Hello darlings.

I’ve been sipping at an idea these past weeks. Nursing it like a drink on a night that’s on the edge of over.

Stories don’t really belong to us, do they?

The best stories tend to be about people. Something lived, something witnessed, something shared. Every person present has their own version. But you don’t own that story; not really. You’re just one of its keepers.

Certainly, there are stories that happen when we are alone. Certainly, there are stories about things that never happened, invented for the joy of imagining. But in their telling, even these become stories of the world. Shared things.

It is this exploitable magic trick that I use to make games.

Today I will share some stories that are particularly not-mine. They are about places I have not been. Somehow, though, they are also about things I have done, or seen, or felt, and that makes them feel like my stories, too.

1 - I have never been to California (but I have shipped a friend there in a small cardboard box).
2 - I have never been to Italy (but I have used my hands to tell stories).
3 - I have never been to Germany (but I have been to therapy).
4 - I have never been to Rhode Island (but I have watched a memory disappear).
5 - I don’t always write letters (but I always like to try).

1 - I have never been to California (but I have shipped a friend there in a small cardboard box).

In February, I ran a Kickstarter for the game Sock Puppets, which is about a failing children’s television show and its squabbling puppeteers. Most people who supported the game bought a book.

One person bought a puppet.

The highest reward tier for the Sock Puppets campaign was joke, mostly: for a couple hundred bucks, you could be the sole owner of the spokespuppet I made to advertise the Kickstarter.

Selling my puppet served two purposes. First, it created an exclusive reward. Second, it would excise a large humanoid from my bedroom closet.

See, a puppet in your home doesn’t just take up physical space. The real estate they squat in is mental, too. I cannot explain this. One begins to develop a simultaneous feeling of affection and discomfort for an imaginary person.

And there is discomfort. It is difficult to express how unsettling the dead-eyed stare of an unpiloted puppet is.

Herman — the puppet — sold within 2 hours of the Kickstarter launching. My partner thought it must have been a bot, programmed to purchase exclusive Kickstarter rewards for later resale. We laughed, imagining a scalper’s horror looking down into the unblinking face of Herman.

But it was no bot that purchased my puppet. I would come to learn that Herman’s new owner was a professional puppeteer living in California, supporting a small tribute to his trade.

Herman was bound for California a few months after everything else in the Kickstarter was already settled. This was because he had games to play and videos to film first.

Time passed. Seasons changed. Then, late in the fall of 2025, I laid Herman supine in a box, arms crossed behind him, and taped it shut over his face. He was lighter than I thought. He seemed smaller, too.

I walked to the post office. Exchanged pleasantries with the clerk, who confirmed the package’s weight. He gave me a tracking receipt and bid me a good day.

But I lingered.

I felt my eyes on the box. I felt my heart in my throat. I felt a misplaced goodbye for a fleece-felted guy.

The clerk asked, “Need anything else?”

He asked this because I was staring at a box in a post office, like someone who needed help.

“No,” I said, putting on a smile. “Thank you!”

As I walked away, I swallowed the urge to look back at the box again.

2 - I have never been to Italy (but I have used my hands to tell stories).

In May, I received a message over Discord. The sender introduced himself as Enrico, then said this:

I falled in love with your rpg Sock Puppets. Could you be interested in an Italian Edition for our Fanzine line?

Reader, I could be more than interested. I could be thrilled.

Enrico and I sent a handful of emails back and forth throughout the summer. He shared a contract; I shared game files.

In October, I learned that Enrico and his colleagues had finished the Italian version of the book. I learned this by opening Discord to find a picture of my game’s art, translated, on an enormous banner.

…And a second image showing four Italians crouching behind couches, partway through an actual play for a live audience.

I’ve since been enjoying watching people talk about Sock Puppets (Italian edition), though I speak no Italian myself. My favourite response has been an unboxing video. I love it because I genuinely cannot tell if the host is miming puppetry or just gesturing in Italian.

3 - I have never been to Germany (but I have been to therapy).

Before the shock of an Italian translation managed to wear off, I found myself with a second opportunity on my hands. The kind folks at System Matters Verlag approached me to publish Sockenpuppen.

This time, I was looped in a little more closely. I leant a hand comparing the German translation to the original text.

Now, let’s get this out of the way first: there’s an art to translation. From one language to another, ideas and touchstones shift. Each tongue has its own idiosyncrasies and audiences. Literal translations are rarely the best versions; you want context, finesse.

But one change between the original and its German equivalent bears highlighting.

There’s a character in Sock Puppets who has a weird kink. Something that isn’t sexual for most people, but is to them. They got drunk and confessed their kink at the Christmas party, and things haven’t been the same since.

The original book tells readers to pick one kink or create their own: mashed potatoes, statues, shrinking.

The German translation tells readers to pick one kink or create their own: mashed potatoes, statues, psychotherapy.

I stared at the page for a minute before laughing as I realized the translation error. Shrinking. Shrinks. Of course. I emailed the team to flag the mistranslation, but suggested it could stay. Unfortunately for my ego, “psychotherapy” is much funnier than my original joke.

I told this story for a couple of months, happy with the punchline. I would later discover that I wasn’t the only one telling it.

The folks from System Matters Verlag did an interview at a major tabletop convention in October, each holding their own sock puppet. And their story had… a little more detail than mine did.

Their “psychotherapy” story ends with a bonus anecdote from Sarah. Translating from German:

And then we did the best research ever and learned extensively what the heck a shrinking kink is. Apparently there are people who like to imagine being very small, and then very large women come and crush them, and depending on how explicit it gets, under their breasts, feet, or whatever.

Daniel suggested in an earlier email that I’d sent them down a bit of a rabbit hole, but I didn’t register exactly what that meant until I watched the interview. When I picked the list of kinks for the character options, I never considered that the curious might open up the Internet and learn more than they bargained for.

We’ll see if the folks at System Matters want to work with me again, or if my freaky ass has done quite enough.

4 - I have never been to Rhode Island (but I have watched a memory disappear).

A few years back, I designed a game about an abandoned theme park called Here We Used to Fly. For me and my co-designer Ian, stories are only made more beautiful in their bittersweetness. We were lucky enough to find a group of people — our Kickstarter backers — who agreed with us.

A couple months ago, one of our backers reached out to share a special story. With his permission, I’ll share it here for you as well.

I live in Rhode Island. Our one amusement park, Rocky Point, was founded in the 19th century. It closed in the 1990's.

I went quite a few times when I was a kid. I've never been a thrill junkie, can't handle roller coasters — but I loved the Ferris Wheel, the haunted house, and the skyride. It was a happy point of my childhood.

To the state's credit, when the park closed, they didn't want it to turn into condos or malls or whatever. They built a state park in memoriam of the amusement park. Most of the attractions were torn down. They left one of the arches up as a reminder. There were also many plaques and pictures, detailing what used to be there.

This past summer, I finally went to the park to walk it with my dad. I'd known it existed for a while, but I felt it would be too raw and upsetting to visit it. Finally pulled the trigger a month or two ago.

It was a beautiful experience. There weren't rusted-out hulks of a monstrous Ferris Wheel. Rather, it was respectful pictures and imagery, and a pleasant place. I could see its ghost, without seeing its corpse, if that makes sense.

Both my dad and I agreed, it was much smaller than we expected it to be. The amusement park felt so big! We were shocked at how small the physical area was. Any amusement park with that much fun, we figured it needed a bigger space to contain it.

Overall, the experience was more wistful than actually sad. The entire time, I was very much thinking of your game.

Here's the best part: The Skyline still had pylons pointing to the woods. (Wasn't it higher? We remembered it being much higher!) We saw one end of it clearly. I was determined to find the terminus of it, which was somewhere in the woods.

We explored the paths, but couldn't quite get our bearings for a bit, until I finally saw the rusted remains of another pylon. Using that as a guide, I walked a path . I climbed a few rocks, and found the 'cave' that adventurous kids (and teens) would party in, decades ago. Then, climbing up some more rocks, I finally got within reach of the ride's turnaround point, the other half of my favorite ride. That completed the trip for me.

And my eyes misted up, and I said quietly, but out loud, "Here we used to fly."

Thanks again to Jim for sharing this story.

5 - I don’t always write letters (but I always like to try).

If you like reading my stories — or, in this case, stories that are only a little bit mine — maybe subscribe. Stick around. If you have your own story to share, I’d love to hear your thoughts in my small-but-lovely Discord server.

We can’t know when the landscape of the Internet will shift next, but I will happily keep sending you little glimpses of my life and art. I hope in the year to come, I share a little more than the year before.

Warmth,
Kurt