Everything I didn't do this year.
Some projects I didn't quite get around to (with helpful links to cool stuff), what's coming next from me, and some stuff I think is very much worth reading.
It's (Almost) 2025!
Hey there. We haven’t spoken in a bit. I’ve had a humdinger of a 2024 - I got a new job after five months without, which necessitated moving to a new city on short notice while putting our previous house up for sale. The recurrent cliche of my life right now is “building the plane as we fly it,” but it really did feel like that for a long time. Cliches sometimes become cliches because they keep being right.
I also don’t like to send newsletters unless I have something to talk about; “new news,” if you will. (“Not being a bother” is one of the major guiding forces of my life.) And in the second half of 2024 I was most proficient at building up things that didn’t quite happen, either at all or at least yet.
Here’s a few of those things.
What I Didn’t Do in 2024:
The Disc 2 TTRPG Jam - I “did” this in the sense I hosted it to completion, but I did not do this in the sense that the only reason this idea came to pass was so I’d have an excuse to write a big pretentious exploration of “TargMargs,” my 4-page hack of Killer Ratings about being drunk and eluding security in a Super Target. I never really got past the “wouldn’t it be funny if — ?” phase with that idea, but a lot of people submitted a lot of cool Disc 2’s for which I can take basically no credit. Check out the submission list, it’s completely bonkers.
The Minimalist TTRPG Jam 3 - I had a good idea for this! I even wrote most of it. I am sort of halfway responsible for this entry, even. I’ll probably get around to releasing my game (Fight the Future) in the near, uh, future. I am considering the idea of an EP, sort of a collection of smaller games, which would include…
Scavs - This is a map exploration mini-game originally meant to be tacked on to Blades in the Dark if you want your crew to explore the Deathlands in a Final Fantasy overworld map kind of way. Call this one a “probably,” as it is fully written and just needs to be laid out, which really stymied me.
Wayfarer 1 - This one’s also in layouts, but the good news is the first of two playbooks is done. (I’ve also built the optional Discord duos can use to log their game for all to peruse.) I just need to swap out the back few pages (the introduction to both is the same) and do the second playbook, build the itch page, and then… we’re live.
What is Wayfarer 1? It’s a two-player letter-writing game where one player is Mission Control and the other player is Wayfarer 1, a space probe pushing far past the limits of its original mission. Both sides have to manage resources and equipment malfunction while maintaining communication with one another, and general resource decay will make that communication harder and harder. It’s, basically, a letter-writing game where “one side goes dark” is a feature, not a bug.
It’s got a fantastic cover by Morgan Thomas, which you can see above. She came up with the idea for the little icons explaining the game, which is so fucking cool I’m probably going to do it all the time now.
I’ll ping y’all when it goes live.
On The Docket
Rowan Zeoli wrote an amazing piece on Voices in the Wood, the Tales Yet Told actual play series of VOID 1680 AM that also continues TYT’s own meta-story. Kendo wrangled 17 voice actors and 28 musical acts over five episodes to tell one big story, a project of such scope and difficulty I get tired just thinking about it. This is the absolute best-case reaction a designer could want, and I remain a little stunned it happened, even months later.
Speaking of impressive undertakings, Do You Validate produced a three-episode Actual Play series called Avarice Hotel, based on Killer Ratings. Three ghost hunting crews investigate the same location at three points in time: 2024, 2012, and 1998, and of course everything goes fine. Avarice Hotel was the launch game for DYV’s new Atlanta studio, and it looks fantastic. I’ll be honest: I don’t have a lot of patience for most APs (it is an attention span problem, first and foremost), but this one got me. It’s really damn funny.
I’ve recently decided I won’t be calling them “ttrpgs” anymore. They’re just RPGs. Context will do the rest.
For Your Consideration
Here's some stuff I've been into lately.
In “Casual Viewing,” writer Will Tavlin gets into the issue of “why Netflix originals look like that.” It’s eye-opening to find out just how much Netflix’s current state of processed streaming sludge was the intentional design the entire time, and illuminating in how that gives another piece of evidence that “disruption” was only ever about bypassing regulations and offloading labor and cost to the consumer. It also casually dismantles the emerging myth that Blockbuster Video was a benign space enjoyed by all. Take it from a guy who, at 17, got a job at Hollywood Video the second they came to Dallas because he wanted a direct hand in destroying Blockbuster for taking out his beloved neighborhood rental places: Blockbuster was widely and rightfully reviled in its own time for a number of shady and exploitative practices. If your nostalgia is reliant on “well, they were the only option we had,” that too was very much Blockbuster’s design. May its spirit never know peace.
Ahem.
It’s the turn of a new year, which means it’s time to find out which works of art are entering the public domain. We’re now getting deeper into the catalogue of Mickey Mouse cartoons, and seeing additions like Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest and Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail. I’m still not quite ready for the idea these things are a century old.
As “words that don’t appear in the Bible” go, this Defector piece is some kind of infernal jackpot. As the title implies, it takes a recent nadir of pop culture (a term that itself is starting to feel insufficient) to examine the emerging and prevailing culture of pursuing The Bag At All Costs. I appreciate that writer Patrick Redford doesn’t fall into easy generational blame-game stuff here; he lays out quite clearly that very few options exist for anyone who wants to just Make Stuff. The End, No Moral.
“The Future is Analog (If You Can Afford It)” is concise, loaded with examples, and infuriating. Money quote: “Put simply, analog privilege preserves one’s ability to be seen amidst all the complexity and contradictions of human existence.”
“Spectra ex Machina: A Sound Anthology of Occult Phenomena 1920-2017 Vol. 1” does what it says on the tin. A spooky sampler’s paradise, imho.
In addition to the “Songs of Summer ‘24” playlist, I also made a “Dusk 2024” playlist that feels a little bit more - I don’t know, like dusk? As with the summer list, the only guiding principles here were “songs released in 2024 that fit the vibe.” Give it a whirl, maybe you’ll find something you like. I am especially fond of the tracks from Allie X, Sophie Hunter, and Sofia Isella.
You should check out DJ Corsac’s broadcast that rounds out the year for VOID 1680 AM Affiliate shows. It’s full of hope for rebuilding in the rubble, wild world building, and a number of DJs playing live callers. I promise it’ll make you feel good.
My wife got a cool poncho and she lives in it now. You should consider one for yourself.
That's it.
See you next year.
