COMMUNISM WAS JUST A RED HERRING

This is an alphabetical list of writing on tabletop games, video games, games broadly, and a few adjacent topics. It is required reading. I am not agreeing with anything by having it on this list. Some of the works feature bibliographies and links to other works which they are referencing or in conversation with. Read those if you can. There are works I wanted to include on here but have been taken off of the internet, and I was unable to find them elsewhere beyond my hard drive.

You should read the following (just one a day or one per week, and maybe write a little personal response to it):

About Games and Beings Serious & Why Do Things Have Outlines, Bateson - https://garadinervi-repertori.blog/post/639473512034222080/gregory-bateson-1972-metalogue-about-games, https://garadinervi-repertori.blog/post/166320033101/gregory-bateson-why-do-things-have-outline

Against Procedurality, Sicart - https://gamestudies.org/1103/articles/sicart_ap

Anti-Canon Worlds and the UVG, Rejec - https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/2019/anti-canon-worlds-and-the-uvg/

Avoiding Inapt Discussions in RPGS, Prescott - https://blog.trilemma.com/2023/07/avoiding-inapt-discussion-in-rpgs.html

Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character, Bowman - https://www.nordiclarp.org/2015/03/02/bleed-the-spillover-between-player-and-character/

Blorb Principles, snan - https://idiomdrottning.org/blorb-principles

Boot Hill and the Fear of Dice, Rutskarn- https://www.chocolatehammer.org/?p=5773

Don’t Incentivize Ethical Behavior, Siew - https://slowlorispress.com/post/742713305722961920/dont-incentivise-ethical-behaviour

Game Design is Mind Control, Crane & Sorenson - https://genesisoflegend.podbean.com/e/episode-21-%e2%80%93-game-design-is-mind-control/

Homo Ludens, Huzinga - https://merton.bellarmine.edu/files/original/b0899cfad820ab8ad7033952b7a022ba1d7cab9d.pdf

Inevitable Architecture, Woods - https://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/inevitable-architecture/

Libre Baskerville Jam - https://itch.io/jam/libre-baskerville-jam

Morality Play, Pokey - https://myfriendpokey.tumblr.com/post/183941596800/morality-play

Moralizing and Manipulating in TTRPGs, IdleCartulary - https://idlecartulary.com/2023/09/02/moralising-and-manipulation-in-tabletop-roleplaying-games/

New Simulationism, Sorenson - https://samsorensen.blot.im/new-simulationism

On Romantic Fantasy and the OSR, Manola - https://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2015/07/on-romantic-fantasy-and-osr-d.html

Playing to Win, Maz - https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/minecraft.html

Revisiting GNS, Baker - https://lumpley.games/2025/04/07/revisiting-gns/

Rules Elide and its Consequences, Sinclair - https://web.archive.org/web/20230401204032/https://cohost.org/jared-sinclair/post/1211889-rules-elide-and-it

Sinistar or: How to Play Games Wrong, Joel - https://youtu.be/OFbhDs_8k1A?si=DGo4y1U3xr_8Qq0z

System Does Matter, Edwards - http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html

Systems of Relation, Dragon - https://possumcreek.medium.com/systems-of-relation-c3b27fc4cc99

Ten Manifestos, Harmony Zone - http://harmonyzone.org/ManifestoJam/TenManifestosForGroupsOfNoPeople.html

The Artist is Absent: Davey Wreden and the Beginner’s Guide, Danskin - https://youtu.be/4N6y6LEwsKc?si=DMFViwSTOOa4W6PY

The Big Three, Sorenson - https://memento-mori.livejournal.com/175828.html

The Forms and Fluidity of Game Play, Nguyen - https://gamephilosophy.org/pcg2014/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/C.-Thi-Nguyen-2014.-The-Forms-and-Fluidity-of-Game-Play-PCG2014.pdf

The Hidden Art: Slouching Towards A Critical Framework for RPGs, Laws - https://web.archive.org/web/20080625014524/https://www.rpg.net/oracle/essays/hiddenart.html

The Impermanence of Art, Bissette - https://web.archive.org/web/20241114224733/https://cohost.org/chrisb/post/2011604-the-impermanence-of

The Monomyth Thread, Libre, Kazumi & Udernation - https://bigstuffedcat.itch.io/the-monomyth-thread

Thinking About Formal Incentive, Marcia B - https://traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2023/09/thinking-about-formal-incentive.html?m=1

What are assumptions about how to play an OSR adventure that you think might not be commonly held as desired?, Scrap Princess - https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/LinksToWisdom/What_are_assumptions_about_how_to_play_an_OSR_adventure_that_you_think_might_not_be_commonly_held_as_desired%3f

What is a Game?, Suits - https://web.archive.org/web/20061010064123/http://www.stsintl.com/articles/whatisagame.html

What Should We Do With Our Games?, LeMieux & Boluk - https://alt254.itch.io/what-should-we-do-with-our-games

I put this list together in response to seeing a lot of the same arguments and discussions happening in regard to system-matters discourse, and it’s thinly veiled offshoots. The original goal was to ask people to understand both sides of the discussion and the reasons for pushback against both sides. After compiling, it now comprises more than just history and the goal is simply education and the sharing of ideas.

Hope you get something from it,

FIRST JOURNAL ARTICLE JUST GOT PUBLISHED 🎉🎉

An Exploration of Emotional Resilience Developed Through Tabletop Role-Play

Abstract:

This study aims to expand on the research into tabletop role-play and social and emotional development, focusing on emotional resilience. 109 participants responded to a survey inquiring about their experiences with long-term, multiplayer tabletop role-play, including characters that were meaningful to them and six factors of emotional resilience: comfort with challenges, ability to problem solve, emotional expression, ability to handle criticism, social connection, and self-perception. Out of these 109 participants, three were chosen to expand on their answers from the survey and were interviewed. The participants included players, game masters, and those who did both, and included participants from diverse backgrounds. A phenomenological approach was taken while the data was coded for themes using NVivo software. 26 key themes were identified that linked tabletop role-play to the development of emotional resilience. The themes were put into four categories: trends found in characters, dramatic rehearsal, social development, and emotional development. The study found that these themes aligned with the three areas of skill development needed to grow emotional resilience (Barry 2018), as well as therapeutic powers of play (Pliske, Stauffer, and Werner-Lin 2021), and beneficial forces of group therapy (Yalom and Leszcz 2020). The results of this study can be applied to make home-games more safe, rewarding, and meaningful, but can also guide practitioners wishing to use therapeutically applied role-playing games in their practices.

Some nights even filling up the kettle and setting an empty mug out for my morning tea felt hard. But I was always thankful for it in the morning.

Other nights, one thing would lead to another, and I’d wake up in a clean house with everything ready to go.

And, on a rare few nights, the one thing that I could do to make my morning easier was going straight to bed and allowing myself to rest.

not on purpose, of course, and I never want to sound like I'm blaming students for their own feelings of isolation. there are a lot of factors that make it hard to socialize, ranging from a very full class/work schedule to various neurodivergences to the majority white attendance at many campus activities to the fact that many of these students spent some formative years in quarantine.

but man, it's hard when students talk about feeling hated and unwanted by a club because no one there talks to them, only to drop that they never even try to initiate any conversation themselves. or when a student complains that they're not making any friends on campus, but when asked where they're going to meet people outside of class they seem confused and say they hardly leave their dorm for anything but class. we're currently administering an anonymous survey to assess student satisfaction with our programs, and one person wrote that they'd like to attend more of our events but don't because they don't know anyone there and don't know what the vibe will be. the solution to both of those problems feels very obvious, to me, and it's frustrating to see mild uncertainty be such a hurdle.

And it is a skill! You are approaching strangers, you are making a bid for connection and interaction that may end in rejection, or just not clicking fully, or anything similar, and that can be scary!

But I think a problem that a lot of younger people have in how harshly regimented many schools and then colleges are, and ditto how little free time they're likely to have outside of their workplace and commute, made worse by isolated housing and lack of free or even affordable third spaces

Is that there's very little development of the skill of seeking out the people who look interesting or otherwise compatible with yourself, approaching them, and beginning the process of connecting with them

People are very used to only making new friends and connections when circumstances, and especially an authority, force them into proximity with one another

i do empathize with and agree with a lot of OP here but at the same time so much of that post and especially the reblog are placing all the onus on the lonely people. all the work of seeking out connection is being placed at the feet of the people with the least social power and wherewithal. why should that be how it works

if there's a cool group of people talking, i'm never going to walk up and bother them. they're the ones with a solid social footing and comfortable position, they're the ones who can afford to invite me in to what they're doing if they want to.

if i'm new at college and I go to a club meeting, it's not my job as the newcomer to start conversations! I've got no social capital, if I try to start conversations I'm being intrusive and rude! It's their club and I'm some rando who wandered in! If I'm the newcomer it's their job to be welcoming if they want new people. I should be humble and wait, and they should be inviting me in and making me part of what's going on.

I am a normal person who understands thought crimes are not real, fiction is not reality, and people can read/write/enjoy whatever they want as long as it’s fiction and no one in real life is harmed. I don’t have to like it, because I know how to mute, block and scroll past what I don’t want to see. Overall I think labels are childish, but by definition I am proship and profic. I am also against censorship.

these are merely some highlights when i was going through it yesterday before i got lightheaded from laughing and had to make dinner

essentially its a piecemeal of mostly d&d 5e, with some pathfinder 2e and maybe savage worlds thrown in. largely seems to be a fairly dark dungeon delving / murderhobo (i hate that term but dont know an alternative) kind of game that assumes lots of gritty tactical combat and pc death

the most charitable reading of it i can come up with is that this is what d&d 5e would be if it existed in the neopets world?? like this is d&d 5e For neopets?? which i dont think is what anyone was expecting and absolutely no one wanted

there is also some sort of internal snafu happening with geekify (ofc) and according to reddit the reason the beta is so late is that they may have gone through several full teams who took all their work with them upon quitting. when the gdoc first dropped there was a whole tab with nothing there that only said the team hadnt been paid to write that

importantly it does not seem like anyone on the team is a ttrpg designer of any kind

some more important facts: the beta was just released - on google docs - with public comments turned on - a FULL YEAR after the physical books were meant to be shipped out. even with 85% of it being ripped right from d&d 5e its incredibly half baked and messy and full of errors

despite being a huge neopets guy growing up i looked at the kickstarter in 2024 and said. lol. thats a trainwreck. i've never seen a PDF copy or character sheet paywalled behind stretch goals before (these were the first two stretch goals, at 2.5x and 3x the original funding goal of 40k usd)

All's Fair - a two player game about wanting to fuck each other so bad you save the world about it

Heavily inspired by Mickey 17

Watching puritanism and censorship rise, the importance of sex as resistance has been resonating in my soul at increasingly high frequencies. And then, I saw Mickey 17, specifically I saw two main characters for whom sex was portrayed in direct violation and joyful rebellion against their oppressors. This game is inspired by exactly that.

This game bounces between explicit eroticism and facing the horrors of an increasingly controlling regime.

All's Fair is coming to Zinetopia on Backerkit this February, published by Elliot Davis, with stunning art by Caro Asercion.

I've had a lot of free time open up in Feb- the perfect year for me to take part in my first ever Zinetopia!

Magestar is a GMless game about a group of magical people exploring the ruins of a world 50 years after the apocalypse. But now they're harnessing that apocalypse to give themselves special powers- how cool is that???

I've just set up the teaser page & I'd love it if you'd sign up for updates!