• Ennies 2026

    I. Spotlight The nominees for the 2026 Ennies have been announced and it’s another interesting line-up, with the big news being the addition of a separate solo games category. It’s nice to see a new category and  I imagine that we’ll now see more and more. The streaming content category, for example, will probably be…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Girlframe, Frames, Individuals

    I. Spotlight II. Media of the Week III. Links of the Week Articles News IV. What am I playing? This is a day late but I wanted to get it out even though I was caught up all weekend. We’re at an interesting place for Band of Blades and Apocalypse World: Warriors of the World…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Love Letters

    I. Spotlight II. Media of the Week III. Links of the Week Articles, Blogs Misc IV. What am I playing? I’ve been having lots of success with Apocalypse World-style love letters in both of my games. Essentially, they’re ways of turning an absence from the game from something that dissipates energy to something that can…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Games, Engines, Games

    I. Spotlight One of the cool things that has come out of success of Mythic Bastionland is that people are riffing off how the handles hexcrawling. The elegance of “an escalating series of encounters that could be triggered anywhere” has led to what one blog is calling the Mythic Engine. The essential idea is to…

    Thomas Manuel
  • A row of colorful masks

    Masks & Fear

    I. Spotlight The blog mynerdyhobby has a great post about the value of a worldbuilding rule like “everyone wears a mask“. Not only does it lead to a more evocative world but it could also make NPCs easier to remember. It’s written as an idea for Mythic Bastionland but works for any game where you…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Fiction-first, NPC-first

    I. Spotlight Wil of Aggregate Cognizance writes an analysis of Blades in the Dark that both criticizes misreadings of the game as well as the game itself (but his criticisms are better). In the article, there’s an explanation of “fiction first” that like all attempts to explain the concept doesn’t seem satisfying. Wil argues that…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Awards, Satisficing, Prep

    I. Spotlight II. Media of the Week III. Links of the Week Articles News IV. What am I playing? We only did Band of Blades last week — the other games feel through. One of the big parts of the fun of the game is the “microstories” that come out of the smaller characters in…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Groundbreakers, Knutepunkt, Daggerheart

    I. Spotlight The IGDN announced their list of nominees for the Groundbreakers, their awards. It’s a very cool list with lots of nominations going to The Time We Have, a two-player game of brothers losing each other during the zombie apocalypse. It picked up 5 nominations and if you want to learn more, I spoke…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Deep Thoughts

    I. Spotlight Lots of good stuff this week and I can’t pick so just check it all out and pick your own. As always, have a good week, folks. Hope it’s a good one. II. Media of the Week III. Links of the Week IV. What am I playing? Things are bad everywhere but I…

    Thomas Manuel

  • Difficulty and Challenge

    I. Spotlight A Knight at the Opera writes about how to talk about difficulty in RPGs. This is a great topic and Dwiz has a neat binary of challenging decisions versus challenging actions. “Chess is a game that only ever features decision-challenges. There is never a risk that you fail to execute a move you’ve…

    Thomas Manuel