our power, species, and faction affiliations, but now the goals and weaknesses are more pronounced with each sentence getting their own line break.

Notice how Mr. Paul Dander has a secret armor that triggers as fallout. Sometimes the fallout is that the creature dies on their own terms. Hopefully, the players check his personal computer before they try to shake him down. He's a company man in more ways than one!

How lore blocks handle items and loot.

In traditional stat blocks, monster features often do double duty when it comes to loot. For example, a goblin with a "hand ax attack," keeps a hand axe in their inventory, even when its not listed. The same efficiency exists in lore blocks.

Monsters, creatures, and characters tend to carry what they use—which is why they often manifest as armor, motives, and weaknesses. Weapons, for example, are always deterrent-like armors in the hands of smart characters. A man with a gun will use it. Similarly, being weighed down by loot can be shown through a weakness. In video games, it's normal to carry around an arsenal. In a normal story, it makes the packmule look like a walking vending machine.

I like this method because it encourages the GM to show loot in action and prove its value (and risks). A key card is boring—or even worse, undefined—when it's stuck in a character's pocket, but if Paul Dander had one, he'd use it to lock doors and trigger airlocks. Immediately raising its value to onlooking troubleshooters.

The other strength of lore blocks are their limitations. They force designers to distribute details elsewhere. Most loot should be in the environment if its not going to be used, abused, or protected by the NPC. In the environment, it tells a story and adds interactive kindling to the scene.

Lore blocks in summary.

If you're thinking about adapting lore blocks for a system-agnostic adventure, I strongly recommend building on the example made in Reach of the Roach God. It's easy to convert, and effective at conveying what really matters in play. Some designers create system-agnostic adventures with facsimile versions of an OSR ruleset, and they always demand a little extra interpretation and translation.

If you're thinking about using the beefier versions, I recommend hacking them into form. The best lore block is going to focus on the elements that matter most to your game.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Does my game care about danger levels, relationships, or factions?
• Is my game powered by npc motives, agendas, and weaknesses?
• How combat-heavy is my game? How diplomacy-based is it?

Finally, if you're going to write lore blocks, I have a few personal rules:

• Use natural language. Avoid coined rules, abilities, and phrases.
• Leave the numbers out of it. Convey things in words when possible.
• Write details that connect. Plant solutions and patterns in the lore block.
• Make your details do double duty as loot, world-building, and tone.

Next time, I'll try to share my home games. That article will be titled "Slaying the Dragon" in the meantime, let me know what you think in the comments and on social. You can find me on Bluesky.

Thanks for reading!

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The conclusion of the fourth round means another year's bracket is complete. You can find the results in this post, or by visiting this year's official home page.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

Advice Category

This category includes advice for play, prep, publishing, and more.

🏆 Writing Rooms in Pairs: 58% (130)
❌ Obstacles Support Exploration 42% (94)*

*The former title of this article in the competition, "Less Combat... More Obstacles" was incorrect. It was submitted with the wrong title, and I didn't notice the error. However, to avoid confusion during the voting, and to avoid cutting off any momentum the old title had, I kept it as-is in the competition until the final results. The correct name is "Obstacles Support Exploration."

Critique Category

This category includes critical analysis of books, games, adventures, and more.

❌ Review of Initiative Methods 49.4% (115)
🏆 How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design, Part 1: Pre-Jaquays Dungeons 50.6% (118)

Gameable Category

This category includes ready-to-use rules, monsters, and more.

🏆 RANDOM ENCOUNTER TABLES AS ADVENTURE RAM: Adding “Memory” To Encounter Checks 50.9% (115)
❌ Anti-colonial Dungeon 49.1% (111)

Theory Category

This category is all about systems, mechanics, gameplay, and more.

🏆 WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives 50.7% (115)
❌ The 10 Types of Special Rooms 49.3% (112)

Meta Category

An all new category for ideas about taxonomy, creativity, and beyond.

🏆 Mapping the Blogosphere 53.3% (122)
❌ the default dungeon is colonial 46.7% (107)

Conclusion

The infamous Bloggies bracket is complete. I know this saga suggests there are winners and losers, but it's all just kayfabe. An elaborate ruse to get everyone reading and talking about blogs. Every round had upsets. Every round had champions. The razor thin margins of this year could have fallen either way depending on time, day, and week. Thank you to everyone who participated.

Stay tuned for the second week of The Bloggies where we crown best series, best debut blog, and finally crown best blog post of the year.

Until then, godspeed, Bloggies voters.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

The conclusion of the third round means we're officially in the end game. You can find the results in this post, or by visiting this year's official home page, which includes the final round of voting.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

Advice Category

This category includes advice for play, prep, publishing, and more.

🏆 Writing Rooms in Pairs: 51.2% (129)
❌ make better mind pictures 48.8% (123)

❌ How to Replicate Over/Under 44.2% (110)
🏆 Less Combat… More Obstacles 55.8% (139)

Critique Category

This category includes critical analysis of books, games, adventures, and more.

❌ Mausritter, Wargame 34.6% (80)
🏆 Review of Initiative Methods 65.4% (151)

🏆 How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design, Part 1: Pre-Jaquays Dungeons 60.3% (146)
❌ Arthurian Mysticism and Violence: a Mythic Bastionland Analysis 39.7% (96)

Gameable Category

This category includes ready-to-use rules, monsters, and more.

🏆 RANDOM ENCOUNTER TABLES AS ADVENTURE RAM: Adding “Memory” To Encounter Checks 61% (147)
❌ Promises - a Mythic Bastionland House Rule 39% (94)

❌ Just Use Bears… Or Wolves, Dragons or Spiders 48.5% (112)
🏆 Anti-colonial Dungeon 51.5% (119)

Theory Category

This category is all about systems, mechanics, gameplay, and more.

🏆 WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives 52.3% (123)
❌ The Star-Pattern: a Pitfall of GMing 47.7% (112)

🏆 The 10 Types of Special Rooms 54.8% (137)
❌ Combat As My Balls 45.2% (113)

Meta Category

An all new category for ideas about taxonomy, creativity, and beyond.

🏆 Mapping the Blogosphere 61.6% (146)
❌ Don’t wait to create, don’t wait to learn 38.4% (91)

❌ Close and Distant Playstyles 48.9% (113)
🏆 the default dungeon is colonial 51.1% (118)

Conclusion

That's everything for Round 3. If you're reading this, that means round 4 is already underway (and you're running out of time). You can find the latest news, standings, and voting at this year's Bloggies homepage or at the link below.

Godspeed, Bloggies Voters.

The Bloggies: Round 4

Welcome to The Bloggies. You’re currently voting in the forth and final round of the tournament! All five categories are included. You’ll be voting on each matchup in the five categories. What are The Bloggies? The Bloggies are a fan-led celebration of blogging in tabletop rpgs. It’s one part award show and one part battle royale. You can find this year’s nominees and their respective brackets at the official homepage for this year.

Google Docs

The playing field has been reduced by half again, and voting for the next round has already started. I've broken every category into its own section. You can find the results in this post, or by visiting this year's official home page, which includes the next round of voting.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

Advice Category

This category includes advice for play, prep, publishing, and more.

🏆 Writing Rooms in Pairs: 58.8% (97)
❌ Ten Intangible Tips for Development Editing Your RPG Manuscript 41.2% (68)

❌ A Lock With No Key: Designing Obstacles for OSR Play 44.6% (75)
🏆 make better mind pictures 55.4% (93)

🏆 How to Replicate Over/Under 52% (90)
❌ Look Before You Leap 48% (83)

❌ Action-Oriented Interaction 47.5% (75)
🏆 Less Combat… More Obstacles 52.5% (83)

Critique Category

This category includes critical analysis of books, games, adventures, and more.

🏆 Mausritter, Wargame 54.2% (64)
❌ Playing the Chaplain's Game 45.8% (54)

🏆 Review of Initiative Methods 59.7% (74)
❌ B1 and Toyetic Dungeon Rooms 40.3% (50)

❌ Monster, Maiden, Madonna, Medusa 46.4% (58)
🏆 How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design, Part 1: Pre-Jaquays Dungeons 53.6% (67)

🏆 Arthurian Mysticism and Violence: a Mythic Bastionland Analysis 59.2% (71)
❌ I Read Spine 40.8% (49)

Gameable Category

This category includes ready-to-use rules, monsters, and more.

🏆 RANDOM ENCOUNTER TABLES AS ADVENTURE RAM: Adding “Memory” To Encounter Checks 69.2% (110)
❌ Stacking The Deck – Mining Fallout: New Vegas for TTRPG Setting Ideas 30.8% (49)

🏆 Promises - a Mythic Bastionland House Rule 60.6% (103)
❌ Let’s Make a Forest 39.4% (67)

❌ 1d20 Diegetic Rules, 1d20 Hypo-Diegetic Rules 47% (78)
🏆 Just Use Bears… Or Wolves, Dragons or Spiders 53% (88)

🏆 Anti-colonial Dungeon 67.5% (110)
❌ [HMTW] Using Divination to Generate a Character 32.5% (53)

Theory Category

This category is all about systems, mechanics, gameplay, and more.

🏆 WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives 55.3% (78)
❌ Everything is Pointcrawl! 44.7% (63)

❌ Why Orcs? Or, Why Do I Love Orcs? 49.3% (66)
🏆 The Star-Pattern: a Pitfall of GMing 50.7% (68)

🏆 The 10 Types of Special Rooms 53.8% (71)
❌ There is a point to Tom Bombadil (or how I approach lore) 46.2% (61)

🏆 Combat As My Balls 58% (80)
❌ [An OSR Pattern] One, Two, or Three Exits 42% (58)

Meta Category

An all new category for ideas about taxonomy, creativity, and beyond.

🏆 Mapping the Blogosphere 61.1% (88)
❌ The OSR Onion 38.9% (56)

❌ The 1E Manifesto 48.9% (66)
🏆 Don’t wait to create, don’t wait to learn 51.1% (69)

🏆 Close and Distant Playstyles 53.3% (72)
❌ Faggot Games: An Urgent Warning 46.7% (63)

🏆 the default dungeon is colonial 58.6% (78)
❌ The Five Laws of Roleplaying Games 41.4% (55)

Conclusion

That's everything for Round 2. If you're reading this, that means round 3 is already underway. You can find the latest news, standings, and voting at this year's Bloggies homepage.

Godspeed, Bloggies Voters.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

If you're reading this, it means round 1 of The Bloggies is over. The playing field has been reduced by half, and voting for the next round has begun. I've broken every category into its own section. You can find the results in this post, or by visiting this year's official home page, which includes the next round of voting.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

Advice Category

This category includes advice for play, prep, publishing, and more.

Critique Category

This category includes critical analysis of books, games, adventures, and more.

Gameable Category

This category includes ready-to-use rules, monsters, and more.

Theory Category

This category is all about systems, mechanics, gameplay, and more.

Meta Category

An all new category for ideas about taxonomy, creativity, and beyond.

Conclusion

That's everything for Round 1. If you're reading this, that means round 2 is already underway. You can find the latest news, standings, and voting at this year's Bloggies homepage.

Godspeed, Bloggies Voters.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

The day has finally arrived. The nominees for this year's Bloggies are here, and in one week they'll compete head-to-head in a single-elimination tournament. If you want to find out who this year's nominees are, visit the official webpage or keep reading.

Otherwise, let's talk about the surprise category for this year. In addition to the four categories we know and love, this year (and probably only this year) we're experimenting with a little category called "meta."

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

The all-new Meta category.

Why is there a category called meta? The answer is pretty simple. We had a lot of great manifesto, taxonomy, and industry talk this year, but it was quickly crowding out the other categories—so rather than omit good posts, we siloed them to their own spotlight in the Bloggies. (I know I keep writing "we" but it really is mostly me floating ideas to friends and family before jumping in head first.)

The goal of the Bloggies has always been to get more people reading and writing blogs, and this category allows us to showcase great writing about the industry without replacing valuable advice, critique, gameable, and theory writing.

How were these nominees selected?

The nominees are selected through a mixture of submissions and curation. Anything that got a particularly outstanding representation in the body of submissions was included in this year's competition, but since this is a small competition—and blogging is so niche—a lot of posts (even popular ones online) only got one or two submissions at most. So, with advice from family and last year's winners, I handpicked the remaining nominees.

There were also creators who had a lot of support, so much support that if I strictly followed the numbers, they would have filled entire brackets on their own. Since I have the burden and privilege of hosting, I decided to limit creators to one post per bracket so that other amazing creators could join them.

Lastly, you might be wondering, "Clayton, where are the seeds?" There aren't any. Unlike Football, Fútbol, and Bloodbowl—we don't have quantifiable data to create an objective bracket, so rather than create arbitrary seeds, I tried to pair posts with thematic twins, and if that wasn't possible, then (and only then) I tried to recreate the idea behind seeds—which is to pit frontrunners with challengers.

I think you'll like some of these thematic matchups. Some of them aren't obvious until you read them.

How will you read all of these articles?

I recommend picking and choosing the categories you like. When voting starts next week, there will be a separate form for each category, so if you don't care for theory, gameable, etc, you won't feel obligated to weigh-in.

There's also a rumor—some say a quest—that others are recording these blog posts after being inspired by Nick Whelan's Blogs on Tape podcast. (If you haven't listened to that podcast, you really should.) When the Bloggies podcast goes live, I'll share it on the official webpage and include a link with the voting announcement.

What's the schedule for The Bloggies?

Add these dates to your calendar. This week, believe it or not, is the calm before the storm. Once voting begins, The Bloggies website will be updated almost daily (with the exception of weekends).

• Bracket voting begins: Monday, February 16th, 2026
• Bonus Category voting begins: Monday, February 23rd, 2026
• Final Winners declared: Last week of February

The Bloggies 2026 Nominees

Bonus Category Nominees

The Best Overall Blog post will be decided alongside the bonus categories the week after the tournament. Until then, we don't have our final list.

What's next for The Bloggies 2026?

Voting. Make sure to bookmark this year's page and mark your calendars. I want to build on the awesome work done by last year's host, Sacha Goat, and try to double this year's voter turnout.

Until then, read blogs other than this one. You're already behind!

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

This year's Bloggies are being hosted by Explorers Design a creative outlet by Clayton Notestine. If you liked this article, the tone, or the work that I do, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing.

Thank you for submitting so many awesome blogs and articles from across the rpg blogosphere. Like any good competition, there are more nomination-worthy posts than there are nominations. This week's whittling will be painful.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

What's the official breakdown?

The main event, "Best Blog Post" had 765 submissions across its four major categories, Advice, Theory, Critique, and Gameable. I've tried my best to remove duplicates from the final numbers, but its imperfect. A lot of posts were submitted under different URLs, spellings, and categories.

• Advice. 217 submissions (170 unique).
• Theory. 262 submissions (162 unique).
• Gameable. 164 submissions (131 unique).
• Critique. 122 submissions (80 unique).

As you can see from the numbers, theory and advice are by far the most popular. Theory in particular gets a lot of submissions, but often repeat submissions (some posts were nominated more than 12 times!) Not surprisingly, critique—formerly called "reviews"—remains one of the least populated categories despite being expanded to more than just reviews. None of this is surprising, but it goes to show how different the categories are.

The two bonus categories were much smaller, but I'm happy to announce we have enough to host both this year. (This will be the first year for "Best Series.")

• Best Debut Blog. 104 responses (70 unique).
• Best Series. 94 responses (62 unique).

What does the selection process look like?

This week will be all about finalizing the nominees and "Best Blog Post" brackets. Nominees are selected on their individual merit and number of nominations. 765 submissions sounds like a lot—enough to rely on number of submissions alone—but ultimately the difference between 1 and 10 submissions is marginal when exposed to the internet. A well-timed post on Bluesky or Discord can create a lead very easily.

That's where help comes in.While the burden of selections starts and stops with me, I reached out for help. The other finalists from last year, Warren from Prismatic Wasteland, Amanda P from Weird Wonder, and Paul from Indie Game Reading Club have been my soundboard on any major decisions. They're a huge part of what kept this project fun.

If any of their work ends up in this year's competition, rest assured it happened without them knowing or with protest. The benefit of having a singular host for a silly Thunderdome-style competition is that the host gets to make final decisions and suffer the consequences.

What's next for The Bloggies?

Nominees will be revealed Monday, February 9th. This will include the brackets with 16 posts a piece, the 10 debut blogs, and the 10 series. I want to give everyone a full week to read the posts and talk about them before voting.

Voting will begin Monday, February 16th. Read the nominees in advance because we're doing all of the brackets at once. First round voting will start on Monday. The four brackets voting will be done by the end of the week.

Final Voting will begin Monday, February 23rd. On the second week, we'll vote for Best Debut Blog, Best Series, and Best Overall Blog Post across all four categories.

Additional reading...

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

How do The Bloggies work?

The blogosphere’s annual celebration is coming back.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

The Bloggies Hall of Fame

Every winner of The Bloggies from 2022 to 2025. Want to melt your rpg brain? Start here.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

1. Never skip the test print. Nothing finds mistakes faster than printing the book. Print your drafts. Pay for the press proofs. Give yourself an opportunity to double check your work at every stage of production.
2. A record scratch can be desirable. An imperfection, burr, or oddity in a game's design calls attention to itself and thus the overall experience. To quote the potter, Pete Pinnell, "Sometimes, something that's completely resolved isn't as interesting..."
3. Playtest early. Playtest often. Lo-res prototypes keep play focused on fewer parts, and encourage a wider range of feedback. High-res prototypes can pose too many variables, and feel too set-in-stone for players to provide honest feedback.

Explorers' Loot

• Against Dominant Mechanics. Rules form relationships with each other. Some share the spotlight. Some hog it. My latest 1 HP Dragon design notes.
• My 5 Favorite RPG Newsletters. Forget about algorithms. We've got smart, curious people to show us around the best corners of the rpg blogosphere.
• The Bloggies Hall of Fame. Every winner and host in one place. The result is a parade of influential ideas, untapped possibilities, and a slice of rpg history.

Quests & Rumors

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

• ⚔️ Bloggies Voting is Coming! Bookmark the official page. The Battle Royale of rpg blogs is about to begin later this month.
• Zinetopia & Zinequest 2026. A month-long celebration where creators share and launch new DIY zines. They're both running this February.
• Old-School Essentials Month. Prepare your spirit for a collab project led by Exalted Funeral and Necrotic Gnome on Backerkit. May 5th – June 6th.
• Shadowdark 8-Bit Game Jam. Take inspiration from classic NES-era games and produce fresh, table-ready Shadowdark content! Ends Feb 12th.
• Nightsong Living World S1. Make something for Fari RPG's upcoming old-school-style game, Nightsong. Build a living world. Jam ends Feb 22nd.
• Fix Your Hearts or Die Jam. Create a game in honor of David Lynch. In other words: make it unflinching and unusual. Jam ends Feb 24th.
• Swyvers Heistable Hovels Jam. Build an entire city one house at a time alongside other Swyvers-like scoundrels. Jam ends Feb 28th.
• Total//Effect//Jam. Binary Star's hosting a jam to celebrate the launch of Null_Space, a sci-fi game with novel mechanics. Jam Feb 16th – April 30th.
• 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.

• The Electrum Archive is Prescription Medication by Valeria Loves. "All games are not created equal, but there are innumerable ways to be perfect."
• Deathmatch Island by Old Men Running the World. An in-depth conversation about the design of Deathmatch Island and the future of AGON.
• It's... [The Monty Python Game] by Benign Brown Beast. A play report and review of the Monty Python RPG. It's way more interesting than you think.
• 🎙️ Pollute the Elfen Memory Water by Between Two Cairns. Yochai, Brad, and Sam are joined by Liam Pádraig Ó Cuilleanáin.
• 🎥 We Need to Talk about Goodman Games by Questing Beast. A layout and design comparison of Good Man Games (DCC/MCC/etc.) and Necrotic Gnome (OSE/Dolmenwood/etc.)
  • Eating the Book by Orthopraxy. A counter-argument for why Goodman Game's florid presentation works for many GMs because it's prose-like.
  • Why not both? by Dungeon Merlin. A counter-counter-argument that posits both approaches are valid while explaining why. (I like this one.)

Exhibits & Best-iary

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

• The Winners of the 2025 Gloggies. Goblin Laws of Gaming. A rules-lite, hack-heavy rpg community. They just released their top blog posts of last year.
• Idle Cartulary Awards for Excellence in Elfgames. Friend of the blog, Nova, gives us her top modules, rpgs, pods, and more from last year. Excellent.
• Zinetopia: Reservoir by Cameron Maas. This is the project I'm most excited for on Backerkit's Zinetopia. The cover is disgusting (complimentary).
• 🎥 Start Hoarding Textures by Alfred Valley. If there's anyone in the tabletop space who knows something about textures, it's the Alfred Valley.
• 🎥 A Primer on Tabletop Magazines, Zines, and Periodicals by The Weekly Scroll. If you're hungry for writing about rpgs, this video has it.
• 🎥 The Secret Sauce of Italian RPGs by Weird Place. The tabletop games coming out of Italy are different, I read many of them for the Ennies.
• 🎥 Show Me Your Moves by Plus One EXP. A show all about making Powered by the Apocalypse-style moves. This episode features the Bakers.
• 🎥 Puzzle Dungeon Jam Critiques by Directsun. One of the best methods for learning is watching someone else get feedback. This series is that for puzzle-based adventures.
  • 🎥 Perils of the Tower Wizard w/ guest Amanda P
  • 🎥 Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between w/ guest Arnold K
  • 🎥 Reservoir w/ guest Ben Laurence

Theory & Craft

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

• How to Deliver your Game Copy to a Layout Designer by Graftbound. A lot of projects would be improved by non-layout designers following this article.
• Turning the Dial by New School Revolution. Playing the game is how you understand it. "Playing rules-as-written isn't obedience. It's literacy."
• Elements of a Key Pt. 2 by BAATAG. An interesting look at adventure design through the lens of its consumption—design, prep, and play.
• Designing for Pirate Borg 1/3 by OSR Rocks! "Designing for Pirate Borg (or any game you want to be compatible with) starts with constraints, not freedom."
• How to Not Do Zines Wrong by To Distant Lands. So you want to make an honest-to-god, scrappy, print-at-home zine? Not the polished stuff. Read this.
• The Loot Sicko's Dilemma by Fail Forward. How to have gear and loot in your game without having the rest of the game get buried in said loot.
• Affinity Tables Suck by Fari RPGs. Affinity Studio made tables easier to use—but they're still a pain. Fari teaches a simple workaround using text styles.
• The Five Room Dungeon Expanded by Zackary Ellis. A theory on designing expansive one-shot dungeons with a focus towards replayability.
• Common, Recalled, Obscure by Elmcat. What if you combined "knowledge checks" with DIY & Dragon's Landmark, Hidden, Secret? You get this.
• Playtest Early, Playtest Often by Prismatic Wasteland. I think Prismatic's title might have infiltrated my mind. We shared a wavelength this month.
• 🎙️ Designing for GMless Play by Talk of the Table. Brian and Elliot are joined by Nat Mesnard, a game designer and professor, on GMless design.
• 🎥 You Can Turn Photos into Zine Art by Odin's Beard. Not an illustrator? No problem. This Photoshop process is a great technique to start with.
• 🎥 How to Draw a Sci-Fi Building Map by JP Coovert. If you're like me and drawing maps intimidates the hell out of you, check out this friendly video.

Inspiring & Non-roleplaying

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

• 15 Years of Indie Dev in 4 Bits of Advice by Tom Francis. The advice is specifically for video game developers, but has immediate parallels to analog.
• How to Thrive and Survive As a Freelancer by True Grit. An illustrator-focused article with some great wisdom from illustrators and designers.
• Publishing your Work Increases your Luck by Aaron Francis. Every little project you share is like buying a lottery ticket for massive success.
• GalleriesNow. If you're the sort of designer who looks to fine art for inspiration, this website cataloging gallery showings might be for you.
• Don't Be the Best; Be their Favorite by Jay Acunzo. Push through the marketing-feel if it gives you hives: the advice is true. Do what you like.
• 🗄️ Modern Illustration Archive. An archive of illustration from c.1950-1975, shining a spotlight on pioneering illustrators and their work.
• 🗄️ Readymag's Websites of the Year 2025. This year's websites were experimental, boundary-free, and chosen by a specially formed jury.
• 🗄️ Typespiration. Google Font pairings with an emphasis on web. It includes hex codes for color pairings as well. Now all it needs is sizing notes.

Design Archive

Old articles, famous and the overlooked, resurrected from the dead.

• Game Design: When to Be Random by Goblin Punch. The ins and outs of random tables — one of the most misunderstood bits of tech in old-school.
• The ICI Doctrine: Information, Choice, Impact by Bastionland. Essential reading, especially for GMs that run games that focus on problem-solving.

Missed the last issue? Read it here.

The Explorateur: Issue #15

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

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

This newsletter uses the occasional affiliate link to support Explorers Design. If you notice any broken links, mistakes, or bad actors, please let me know.

Explorers Design is a production of Clayton Notestine. If you liked this issue, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing.

I continue to fight The 1 HP Dragon. Playtests have been good. Ironically, the most productive part of my process has been playing other people's games and reading their blogs. "Slaying the dragon" is a common design goal.

So here's what I've learned: the secret to diegetic, narrative-first, combat-as-puzzles isn't what you add—it's what you omit. I've consumed a lot of games over the last year. None of them have scratched the itch. And I have a theory for why.

Most games attempting to slay the dragon add mechanics I'm convinced cannot co-exist with the gameplay I desire. They're all-consuming, gravity-bending, gameplay hogs. No matter how they're deployed—if present—they run the show.

Obviously, rules influence play. That's not novel. What I'm suggesting is that some rules influence play and censor others. If you include these rules, you exclude others. They exert an overwhelming influence.

I discovered this in my playtests. "What if my system had the puzzle but also single-digit hitpoints? Meta-currency? Tiered monster phases? Difficulty classes? Nested hit dice?" I ground through iterations. Trying to get novel outcomes (new gameplay) with familiar mechanics. The same thing kept happening. No matter how much I formalized and incentivized the gameplay I wanted, if certain mechanics were present, the game I desired disappeared.

After talking to fellow designers, I'm going to call these rules Dominant Mechanics.

What are Dominant Mechanics?

Here's a short and sweet definition of Dominant Mechanics:

Dominant Mechanics are rules that cannot co-exist in a system without monopolizing play and overriding other rules.

Worded like a law: The Law of Dominant Mechanics™ (Trademark is a joke.)

If present in a system, some mechanics—Dominant Mechanics—will take precedence and replace the effects of other mechanics regardless of how those other mechanics are designed or presented.

This effect can be desirable. It's a core idea of game design that rules can guide (and by extension control) play, but for the scope of this article and my current project, a dominant mechanic is one that does so invasively—regardless of how other mechanics are implemented. Often in opposition with the designer's intent.

This means a dominant mechanic can be dominant in one design and not dominant in another. It's dependent on the system, the designer's goals, and the presence of other mechanics. (Some mechanics are incredibly dominant in some systems, and evenly matched in others.)

For the sake of this article, I'm focusing on what's been overly dominant in my 1 HP Dragon explorations and that game's design goals. There are at least three examples.

Rollable Skills e.g. "Disarm Trap"

Back in the day, skill rolls were a lot less common in games like D&D, especially compared to its modern iterations (3rd, 4th, and beyond). In the absence of those skills, it was more common for players to try and overcome challenges by narrating their actions. When more skills were added to the game (and later expanded on), they pasted over and disincentivize this kind of game play. For example, in AD&D, the thief's trap skills effectively cooled other classes from touching traps. After all, with the abstraction of skills, you didn't have to poke and prod at poison dart traps. In fact, doing so likely put you in more danger than engaging with the mechanics provided or letting your thief with the skill do it.

This phenomenon isn't necessarily undesirable, but it shows how skill checks—a kind of scaffolding and lever of play—"automates" or renders suboptimal a behavior. The Dungeon Master didn't have to adjudicate the results of a player saying, "I'm going to plug the holes," because the skill roll resolved the player saying, "I'm going to disarm the trap."

This is why games like Cairn, Knave, and similar "adventure" rpgs have omitted skill checks from their mechanics. These games want the problem-solving in conversation. If a player could roll a die to abstract or even elide the means, method, and results—the diegetic conversation doesn't happen. Similarly, in games like Dogs in the Vineyard, themes like faith, sin, and judgement are left un-mechanized despite their prevalence in the game's themes. The omission is by design, likely because its inclusion would overly control the outcomes.

Advantage/Disadvantage in Mausritter

Mausritter is a design descendent of Into the Odd with a number of changes. It's setting and grid-based inventory are the most famous. But we're going to focus on a subtle but seismic one—the inclusion of D&D's Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic. Nothing in Mausritter strays further from the Into the Odd design philosophy like the inclusion of D&D-style Advantage/Disadvantage.

If you want to know why Into the Odd omits Advantage/Disadvantage (A/D), I recommend reading Chris McDowall's explanation. It makes this next part clearer. To summarize: Into the Odd supports variable difficulty by focusing on the impact instead of the odds of success. It's a design idea famously codified in Blades in the Dark's "position and effect." By omitting A/D, players are left to weigh the fictional situation and how it impacts the results of their actions. More simply: Without A/D, players have diegetic conversations about the in-world fiction. The moment A/D is included, that focus shifts to the mechanical layer with players "chasing mechanical advantages."

What's important to recognize is that Advantage/Disadvantage doesn't technically ban or even replace the diegetic conversation. In theory the two procedures can co-exist, but in practice—with player priorities, optimal play, and finite time—A/D takes precedence.

Hit points in games with combat.

We're back where we started. In my experience, when combat has hit points, increasing or decreasing those hit points becomes the primary locus of play. Even when a game has related mechanics—like Knave's conditions or D&D's statuses—hit points take precedence. The reason is many and myriad, but before we talk about that, I want to expand what I mean by hit points.

Many games that are "hp-free," feature them by another name. If a monster takes "3 successes" from rolls to die, like in World of Darkness games, that's 3 hit points. If a player dies in one hit but has meta currency to negate those attacks, the meta currency is effectively hit points. Similarly, Fate and games like it have stress and consequences, but stress—the currency used to avoid consequences—behaves like hit points.

What makes a mechanic dominant?

It's important to underline that Dominant Mechanics are not necessarily dominant by design. I know the word suggests agency, but this phenomenon is almost entirely extrinsic to them. The things that make a mechanic dominant are the players who use them. Their biases, comfort, and expectations unevenly distribute attention and priority.

Cognitive Bias

Players form mental models and heuristics as they learn. These mental models and shortcuts, built from their past experiences, beliefs, and knowledge influence how they learn and play other games. When they pick up a new game, they try to understand it with what they already know, leading to inferences, preferences, and assumptions. This can be really useful for teaching people new games, but sometimes these mental models lead to assumptions, bias, and decision making divorced from what's present in the game.

Cognitive bias ranks mechanics via assumptions unrelated to the game itself. Often without players noticing. The rules and procedures we don't know? We have to breakdown and rebuild our mental models to include them. But the mechanics we know? They're not only included, they often come first in the pecking order. This is why sometimes, when you include a popular mechanic found in other games like D&D, it tramples over other mechanics. Usually the more subtle and novel ones. In addition to prioritizing what we know, bias can also tack on assumptions that aren't present in the rules, snowballing the dominant mechanic in play.

Occam’s Razor

Given the choice, players tend to pick the option that's most immediately effective, reliable, and convenient in play. There's a similar phenomenon in urban planning called, "desire paths," where pedestrians cut through lawns and flower beds, creating dirt paths where sidewalks are absent. I don't think it's too far a reach to suggest, that if you create a mechanic that negates the need for complexity or variables, players are likely to use it.

Hit points hold dominion over play because they're simple and efficient in almost every way non-HP mechanics are not. What they lack in detail and color, they gain in immediacy. The outcomes associated with hit points are tangible, reliable, and consistent. They're easy to remember, easy to reference, and easy to interact with as a group. The time between decision and impact when considering HP is short. My working theory is that if given the choice between attacking a creature's HP or doing something else, the vast majority (in most cases) will choose to attack a monster's hit points, even if it's suboptimal in the long run. In the immediate future, it is optimal because it's quick, reliable, and consistent.

Emergent Play

If you're a fan of game design, you're probably familiar with the idea. Rules and mechanics plant seeds for emergent play. Sometimes they push us into it, other times they guide it, and in some cases they even meet us there. A dominant mechanic exerts an unintentional and overwhelming influence on emergent play.

This is "rules elide" and other design concepts invoked without intention. Skill rolls override diegetic conversation. Advantage and Disadvantage abstract and flatten tactics. Hit points frame combat as numbers. When intentional, it's super effective, but it can be surprising how much emergent gameplay lives or dies from the presence of just one mechanic.

Dominant Mechanics in Summary

Is this a term with legs? I'm not entirely sure. I can see myself playtesting someone else's game and saying, "Oh, I know why it's not working. You have a Dominant Mechanic jamming everything up!"

"Dominant Mechanics" is my name for rules that thwart my design goals. They're not universal. In order to identify an invasive, monopolizing, radioactive, loud, gameplay-hogging mechanic, a designer would need to identify the gameplay they're trying to invoke. If the mechanic is doing what is intended, is it a dominant mechanic? Perhaps. Maybe what I'm looking for is the dominant mechanic that serves my design goals. Time will tell if this term has utility when I'm done.

Thanks to all of my design colleagues who helped me workshop a cursed name for this phenomenon. "Dominant Mechanics" was Ram's idea. You can find his blog at Save Vs Total Party Kill.

If you're interested in learning more about the ideas that informed this post, I recommend checking out the following resources:

• Mental Models. "What users believe about a system, impacts how they use it."
• Occam's Razor. A common term with a lasting impression on my designs.
• Desire Paths. Once you see them, you can't unsee them.
• Jakob's Law. How user preference becomes a burden on website UX.
• Rules Elide. I think this idea still holds water (though not exclusively).
• Fruitful Void. Look at the citations for the source. This link is easier to read.
• Affordances. This product design concept feels especially relevant.

Finally, if you're interested in exploring more thoughts on combat without health, check out the links below.

Until next time, I'll keep exploring.

The 1 HP Dragon

Combat as puzzles. A hack on the 16 HP dragon from Dungeon World.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

Why Combat Is a Fail State

Revisiting the old-school maxim “Combat is a fail state” and redefining what it means at my table and as a design theory for the OSR.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

Combat without Combat

NULL_SPACE # Liminal Void is has been consigned to the void. Well, the name has, anyway. Going forward, it will be called NULL_SPACE! When I spoke about it last, I said both of the following: (in the context of priorities for the game:) De-emphasize combat. Over each edition, the degree to which anyone can easily do combat has been relegated more fully to explicitly chosen weaponry and combat-ready outfits - which was the goal from the start, but at the time I’d been coming off of LUMEN so I was still kind of thinking in the combat-game sense.

Binary Star Games

They Have a Cave Troll

Understanding THORN and healthless combat

Gila’s SubstackGila RPGs

Explorers Design is a production of Clayton Notestine. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing. Paying members get access to bonus tools and templates as a heartfelt thank you.

People are my preferred search engine. They're educational. They're challenging. And they make discovering new games, ideas, and creators fun.

That's why I recommend curation newsletters. They're like the tabletop rpg internet's TV Guides. They've got some algorithm in them, but with some much-needed human intervention.

If you're looking to expand your tabletop rpg blogging horizons, newsletters are the way to go. The following list are my go-to guides for the rpg blogosphere.

The Indie RPG Newsletter

One of the best to ever do it. In addition to a treasure trove of insightful links, Thomas has this jealousy-inducing habit of writing compelling essays at the top of his newsletters. Sometimes (oftentimes) his essay is the best part.

Content: Essays, Video, Podcasts, and Announcements.
Genres: Indie, Storygame, and LitRPG.
Frequency: Weekly

Seed of Worlds

Who has the time to make an incredible list of adventure rpg links every week? Apparently Seed of Worlds. And thank the gods for that. In addition to sharing their discoveries on Seed of Worlds, they also promote them on /r/OSR—which means they're sending hundreds of readers to creators every week.

Content: Essays and Play Reports.
Genre: Old-school Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and GLOG.
Frequency: Weekly

The Glatisant

The Questing Beast's newsletter is still one of the best for keeping up-to-date on adventure rpgs like the kind you find in the OSR, NSR, and beyond. Back in 2024 it had some questionable sponsors (to put it mildly), so I waited a year to see if it would happen again. So far, so good. I like the changes Ben's made to his channel and newsletter since then. If you like elf games, give this a look.

Content: Essays, Videos, Sales, and Announcements.
Genre: Old-school Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and fiction.
Frequency: Monthly

Carouse, Carouse!

Carouse is a shaggy project shared by a dozen different people. I'm one of them. We share blog posts, videos, reviews, and even gameable material. We also have the good fortune of having John, an awesome illustrator, on the team to draw party-themed illustrations every month. It's a labor of love.

Content: Essays, Videos, Reviews, Gameable, and more.
Genre: Indie, Storygame, Old-school Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
Frequency: Monthly

The Idle Digest

Idle Cartulary is prolific. Nova could fill an entire newsletter with just her reviews and essays, and yet, she keeps finding articles I haven't read. If you're an indie designer, The Idle Digest is guaranteed to boost your WIS score.

Content: Essays, Reviews, and Announcements.
Genre: Indie, Storygame, Old-school Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
Frequency: Monthly

Closing thoughts

Above is my top five from 2025. I have lots of honorable mentions—most of them curation-newsletter adjacent. If you're hungry for more sources, check out these other websites.

• Missives from the Meatcastle. If you like gameable material, Meatcastle's Missives have you covered. Every year they release a downloadable magazine full of hacks, ideas, and years-end awards.
• Wyrd Science's The Gazetteer. Unfortunately, Wyrd Science is no longer doing The Gazetteer (for now). The editor is reinventing it for 2026. In the meantime, check out the back issues and give it a follow.
• Patchwork Newsletter. Patchwork Paladin recently started up a weekly newsletter with everything from blog posts to Discord conversations. It's still early, but I already really like it. The inclusion of Discord convos is unique.
• News from the Grid. I've been a fan of Jean's work for a few years now. If you like rpg graphic design, their monthly newsletter is a joy. There's always one or two inspiring links in every issue.

Finally, if you don't know already, I have a monthly newsletter as well.

The Explorateur

Monthly design jams, critique, theory, and inspiration for tabletop rpg designers written by rpg designers. If you want to level-up your design skills, give it a read. I try to share only the best links I can find from across the internet. You can find every issue here on Explorers Design.

Until next time. Thanks for reading!

Explorers Design is a production of Clayton Notestine. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing. Members who support me get access to a few bonus tools and templates as a thank you for all the help.

The Bloggies are nowhere near as serious as other awards competitions. Actually, they're incredibly unserious. A silly competition for something inherently scrappy.

Yet, of all the award shows, I actually like revisiting previous years. It's a public collection of bookmarks for everyone to enjoy. A canon of ideas. If you're only discovering The Bloggies now, you're in for a treat. This post is a collection of past winners.

There's an entire novel's worth of reading in the links below. If you're hungry for more, you can dive even deeper by exploring each individual year's host site. Every year has 64 nominations. More than 192 posts in total.

Without further ado, here are The Bloggies winners of yesteryear.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

The Bloggies 2022

The 1st ever Bloggies were hosted by Prismatic Wasteland.

Theory Category

🥇 Gold: D&D’s Obsession with Taxonomy from Zedeck Siew’s Writing Hours
🥈 Silver: Hexcrawls ARE pathcrawls from Permanent Cranial Damage
🥉 Copper: Proceduralism from All Dead Generations

Gameable Category

🥇 Gold: Nested Monster Hit Dice from mindstorm
🥈 Silver: Getting Rid of Dogfights from Failure Tolerated
🥉 Copper: GOBLINS GOBLINS GOBLINS from False Machine

Advice Category

🥇 Gold: Prep Tools, Not Adventures from Papers and Pencils
🥈 Silver: Hexcrawl Checklist: Part One from Prismatic Wasteland
🥉 Copper (tie): My Process from Mazirian’s Garden
🥉 Copper (tie): Adding Congruency to Anti Canon Worldbuilding from Mindstorm

Review Category

🥇 Gold: Enough Dweeb Adventures from A Knight at the Opera
🥈 Silver: Folie a Deux - Holy Mountain Shaker from Bones of Contention
🥉 Copper: Karth Taught me to Love Mothership from Technical Grimoire

The Bloggies 2023

The 2nd Annual Bloggies were hosted by Zedeck Siew.

Theory Category

🥇 Gold: OSR Rules Families from Traverse Fantasy
🥈 Silver: Critical GLOG: Base Resolution Mechanics from Goblin Punch
🥉 Copper: Being a problem - Playable Orcs at the limits of humanity from Majestic Fly Whisk

Gameable Category

🥇 Gold: Laws of the Land: meaningful terrain via in-fiction limits and conditions from Was It Likely?
🥈 Silver: Pointcrawling Character Creation from Rise Up Comus
🥉 Copper: Flux Space from Papers & Pencils

Advice Category

🥇 Gold: Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction from sachagoat
🥈 Silver: How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM from Goblin Punch
🥉 Copper: RANSACKING THE ROOM from Mindstorm

Review Category

🥇 Gold: An Empty Africa - PF2E’s The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism from Majestic Fly Whisk
🥈 Silver: Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022) from Traverse Fantasy
🥉 Copper: MICROBLOG: CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND TABLETOP GAMES from Fail Forward

The Bloggies 2024

The 3rd Annual Bloggies were hosted on Sachagoat.

Theory Category

🥇 Gold: The 1 HP Dragon from Explorers Design
🥈 Silver: In Praise of Legwork from Sam Sorensen
🥉 Copper: Interesting Social Situations, or The Discourse Post from Rise Up Comus

Gameable Category

🥇 Gold: Overloading the Random Encounter Table, from Prismatic Wasteland
🥈 Silver: The Bell Curving Encounter Table, from Pointless Monument
🥉 Copper: A Person Shaped Hole, from Mindstorm Press

Advice Category

🥇 Gold: On People-Centered Adventure Design, from Weird Wonder
🥈 Silver: Setting up an OSR Sandbox, from Roll to Doubt
🥉 Copper: Monster Checklist, from Goblin Punch

Review Category

🥇 Gold: Deep Dive: Stonetop, from Indie Game Reading Club
🥈 Silver: The loss we gain from a Thousand Year Old Campfire, from Hendrik ten Napel
🥉 Copper: The Sci-Fi Special Edition, from The Soloist

Debut Blog (Bonus Category)

🥇 Gold: MURKMAIL
🥈 Silver: WOBBLEROCKET
🥉 Copper: Among Cats and Books

Want more blogging goodness?

The Bloggies 2026* are underway. This post is something of an advertisement for this year's competition. We're now accepting submissions for best post, debut blog, and series—so what are you waiting for? Check out the official page and bookmark it for later.

The Bloggies 2026

A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

It's official. 2025 has been slain. Thank you for killing it. Let's waste no time this month and jump right into last month's discoveries...

Explorers' Loot

• Jackian Magic System. Experimental mechanics that combine Mausritter inventory, Tetris, and engine-building into an alternative Vancian magic system.
  • Lex over on YouTube recorded an awesome read through of The Jackian Magic System. It's unbelievably relaxing. Give it a watch. (Thanks, Lex!)
• How to Design Signals in Books. This is one of my best design-focused articles of the year. A 9-minute primer and guide on page numbers, headers, and more.
• Critmas Gift Guide 2025. It's not a typo. If you're still in the charitable mood this new year, send some much-deserved recognition to a designer you love.

Quests & Rumors

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

• 🗳️The Bloggies are here! Submit your favorite articles, blogs, and series to this year's Bloggies! Voting opens in February. Submissions are open now.
• Zinetopia 2026. Backerkit continues its takeover of the rpg crowdfunding space with its riff on Zinequest. They're accepting projects for Feb 2–27th.
• Subscribe to Rascal News. Independent journalism is a rare thing, and Rascal News—independent journalism for rpgs—is even rarer.
• Make Moves Jam. A year-long exploration and conversation around making moves in the Powered by the Apocalypse tradition. Jam ends Dec 31st, 2026.
• Gaming Like it's 1930. A new year means making games from new material entering the public domain. This year's additions are from 1930. Jam ends Feb 1st.
• Fix Your Hearts or Die Jam. Create a game in honor of David Lynch. In other words: make it unflinching and unusual. Jam ends Feb 24th.
• Nightsong Living World S1. Make something for Fari RPG's upcoming old-school-style game, Nightsong. Build a living world. Jam ends Feb 22nd.
• 48-Word RPG Jam. Create an rpg that's forty-eight words or fewer. A great excuse to make rules and visuals do most of the talking. Jam ends Jan 31st.

Reviews & Critique

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

• Dead Weight: Death Begets Death by Meatcastle. Mothership modules are rich with high concept setups. Dead Weight has that setup and it delivers.
• Crown of Salt by Save Vs. Total Party Kill. The Mörk Borg adventure continues to earn its roses, but not without some noteworthy thorns.
• Carved in Stone by Idle Cartulary. "I’ve often opined the fact that there are too few rpg books designed like children’s history books: This is that book."
• It's Good Because It's Funny by The Weeping Stag. This is a review of The Sinister Secret of Peacock Point by Brad Kerr and how it pairs tone with function.
• Critique Navidad by Idle Cartulary. There were so many incredible spotlights in this year's avalanche of reviews by Nova. It's hard to pick just one.
• 🎙️ Into the Wilds by Between Two Cairns. Podcast. Yochai, Brad, and Sam answer an interesting question about studying rpg modules the way artists do master studies.
• 🎥 Forgotten Shrine 01 by Directsun and Warren D. Video. This isn't a review. It's better. A live session with editorial feedback. This one's packed with insights.

Exhibits & Best-iary

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

• Gloggies Nominations 2025. Goblin Laws of Gaming. If you're not in the know, it's a rules-lite, hack-heavy rpg community. Check it. They blog a lot.
• The Verbs of Play by BAATAG. We have many "frameworks" and "taxonomies" for describing and understanding rpg books. This article is near the top.
• A Digital Post in Praise of Physical RPG Magazines by For Want of a Silver Bullet. A fantastic parade of rpg magazines and why they're awesome.
• How to be the Manager that Freelance TTRPG Writers Love Working With by Leon Barillaro. It's a rare thing—good clients. Be one.
• Taking a Postcolonial Approach to a Classic Traveller Adventure by The Weeping Stag. It's hard to describe just how deep this goes. It's good.
• Idle Cartulary Awards for Excellence in Elfgames by Idle Cartulary. Nova reads and reviews a lot of modules. This is a great collection of standouts.
• 🎙️ The Cairnies 2025 by Between Two Cairns. Podcast. I love a year-end celebration, and this is (unsurprisingly) one of my favorites with a number of exciting announcements.
• 🎙️ 2025 in Rearview (w/ Quinns) by Yes Indie'd. Podcast. Another year-end podcast, this time with the always insightful Thomas Manuel and Quinns from Quinns Quest.
• 🎥 The Golden Age of Indie RPGs: 2010-25 by A.A. Voigt. Video. If the idea of a decadently long video about rpg design movements gets you excited—strap in.
• 🎥 Charlie Ferguson-Avery Interview by The Weekly Scroll. Video. It's always fun hearing about a designer's catalog from the designer themselves.

Theory & Craft

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

• Ten More Tangible Tips Editing Your RPG Manuscript by Sam Sorenson. Sam's tips are like reading The Elements of Style for rpg writing.
• Sam's Three-Question Taxonomy by Sam Sorenson. Elegant and comprehensive. This method meshes well with our current "cultures of play."
• Ten Intangible Tips for Development Editing Your RPG Manuscript by Sam Sorenson. If it's not obvious, Sam's output has been a perfect fit for the Explorateur.
• Common Adventure Pitfalls by Beau Rancourt. "A list of tropes and patterns to avoid (or apply) so published adventures are cleaner."
• Conflict as Motivation and Resolution by Binary Star Games. Everyone always says what combat is doing, but nobody ever asks how combat is doing.
• Mastering the Puzzle Dungeon Through Challenges and Lessons by Puzzle Dungeon/Directsun. Another lesson on making puzzles that are fun.
• How to Run a TTRPG Crowdfunding Campaign by OSR Rocks! A great round-up with links for everything including tools, advice, and planning docs.
• The Default Dungeon is Colonial by Lowercase. Another exploration into how mechanics can tell their own story underneath the game's explicit setting.
• Everything is pointcrawl! by Skeleton Code Machine. "How we can reduce the illusion of choice and instead have players make meaningful decisions?"
• In Support of Belief Based Games by Storygames Chicago. Really interesting thoughts and ideas about designing beliefs, culture, and politics in games.
• 🎥 Designing with Pattern Language by RPG PHD. Video. Here's one for sickos, Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language applied to dungeon and adventure design.

Inspiring & Non-roleplaying

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

• The 173 Best Book Covers of 2025 by Literary Hub. This is a great collection of covers crowdsourced from 52 different book cover designers.
• The Best Movie Posters of 2025 by Posteritati. RPG covers sit somewhere between book covers, movie posters, and shampoo bottles. These look good.
• True Grit Texture Supply. Resource. The New Year's sale is near, and I can say this is one of the best places to get brushes, textures, and more.
• Texturelabs. Resource. If you want to become a wizard with Photoshop, Texturelab's YouTube channel is still at the top of the list. The textures themselves are excellent.
• Typewolf's Book Guide. Resource. I consider Typewolf to be the #1 resource online for type enthusiasts. This post shares the best books for mastering type.
• 🎥 Create Professional Looking Wargames by SPGD. Video. Sam Pearson is an ex-Warhammer designer. His YouTube channel, SPGD, has all kinds of great insights.
• 🎥 This Roll and Write is HUGE by No Pun Included. Video. This review's subject, Tend, showcases a lot of trends I see gaining popularity in indie rpgs.
• 🎥 Is ‘The Old King’s Crown’ 2025’s Best Board Game? by SUSD. Video. A beautiful thematic board game that builds stories on a bed of simple mechanics.

Design Archive

Old articles, famous and the overlooked, resurrected from the dead.

• (Don't) Incentivize Ethical Behavior by Zedeck Siew. "This is my main problem with mechanically rewarding pro-social play: a character’s ethical choice is rendered mercenary."
• Traffic Lights are Communication Tools by Meguey Baker. If I could redirect every conversation about "safety tools" toward "conversation tools," I would.

Missed the last issue? Read it here.

The Explorateur: Issue #14

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

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

This newsletter uses the occasional affiliate link to support Explorers Design. If you notice any broken links, mistakes, or bad actors, please let me know.

Explorers Design is a production of Clayton Notestine. If you liked this issue, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing.

The infamous "fire-and-forget" magic system of D&D comes from Jack Vance novels. In those stories, spells are living entities, thrashing between the ears. When a wizard casts "fireball," it looks like a fiery little warhead. In reality, it's a massive fire elemental getting forced through the pinhole of someone's mind.

Am I misremembering Jack Vance novels? A little bit. (Maybe a lot.) I'm definitely mixing them up with Jonathan Stroud books. Either way, what matters is this: D&D's magic system is just one approach. I'm interested in alternatives.

Imagine this: every wizard's mind is a fortress, built to contain the demons inside their head. As the wizard grows in power, their mind fortress expands, deepens, and evolves to find, trap, and feed its inhabitants. But this power comes at a terrible cost, as wizards grant these spirits foothold, the wizard willingly (or unwillingly) gives them the power to colonize it—and slowly the demons from the humble light to the all-consuming fireball take over the wizard.

Here is my draft of a new Vancian Magic System. The Jackian Magic System.

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Spellcasting Tetris-style.

Jackian Magic starts with a wizard's mind, a small impressionable little hovel with the potential to become a formidable dungeon of spirits, demons, and elementals. The more powerful the wizard, the bigger the mind, and bigger the grid. The more powerful the spells, the bigger the spirits, and the more grid they take up.

In this system, we're going to call the spellcasting grid simply the mind.

Preparing Jackian spells.

After a night's rest, a wizard studies their spell book and scrolls to find, summon, and contain their spirits. Then the player arranges them in the mind. The size of the grid and its strategic considerations are the only limits to how many spells can be memorized.

Casting Jackian spells.

Regardless of the system, Jackian magic follows the same basic structure: Every spell either works as intended or it doesn't. If the cast is successful, the spell goes off without a hitch and its respective token remains inside the mind grid. If the cast is a failure, the spell acts on its own.

When a cast succeeds: Resolve the spell's result then mark 1 success for it.

When a cast fails: Resolve the spell's result and failure conditions then mark 1 failure. If a spell moves, grows, or exerts control over the mind, roll 1d20 to determine in which direction (1-5 North, 6-10 East, 11-15 South, and 16-20 West). If the spell moves past the edge of the grid, it escapes out into the world and either disappears or causes trouble.

Recovery from Jackian spells.

Magic recovery mirrors physical recovery. First, remove any prepared spells that can be removed (some might not relinquish territory). After a week's rest, remove any ability score damage and temporary conditions. If a spellcaster is deprived of a crucial need (such as food or rest), they're unable to recover from spellcasting.

System hack example: Cairn 2E

In Cairn, every spell is represented by a singular spellbook that takes up one inventory slot. Which means that "wizards" in Cairn are walking libraries—committed to carrying nothing else besides spellbooks. With the Jackian magic system, those spells are relegated to a single extra bulky spellbook (4 slots), while the prepared spells take up slots in their mind.

Unlike in Cairn 2E's normal system, you must make a Wil Save every time you cast a spell. In the Jackian magic system, there's always a tactical risk with casting. On a failure, the spell exerts control and triggers failure results.

Advancement in the Jackian magic system.

Most of the systems I play don't have traditional leveling systems, so the exact trigger for this advancement is dependent on the system. For my Jackian Cairn 2E hack, a "spellcaster" needs at least three failed saves, or three successes, and a week's rest to grow their mind's grid. While playing, note these three instances:

• Mark every time a spell succeeds (keep track of this progress for each spell).
• Mark every time a spell exerts control and breaks out of the mind.
• Mark every time a spell exerts control and stays inside the mind.

After choosing an advancement, the record is wiped clean, and the advancement process starts over. A player can choose not to grow or change their mind's grid and "bank" their failures for the future.

Unlike failure results, successes on individual spells are persistent. They're never wiped after an advancement. When a player has successfully cast a spell three times, they get a new version of the spell. (This is an optional rule. Maybe too granular. I'm not exploring it in this article.)

Keep. Add one additional empty slot to your mind's grid. Prerequisite: Three casts need to break out of your mind.

Moat. Add an un-breachable side to one slot in your mind's grid. It can border another slot or the edge of your mind. Nothing can break through this moat, if a spell's failure condition in contingent on break out, nothing additional happens. Prerequisite: Three casts need to exert control inside your mind.

Port. Add a "gate" to one external side of a slot in your mind's grid. Whenever a spell exerts control, it always breaks out through the gate. Prerequisite: Three casts need to break out of the mind.

Repair. Remove one permanent condition from the mind. Prerequisite: Three casts need to exert control. It doesn't matter how. This is the default option.

Example Jackian Spell List

Magic Missile. 1-slot token. Hits one target for 1d6 damage. Ignores armor. Failure: The magic missile moves in a cardinal direction until stopped by another spell or the walls of the mind. If it hits a spell, that spell is cast and lost.

Sleep. (1-slot token.) A creature you can see falls into a light sleep. Failure: Add a sleepy condition to your inventory. If this fills your inventory, fall asleep, then remove all sleepy condition tokens.

Light. (1-slot token) One object you can touch shines like a torch. Failure: Bright light shines out of the spellcaster's eyes. To stop the light, their eyes must remain shut. If the spell Dark is in the mind, it is lost.

Dark. (1-slot token.) Extinguish the light of one mundance object you can see. Failure: The spellcaster's vision grows dark, no brighter than candlelight. If the spell Light is in the mind, it is lost.

Fly. (1-slot token.) For one minute, the spellcaster can swim through the air like water. Fly cannot be placed on the "floor" of the mind. Failure: Fly moves one space in a cardinal direction. If it ever ends up on the floor, it's lost.

Invisibility. (1-slot token.) A creature you touch is invisible until they move. Invisibility cannot touch spells on all of its sides. Failure: Invisibility "disappears" before reappearing in an empty slot after a short rest.

Charm. (1-slot token.) A creature you see treats you as a friend. Charm must be touching another spell. Failure: The spellcaster gets the condition "charmed" and cannot harm another creature unless harmed by it first.

Sticky. (1-slot token.) An object you can see becomes extremely sticky. Sticky must be touching a wall of the mind's grid. Anything that touches sticky cannot move in the mind. Failure: Add a "sticky" condition to your inventory. Nothing touching it can be moved without time and effort.

Shield. (2-slot vertical token.) A creature you touch is protected from mundane attacks for one minute. Shield is immune to collisions with other spells in the mind. Failure: Add a bulky "heavy" condition to your inventory.

Flame. (1-slot token.) A small throwable flame appears in your hand. It ignites anything it touches. Failure: Flame creates a duplicate in an adjacent space. If it collides with another spell, that spell transforms it into another flame.

Fireball. (1-slot token.) A torrent of flame erupts from your hands setting a room you can see ablaze. Failure: Fireball doubles in size. On collisions, it consumes other spells. If it escapes the mind, a second version of the spell is cast with the spellcaster at its center. The spellcaster is not immune to this casting.

Portal. (2-slot vertical token.) With one step, the caster teleports from one spot to another they can see. Any spells that collide with portal in the mind teleport to the outside world or another mind grid with the portal spell. Failure: A spell touching portal is sucked out and immediately cast at the target destination.

Gust. (1-slot token.) Push or pull one target 10-feet toward or away from you. Failure: Roll for a direction, then push all spells in a straight line from that direction one space away from gust. Follow any collision rules.

Shrink. (1-slot token.) Touch one object or creature and halve its size for one minute. Failure: Add a "shrunk" condition to your mind. It doesn't go away until after a short rest. If shrink collides with another spell it halves its size. If it's already 1 slot, it's lost.

Grow. (1-slot token.) Touch one object or creature and double its size for one minute. Failure: Double the size of grow. If grow collides with another spell it doubles its size. If this would overfill the mind, lose as many spells as you need to make space. If this triggers an escape result, (like with Fireball), resolve it.

The theory behind Jackian magic.

Jackian magic combines two influences. The idea of spellcasting in Dungeon Crawl Classics and my love for tile-laying/deckbuilding board games. As is often the case, when I first heard of DCC's magic system, I imagined a drastically different experience than the one on the page.

Both systems are maximalist. Both systems transform your spellcaster. The intended goal of the Jackian magic system, though, is to create something more innately interactive. By design, Jackian spells are more reliable (the spell always happens), more predictable (the spell has an internal logic), and more interactive (outcomes vary depending on player choice).

When Jackian spells go haywire, they often set off chain reactions, escalate, and reveal hidden strategies and patterns. I want players to brainstorm their spellbooks and design their mind's grid like they might a tableau or deck of cards. What happens when you place the spell shield in your mind just so it interacts with other spells on the grid? That's my kind of system.

How to design Jackian spells.

This system hasn't been tested, so user results may vary. Here's what I think needs to go into every Jackian spell to make them feel suitably magical.

All Jackian spells have ≥1 prep requirements:

• Placement requirements. For example: Must be touching a wall or spell.
• Relationship needs. For example: Need to be prepped with another spell.
• Lore requirements. Maybe some spells require more STR or certain food.
• Size/shape differences. Some spells take up more or less space.

All Jackian spells have ≥2 failed cast results:

• Transform. For example: double in size, change shape, or multiply.
• Move. Usually triggering collision results or violating placement requirements.
• Collision results. Something happens if the spell bumps into another spell.
• Escape results. By default, most spells are lost, but some explode or go wild.
• Create mind conditions. These temporary conditions fill the mind's grid.
• Create physical conditions. These temporary conditions fill the inventory.

Final thoughts on Jackian magic.

In an ideal world, this subsystem finds a loving home in a game with lots of cool inventory management mechanics. The kind of game where tile-laying and engine-building feels like a natural extension of mechanics already there. None of my projects need a super in-depth magic system right now, so feel free to steal this for your own projects—or make some spells for it and tag me online.

If you're interested in reading more about this idea (or the ideas that spawned it) check out these resources:

Game Design by Abstraction

How to design by focusing on essentiality in roleplaying games—a fun design exercise.

Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

Inventory Tetris (Mausritter) with Quinns — Dice Exploder

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Signals are labels, symbols, and other design elements that tell the audience what they're looking at and where they are in the publication. They're like proverbial road signs and mile markers in your book or zine. Examples include page numbers, running headers, and section titles.

Markers are the designer-facing markings in your grid system for where signals should go. They're consistent by design. A constant as the page evolves with its content. Readers don't see markers, just like they don't see the grid system or sketches under paintings.

Folio is a lot of things to different people. It's a type of paper, a fold, a page size, a library section (based on page size), and—to designers with wire-frame glasses—it can also mean page numbers with evens on the right side of the spread only. It's good to know the word, but it's often too multi-meaning for carefree use.

Live-matter or the "live-matter page" is the area between the margins. In most books I've read, signals are treated as separate from live-matter. To keep things focused, I'm going to do the same thing for this article, but note that the separation is blurry. Content headers, sub-heads, captions, and pull-quotes are signals too. Sometimes, they're as interconnected as the signals outside the live-matter.

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What do signals provide in a book or zine?

Like any layout component, signals perform multiple functions, sometimes only in collaboration with other components. We're going to focus on just three.

Distinction. By definition, signals are noticeable. We design them to be seen and be seen often. That visibility makes them massive contributors to a product's overall visual look and feel. In other words, signals contribute to a book's style.

Orientation. Signals are like street signs. They answer the question, "Where am I?" All you have to do is look at them and you know where you are. This is especially true when the signal is something like a header or section title, it provides orientation without needing to see more of them. They're labels.

Navigation. Signals guide the reader to where they want to be. They answer the question, "How do I get there?" They're a deliberate sequence of clues, giving the book its shape and logic, which empowers the reader to move through it. Think of sign posts in real life. The arrows, border indicators, and stop signs. Books have their own version of that in the form of page numbers and cross-references.

Do I need signals in my work?

The answer is always yes. Even short zines benefit from signals of some kind. I've heard counter-arguments over the years. My book isn't linear. My zine only has three pages. Readers consume the zine in one sitting. All of these are sound arguments for why omission might not harm anything, but they neglect to consider what they might gain.

Signals are great because they encourage readers to focus on important details, allocate resources, and pick books back up. They help readers decide where they can stop, think, and start over. They're also great for sharing your book. "I like this module for the map. The one on page 18 in the undead section."

Use signals. Be creative with them. Remember: signals are more than just page numbers. They're headlines, color changes, symbols, and more. Even a bookmark benefits from subtle cues that suggest which side is the front or back.

Advice for designing signals.

Your project will determine what matters most for your signals. Some projects will value functionality over everything else, but most books are a balance. Consider these options when designing your book.

Make navigational signals easy to find.

Make them unmissable. The best places for signals are where they get their own space, like in margins. Most books, including Editing by Design by Alexander White, suggest the best real estate is in the outside corners. That's where the eyes start and end. It's also where the eyes linger while page flipping.

Keep signals out of the gutter.

The gutter is where two pages meet in an open book or zine. It's the Bermuda Triangle for signals. Send them there to die. They're invisible and fail to do their job when you put them there, especially in tabletop games, where glued "perfect" binding is the norm. Those gutters are especially ravenous.

Add white space to improve visibility.

The closer your signals are to content or "live-matter" the harder it is to separate them from that content. Don't crowd your signals. Give them room to breathe, take shape, and assume their own character. Make sure the usual fantasy marginalia doesn't crowd out your signals.

Use placement to create visual associations.

There are cultural assumptions in the way we place our signals. Old novels tend to place them in the center of the margin. Textbooks in the bottom right. Play on these associations when appropriate. If you have no opinion, put them in the top right for pure functionality. That's where the readers' eyes linger the most.

Design signals to match the visual identity.

A common mistake I see from new designers is using fonts and colors that don't match or compliment the rest of the book. Your page numbers are not separate from the content, they're what link it all together. Use page numbers to reinforce your look and feel. Recycle existing design elements when making your signals, or make them pair with it.

Combine design elements to highlight signals.

A lot of signals are type-based, like page numbers and section headers, but not all of them are, and few are exclusively type. All signals convey meaning with shape, weight, and color. Sometimes (to great effect) without a single number or word. Remember to utilize your entire design toolbox. The possibilities are endless.

Make page numbers big enough for page-flipping.

Signs on the highway need to meet a minimum size for drivers. The same goes for page numbers. Pretend all of your readers are page-flippers who like to read in dimly lit bars. Pretend they're two drinks in and they're obnoxiously reading it at arms length. You need to make the page numbers just big enough for them to see it. I'm being slightly hyperbolic here. Never make your page numbers smaller than you'd feel comfortable with doing for a caption or footnote.

Pull the label out of alignment.

The natural inclination is to align the signal with the content's edge. That's perfectly fine for most books. But if you want to make the label stand out even more, break the grid, make it poke out from the content's silhouette like a hanging sign. This break in the pattern draws attention to it.

Sideways orientation creates separation.

It won't always work stylistically for some books, but a sideways label can really stand out in a cool way. It also encourages your reader to flip through the book even more rapidly than usual. An interesting way of nudging them that way if you choose to do so. Be aware that vertical type doesn't always mesh with some genres.

Beware of false signals.

Readers subconsciously look for patterns and can misinterpret decorations for signaling. This is a common problem with spot art and marginalia. When you repeat them, they look like they're part of a set, which makes tiny alterations to that set look meaningful. But if there is no meaning, it will confuse and even mislead your audience. So, instead of decorating to fill space and add spice, brainstorm functional elements that are substantive and pleasing to the eye.

Use shared language between signals.

There should be no interpretation when the reader moves from the table of contents, to the page, and to the content. Use identical words. It's a mistake to try and add variety of prose through the signals. If the table of contents says, "cathedral" the section header should also read "cathedral" and not "ruined church" or even "crumbling cathedral." I've made this mistake too many times.

Use hyperlinks for added navigation.

If you're not adding hyperlinks to your pdfs, you're missing out. Most designers use them for cross-references, but the underrated hyperlinks live in your pages' running headers. Use them to create links between the table of contents, section intros, and index. The trick is linking them between nodes of navigation.

Use paper stock to make signals tactile.

This one's for the bookhounds, craft nerds, and budget-daredevils (I'm talking to you, Explorers Design friends). Paper color, weight, and texture can signal different content—transforming a solely visual system into a tactile one. This is an expensive, labor-intensive option. Don't plan for it without checking your budget and printer. Most shops won't even do it. That said, they're pretty rad, right?

Use bleed to make signals three-dimensional.

If you have a recurring signal at the edge of your page, like a color bar, you can extend it into the bleed to create a colored edge along the trim. This colored edge, when layered on top of others, creates a three-dimensional signal that readers can thumb through without ever opening the book. Don't know what bleed is? I got good news. There's an article for it.

Summary on signals and markers.

Some quick definitions:

• Signals. Labels, symbols, and other elements that tell the audience what they're looking at and where in the document they are.
• Markers. Placement indicators for recurring signals. They're put in the grid system by the designer to maintain consistency.
• Folio. A word with many meanings, including page type, fold, size, category, signals, and more. Use it with caution.
• Live-matter. The area on the page, between the margins, where the book or zine's primary content lives. In a way, headers, captions, and labels in the live-matter are signals, too, but that's beyond the scope of this article.

Final recommendations:

• Design your signals to provide differentiation, orientation, and navigation.
• Pick and choose design elements that match your book's tone, look, and feel.
• Decide how much functionality you want your signals to have. Be measured.
• Always design your signals with an audience in mind. Needs can differ.

Additional Reading

This article wouldn't exist without reading Editing by Design by Jan V. White. It's a masterpiece. Ironically, the layout is not to my tastes, but the actual advice is brilliant. I've shamelessly recreated some of its best ideas in this article with a tabletop spin. A special shout out to my colleague, BESW, who recommended it to me about a dozen times before I finally bought it.

I also want to thank all of my design friends who read this article and gave me notes and words of encouragement, including, Pidj, Spectacular Jean, Elmcat, Luke, Binary, Markus, Asa, Brian, Dante, Char, and Jimmy.

What did you think of this week's article? Let me know what you think in the comments, and don't forget to like, share, and retweet on social. Until next time, I'll keep exploring.

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Explorers Design is a production of Clayton Notestine. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing. Members who pay $5/month also get access to additional tools, templates, and inspiration.