A new beginning
Hello friends old and new, and hello also to any newcomers who have heard about this new mailing list. This is the initial email for Dispatches from the Imagination, a new newsletter from Mark Dykeman, formerly the writer/publisher behind the How About This newsletter that once resided on the Substack platform.
To catch everyone up very quickly, starting in late 2023 I started to become quite disenchanted with Substack the business and its leadership direction. This was after being an enthusiastic Substack user for about 18 months. I don't intend to rehash all of that again. Anyway, the platform itself is a great hybrid of traditional email newsletters and blogs but I decided it wasn't a place where I wanted to remain, so I deleted my former newsletter How About This at the start of 2025. I did keep copies of everything but they aren't online at the moment. Parts of the old material may resurface eventually.
I also decided that I wanted a new name as a part of the fresh start. Dispatches From The Imagination was a name I used a couple of times on the previous newsletter to denote when I was deviating from the main info that I'd been sharing via Substack in the past. I used it for a short story and a review of one of the newer Star Trek TV series. I think it's a romantic notion, really: all things fictional and creative are the products of our imagination given form so I wanted to reuse the name on a more permanent basis. So here is the first in this new series of dispatches from my imagination.
One other thing that was important to me was to build this newsletter up from ground zero without the benefits and network effects of being a Substack publication. At its peak How About This had 1800 subscribers, as least in theory. This time… I’m practically starting over from zero. I am not trying to capitalize on the old mailing list, I'm basically promoting this new newsletter on Bluesky (my current favorite Internet hangout) and by limited word of mouth. I intend for Dispatches to be a labour of love, not a chase for the most views or highest number of subscribers. Tried that a few times in the past, not interested in trying that this time.
I've also switched newsletter providers and I'm using Buttondown after seeing some recommendations about it. I'm still learning the ropes. There's probably a lot I can do with it that I don't know about yet. We'll see how it goes.
Dispatches is a place for me to talk about my geekier interests, like games, SFF, reading and more. Those of you familiar with me know that I love a good paper notebook and its inevitable that I'll write about them, but hopefully within context.
My main creative project at the moment is, believe it or not, a game. Not a computer game, but a tabletop type of game with dice, cards, and lots of pencil and paper action. Basically I want to take my love of 90s space exploration games, like the Master of Orion series or Star Control II and use them as inspirations for new games that borrow some of their concepts. Ideally I want to provide a solo gaming experience that can be as casual or as serious as a player wants to be. Maybe you're a gamer whose regular group can't meet on a particular night. Maybe you're an introvert who prefers to lose themselves in their own imagination and take a break from both the world and social media. Or maybe you need a change from your current entertainment but you crave some form of science fiction or fantasy content. My goal is to create a gaming experience that, in its basic form, doesn't cost you anything to play that you probably don't already have at home and you can play it by yourself. I love many sided dice but the basic version of these games should not require more than 2 six sided dice and or a standard deck of playing cards (jokers optional).
The interesting thing that's dawned on me as I've been working on these games (there's a second one, actually) is that some of the core mechanics could apply across multiple genres and types of games. So there's the potential for more…
I've been doing a lot of thinking and tinkering with an initial form of the games I have in mind and I hope to have a very simple version available in a few weeks. If you'd like to be an initial tester, drop me a reply and let me know! I'll be sharing more details about the game in upcoming issues of the newsletter. If you can think of other people who might like to try out this new game please let me know!
Finally, just to provide some extra content, I’ll talk about the TV and movies I'm watching. Some of the shows I've recently watched include Silo, Severance, Slow Horses and the Shogun remake. I've begun a rewatch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which debuted over 30 years ago and I'm recording my impressions of the series as I watch each episode. Maybe I'll share them with you in subsequent newsletters.
I think this is enough for my debut newsletter! Hopefully you've found this interesting and entertaining enough to stick around for future newsletters.
Be good, stay good and I'll be back again soon!
Mark Dykeman
Dispatches from the Imagination