A Journey into TTRPG Thoughtspace

What began as a fear of undue influence transformed into a realization that ideas are meant to be shared, not hoarded—execution is what truly matters in the end.

If you know who this is, we should be friends.

Or enemies.

Or frenemies.

2024 Year End Battle Report

Every December my partner and I make the drive down to the Warhammer Citadel in Grapevine, TX to play our end-of-year game. If you’re a fan of Warhammer but have never been to the Citadel, imagine a Games Workshop or Warhammer store that’s also a coffee shop. It’s the closest thing we have in North America to Warhammer World, but it’s closer to a normal Warhammer store than that statement might imply.

Still, as the North American headquarters for Games Workshop, it has the benefit of being fully stocked with even the rare and unusual games, lots of well-painted minis on display, and probably 20 open tables in the back. It’s worth a trip if you’re in town, but not a trip to town if that makes sense. But I digress.

At the start of 2024 we determined to play a full 2000 point game, my Tyranids vs his Death Guard. Then my year exploded. Suddenly it was September and I didn’t have a single painted model to show for it. What I did have, however, was almost all the Necrons I’d need for a Boarding Action. So we pivoted, and rather than try to rush 100+ unpainted models, I finished the roughly ~11 for our new goal.

The Necrons had been a previous year’s army of the year, so I have a decent set of them in various states of completion, and we were big fans of Boarding Actions which came out around the transition from 9th to 10th edition Warhammer, so this was a delightful return to form.

So, how did it go?

Before the Battle

In the current edition of Warhammer you determine who goes first by rolling a six-sided die (d6,) and whoever rolls higher goes first. That person also picks who is the “attacker” and who is the “defender.” The attacker and defender have different deployment zones, places where they can put their minis on the table at the start of the game, and the defender has to put their minis down first. It’s useful to be able to go second in the deployment phase, because where your opponent puts their minis tells you something about their strategy and can allow you to make last-minute strategic decisions about how to respond.

I won the roll-off, which meant that I would get to go first, and I chose to be the attacker, which meant that I got to deploy second.

We each held one unit in reserve to be deployed through strategic shenanigans later. He had a unit of Poxwalkers that he could deep strike (place anywhere on the table that was at least 9" away from one of my models,) through the usage of a limited resource called Command Points. I had a unit of Ophydian Destroyers that have deep strike as a natural ability.

A few more units were held in reserve to come in through the normal deployment mechanism, because Boarding Actions allows a limited number of units to be in the deployment zones each round.

Round 1

During my turn I advanced my unit of Flayed Ones, one unit of Warriors and my Royal Warden towards the central objective. The Royal Warden was my Warlord, which I think is sort of an unusual choice. He’s basically a slightly more powerful Warrior, and in the regular 40K rules he gives an attached unit of Warriors the ability to run away and shoot in the same turn. In Boarding Actions he shouldn’t be able to do that, but as a house rule we decided that he could because it’s flavorful, and we think in the spirit of what the rules intended.

In the Northwest corner I moved my unit of Scarabs to claim the objective. We wouldn’t figure out until round three that they had no objective control score, which meant they couldn’t actually claim that objective for me. One of my lessons learned!

Finally, I moved my unit of Triarch Praetorians to capture the objective in the Southwest corner.

On his turn Ash moved his unit of Chaos Spawn to claim the Northeast objective, then advanced his Poxwalkers and Typhus to open a hatchway into the southern corridor. This was his first major tactical mistake, as he forgot entirely to attempt to claim the Southeastern objective this round.

He repeated that strategy in the north with another unit of Poxwalkers and his Tallyman.

Round 2

Seeing that Ash intended to make use of Hatchways to get into the Northern and Southern hallways, I redirected units in both of those directions. To the North I ran my Flayed Ones into his unit of Poxwalkers. It was an immediate and decisive victory for the Flayed Ones, who eradicated the entire unit in one combat while taking no wounds.

I deployed a unit of Lychguard to the South to block another unit of Poxwalkers who were attempting to head for the Southwest objective. This was strategically one of Ash’s better trades. The Lychguard have a relatively small number of incredibly strong attacks. Overall they were probably the strongest units either of us had brought, and in a perfect world I would have run them directly into his warlord, Typhus. Because their attacks were so strong, any Poxwalker they hit was guaranteed to melt, but because they had so few attacks they could only take out a few each round.

Seeing his Chaos Spawn coming for the central objective, I deployed my Ophydian Destroyers via Deep Strike directly on to the central objective to both claim and protect it. It was clear to me that my relatively slow moving warriors weren’t going to get there in time, and if he claimed it I’d have trouble shifting him off.

During Ash’s turn he ran the Chaos Spawn directly into my Ophydians, dealing two wounds which wasn’t quite enough to take one down. In the trade, my Ophydians did six wounds back, fully 3/4 of the damage his unit could sustain, and removing one of the two Chaos Spawn models.

Using the stratagem “The Dead Rise” allowed him to deep strike his final unit of Poxwalkers into the far Northwest corner, aiming them for my poor solitary unit of Scarabs. However, they were unable to move on their first turn on the board.

A unit of cultists in each of the Northeast and Southeast corners claim both objectives for him, and spend the next term “securing” the objectives, which would allow them to remain under his control as the units continued to move away. I forgot this was something units could do, and that specifically only my Warriors could do it. I had built my list assuming I’d need to keep a unit on each objective I wanted to hold, which is why the Scarabs continued to sit in the Northwest corner. Since part of his strategy was to try to claim one of my back field objectives, this was probably the right idea regardless.

Round 3

In the Southwest I advance one of my units of Warriors towards the objective, freeing up my Praetorians to advance to the center of the board. I knew that Typhus was headed that direction, and that they had a decent melee profile, so I wanted all of my best bruisers ready to hold the contest for the central objective.

To the North I had my Flayed Ones open the hatchway towards the Northwest objective, positioning them to rescue my Scarabs on the following turn.

On Ash’s turn he managed to start making progress against a few of my units. One of his cultists got a lucky shot in the shooting phase and did the one wound needed to finish off one of my Ophydians. Poxwalkers continued to trade with my Lychguard in the south, taking one of them out as well. I also lost a Scarab to his risen Poxwalkers in the Northeast.

He sent Typhus directly into my unit of Warriors, hoping to take them out in a single round. Unfortunately, he only managed to kill two.

Round 4

If you’re not familiar with the Necrons, they’re basically ancient space-faring robotic Egyptians. Basically. And they have a couple interesting gimmicks, but probably the one they’re most well-known for is the ability to reanimate in the middle of combat. So sometimes you think you’ve killed them, and then they stand right back up, stick their thumb to their nose, and blow a raspberry. And by blow a raspberry I mean they shoot you dead with plasma weapons.

So that’s what I did.

Now would be a good time to thank the dice, who were exceptionally kind to me this day. More than half of the models that Ash had managed to kill stood back up, including both the Ophydian and Lychguard from the previous round. This was not a good outcome for him. It was a great outcome for me.

In my movement phase I carefully arranged as many units as possible to be able to shoot at Typhus. The mission we were playing scored an extra 10 victory points for murdering the enemy Warlord. I got close to putting a wound on him a couple of times, and then my own Warlord, the Royal Warden actually managed to hit with six wounds. Exactly enough to kill Typhus. Both of Ash’s saving throws failed, which should have killed Typhus, but he burned what remained of his precious command points to roll again and saved on the second attempt.

What the Royal Warden couldn’t do, the Ophydian Destroyers certainly could, and in the fighting phase they marched right in and turned Typhus into a fine plague-flavored sashimi.

In the Northwest, my Flayed Ones came to the rescue of my Scarabs, and eradicated the Poxwalkers that were harassing them.

At this point, with almost all of his Poxwalkers defeated, his Warlord dead, and me in control of more than half the board with strong units he would be unlikely to defeat, Ash conceded.

I won 55 to 30.

My Learnings

• Scarabs can’t claim objectives. They probably would have been most useful running ahead and opening a door for me. I have a bad habit of forgetting that the hatchways in Boarding Actions can open.
• Lychguard are strong bruisers, but without many attacks do their best work against a single beefy target. I really wanted to get them stuck in against Typhus, but Ash did the right thing gumming them up with Poxwalkers.
• Praetors didn’t get much of a chance to shine, and looking at their profile now I would probably be smart to trade them out for something with a more clearly defined role in the battle.

Ash’s Learnings

• He intended to use the cultists to “sticky things and then die,” and the Poxwalkers were meant to gum me up. In practice, the cultists mostly never arrived to the battle. Probably they should have come out first and ranged ahead, so that the Poxwalkers would have had an easier time getting into position.
• Typhus needs to be used more tactically, he’s not invincible. It came as a surprise when I killed him basically twice.

Final Thoughts

This was the only game of Warhammer we played in 2024, which is a real shame. We both love it. It’s arguably part of how we met. I like the structure of having a game at the end of the year to work towards, because if nothing else we know that one game will happen.

Next year we’re focusing on Necromunda as our game of choice, which has much smaller armies (called gangs) than even Boarding Actions. I hope that by having a smaller painting commitment we’ll be able to get into games sooner in the year, and our annual game next December will be the capstone of a campaign rather than the only game we play.

In closing, here is every one of his models my Necrons managed to take off the board. The real gift was the Poxwalkers we murdered along the way.

Wargaming as a hobby is incredibly cloistered, a series of rituals performed by robed adherents, and the systems broadly share so many concepts that you often draft on one to learn another. This means that onboarding someone into our mystery is often an afterthought - the process starts by reading thirty some-odd pages of scripture, but the real questions you’ll grapple with are the same as the fresh acolyte of any religion. They will all be within interactions the “rules” only suggest. It’s not that the map isn’t the territory - it’s that the map generally describes a world which cannot possibly exist, and the work is in harmonizing that with the real world. This is a form of labor I delight in! But there might be hard limits on how many people want to collaboratively embroider a secular religion in their leisure time.

— Jerry Holkins, The Heloc Heresy

From the journals of St. Rev. Dr. McPunch, Dweller, Vault 76

“Reclamation day” my entire ass. The vault has everything we need, and I’ve spent most of my life in it! Everyone else was in a hurry to get out and see the world. I’ll tell you what you’ll see: a fat lot of nothing. How could there be anything to see? Twenty years isn’t nearly enough time to clear the rads. But I’m running out of food, and I’m going to have to go out there eventually. Might as well be on my terms.

Of course once you go outside, the door closes behind you. Nothing to it but to do it I guess.

Couple of girls standing near the vault entrance. “A real dweller, gosh!” I’m as shocked as they were. There’s still people out here? Guess there’s some sort of rumor going ‘round about treasure, and some people think it’s the vault. Hate to break it to you, nothing in there. I bet it shut down the instant the last dweller (that’s me, hi,) left. But there’s people, and not just people from the vault. That’s got to be something, right?

Found the remnants of a farm not far down the hill, and a group of people calling themselves the Responders. They traded some basic supplies for a little help. I don’t mind playing a bit of gopher for some chems and clean water. The bad news? I guess there’s a cult? That worships the Mothman?! I ran some supplies for the Responders up the hill to another group calling themselves the Brotherhood. Bunch of tightwads, but caps is caps.

Never thought I’d see it, but someone left a Power Armor frame down at the farm. Just hanging out, free for the grabbing. It’s been stripped for parts, so nothing more than a frame and a bit of juice to keep it moving. I wonder if I can find the missing parts?

There was a call for help out of the South, something about a robot? I’ll tell you, it was the most people I’ve seen in one place since Reclamation Day. Mostly vault dwellers like myself, several with fully-functional sets of Power Armor. And me with my Little Slugger covered in razor blades. Oh well. I’m not really sure that I was much help, but there was definitely a robot. Wearing a sheep? It was confusing. But I got some more caps and chems for my trouble.

Overseer left a trail to follow, which has taken me to a little town called Flatwoods. Looks like it used to be a base of some kind for the Responders. I guess I’m formally a Volunteer now? At least that’s what the computer’s saying. There’s basically nobody left to confirm it, just one other random lady and her dog. Doesn’t seem like she knows much about it either. I did some tests, cooked a burger, and stole anything not nailed down to the floor. It looks like they called everyone back to a place called Morgantown’s airport. I’ll have to go check that out at some point.

I’m not “traditionally” goal motivated. What do I mean by that? I mean if I tried to set a goal for a year from now that looked something like this: “in one year I want to have written a book,” that would not, on its own, result in any of the behaviors that lead to a book being written.

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In competitive video games you should expect a 50% win rate. About half the time the other team will be better than you, half the time they won’t. You’re operating at the razor’s edge of your skill level. Today I realized that’s likely true in every other part of life as well.

In no particular order, an update on various interests and hobbies.

Clocks

The mantle clock is running strong, but about five minutes fast per day. It uses a balance wheel, which is a particularly fragile and difficult-to-adjust mechanism, so I haven’t taken it down and tried to fix that yet.

The grandfather clock is out for repairs with a professional. Again. He thinks he’s found the source of the problem, and intends to publish a youtube video about it. I think it’s probably a good (or bad) sign when someone has to post a video about a new and interesting way that a clock can break. (It was magnets.)

MiniDisc

Since he was here to collect all the parts of the grandfather clock, I asked the clock guy (who also does radio repairs,) if he wanted to take a swing at one of my MiniDisc players. It was sold as non-functional with the description of “makes a whooshing noise.” I bought it because it came with what turned out to be a true goldmine of discs recorded “by a Los Angeles DJ.” The player was in beautiful physical condition, and it’s now repaired and working after a swap of the digital to analog converter.

Oh, and I bought a copy of Pure Moods on CD to convert over to MD, because it feels somehow cosmically right. Also the way this particular album looms in the psyche of people who were kids in the 90s. Young me would probably be ecstatic that we finally had a copy.

TTRPGs

I think I’ve lost one of my Earthdawn books somewhere in the house. I’ve done a thorough-enough search to think that maybe I never actually had it, but there’s some anecdata to suggest that I did. Unrelated to that, I was able to find a copy of Prelude to War at a local(-ish) used book store, leaving only four books missing from my 1e Earthdawn collection.

At the same time I also picked up The Complete Sha’ir’s Handbook, which is wizard archetypes for the old D&D setting of Al-Qadim. It’s in pristine condition and was a pretty penny in the bookstore’s rare book room. I usually prefer to buy play copies, because Toys Are Meant to be Played With, but sometimes with these old TTRPG books it’s either buy the perfect copy at collector’s prices or accept I won’t own it. Even play copies are rare. These old D&D settings are interesting to me, and the books are often very “of their time” in an almost charmingly unaware way. Nobody who wrote this book had ever heard the word appropriation, and it usually shows.

The hardbound copy of Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast finally arrived. It went directly on a shelf, because I don’t currently have the capacity to do anything with it, but I remember being charmed by the concept and thinking it might be light enough to convince some local friends to pick up casually without having to resort to digital play. With all due apologies to people who can only ever get their gaming group together on Discord, it’s not the same.

World of Warcraft

WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria is probably the best and smartest thing Blizzard has done since Wrath of the Lich King. No I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic. It’s that good. I think part of why it’s that good is that it’s meant to be a limited duration event, which means that it can be fun in a way which is not also trying to prolong my subscription past its natural lifespan. It’s not trying to sell me any DLC.

It’s a reminder that somewhere in the shambling husk of Blizzard Activision is the beating heart of the company that made Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2. That, if they weren’t in the throes of a dark insanity known as shareholder primacy, they might actually be capable of doing the one thing anyone actually wants them to do: making a good game.

I hope they keep this format and go on to do it for other expansions. I’d be especially glad to see it of Shadowlands, the one expansion I never got around to playing.

I back a lot of things on Kickstarter. Like. A lot of things. Especially during the annual ZineQuest, where indie TTRPG creators are encouraged to take a chance on the small, wild ideas that sometimes grow up to be Something Big.

At PAX Unplugged I had the chance to speak briefly with one such creator, and they asked me what I looked for when I was deciding to back a project, so this post is written to them. Well. Also you, you’re reading it. Hi! But mostly to them, and anyone else who might at some point want to try to publish a TTRPG supplement.

What I’d like to do is go through each of the projects I’ve decided to back in the 2024 ZineQuest and explain why, exactly, it caught my eye. Plus a couple I decided not to back but want to promote. I won’t be punching down and talking about anything I decided not to back. That’s feedback that might be useful to those specific creators if they ever asked for it, but I don’t think it’s generally helpful to publish as a list.

First, A Rubric

Essentially I’m asking myself three questions:

• Do I think I would ever play it? (Medium-likely.)
• Do I think I could convince my friends to play it? (Almost impossible.)
• Do I think I could pilfer it for ideas or mechanics? (Most common outcome.)

Sometimes there’s a few extra points tossed in for “I think this idea is really cool and I want it to exist in the world,” but you can’t optimize for je ne sais quoi.

Things I’m Backing

Blister Critters – I don’t think I’ll ever convince my friends to play this, but the art and idea are unique, the presentation is outstanding, and it’s entirely unlike the canon of TTRPGs I already own. This is the game I expect people to be copying in ZineQuest 2025.

Shadow over Gloomshire – Five words in the project description were all it took: “dark fantasy and gothic horror.” This falls into the category of things I’m not sure will be directly useful to me, but I want more of it to exist in the world.

The Lair of the Skateomancer – I really want to see how the skateboard is implemented as a magic item, and I’m interested in the skatepark themed lair. It seems just ridiculous enough to work.

Radish Quest – The art is half of what sold me. Half of the remaining half is that I’ve backed another project from this creator before and been happy with it. The remaining half-half is the all-in dedication to the bit in the project description. Radishes.

The Wigmaker’s Fingers – A heist where you steal a prosthetic finger. Everything about the way this is packaged makes me want to know more, and the samples of the layout on the book look great.

Cartograph - Atlas Edition: A Mapmaking TTRPG – I’m interested in the mechanics. Like many TTRPG nerds I someday wish to publish my own world as a supplement, and I’m usually interested in systems that I think could help me develop that world.

I Crave The Loop – Curious to see how the mechanics work, plus the name and idea are clever.

The Details of Our Escape – Mostly I want to see how the domino mechanic works, but the art also looks compelling.

Courier - Repacked – The description reads a lot more like a solo board game than a TTRPG to me, so I’m curious to see what that’s about. It also claims to touch on some interesting ideas, like building a base, and I want to see how that’s implemented. I’ve always liked the idea of the players being able to make a home, but I find a lot of the mechanics for doing that in traditional TTRPGs to lack depth or interest.

Valhek’s Guide to Treasure Hunting – At $3 the PDF falls squarely into “why not” territory. It only needs to have one interesting monster or magic item to feel like I’ve probably got my money’s worth.

8-BIT THEATER THE ROLEPLAYING GAME – Many hundreds of years ago I was an avid reader of 8-Bit Theater. Honestly I’m just glad Brian Clevenger is still out there, doing his thing. This is somewhat me just kicking some money to a creator who brought me a lot of joy a very long time ago. It mostly doesn’t matter if the product is any good. But it looks like it probably will be, if nothing else, pretty funny.

Bookwyrm: Loot some books! – Much like Valhek’s Guide, the $4 entry price for a PDF of random tables is enough to get it a “why not.” The concept is cute, and I could probably make use of it in a campaign somewhere.

Cult of the Morach: An Old School Adventure – Mostly interested to see how the encounter clocks function. That’s something I’ve done before, and I think it can be a useful way to pace events that happen whether or not the players are paying attention. I’m curious to see if there’s a better way to do it. The adventure itself looks like it could also be interesting, but it’s for a system I don’t play, so it’s probably going to serve as inspiration and not be something I ever use directly.

Milk Bar: sci-fi roleplaying in post-Soviet Poland – Once again looking at the base building mechanics, although the setting is also wholly new to me. I didn’t know what a Milk Bar was before. The physical edition and layout also looks fantastic.

Dimday Red TTRPG - Nodus Zine 02 – I backed the original Dimday Red kickstarter in ZineQuest 2023, and I think the world is an interesting one. Mid-apocalyptic catches me in much the same way post-apocalyptic would, but it’s a relatively unique take. Stories rarely linger in the middle of the world ending.

Mystery Under Magi-Mart – I think this might be a fun thing to run as a Line Entertainment [E]nforcer at PAX.

Beetle Knight – You can be a moth.

The Tower - A System Agnostic Puzzle Dungeon Crawl – This hits a few highlights. It’s a puzzle/riddle dungeon and it’s system agnostic. The kind of thing I’m likely to be able to slip into any campaign where it might be useful. Too many supplements want to give me more monsters, but I don’t really need more monsters. I have too many already. A good puzzle that players might enjoy solving is hard to come by.

DNGN CLUB: Relics Remastered Vol. 1 – A kitchen sink of the author’s best ideas. Some of the samples are evocative. I’m curious to see what can be pilfered.

Sentai & Sensibility RPG – If you have never wanted to be simultaneously both the green Power Ranger and also Mr Darcy, then I’m not entirely certain that we can relate. But if you have, now is your chance.

Thrifty Trades of Fey – I’ve backed just about everything Gametee have ever made and been delighted by all of it. What particularly caught my eye is the use of an origami fortune teller. I want to see how they make use of it as a mechanic.

Things I’m Not Backing

These are projects that I’m not getting for one reason or another, but I think they’re cool and maybe you’ll be interested.

Field Agent Handbooks: Observancy Dept. 1924–28 – This is a cool idea, but I know to my teeth that I’d never make any use of it. The idea doesn’t seem to be pilferable. For the right person this would probably be a lot of fun, I’m just not that person.

Tiny Fables – The art on this is gorgeous, but it’s for a system I don’t play and don’t think I’ll pick up. The examples make it seem like it would be difficult to adapt any of it to the games I do play.

I finished Roots of Pacha at a little over 50 hours of total play time. I still wouldn’t recommend it.

“But random internet wizard, what would you recommend?” I hear you cry.

Contrariwise’s Definitive and Not At All Biased Guide to Cozy Sim Games

Not Sweaty

1) Stardew Valley

I’ve played Stardew all the way through to completion twice. I’ll probably play it again someday. Many of its best ideas are now fully dispersed into the cozy sim game ecosystem, but few games really do it as thoroughly and as well. I have basically two notes:

• Stop trying to make fishing mini games. They don’t work. I would be tempted to say nobody likes these, because nobody I’ve met likes them, but everything is somebody’s thing so I’m certain that somebody out there lives for the incredibly bland experience of staring at a screen waiting for a pixel to change. Seriously. Stop it.
• I’m not really a fan of the relationship mechanic where you have to go talk to everyone once a day, or remember when characters' birthdays are, or remember what their favorite gifts are. I’m less critical of this one than fishing, because I fully admit this is just my preference whereas I think fishing minigames are a true blight that should be stricken from the catalogue of game mechanics.

2) Graveyard Keeper

This is by far my favorite cozy sim game. I love the macabre setting, I love the mechanics. You don’t spend nearly as much time keeping the namesake graveyard as the title might lead you to believe, and I think that’s the source of some of its less favorable reviews, but if you’re willing to set that aside the mechanical process of playing the game is a delight. My one complaint is that the UI/UX are a bit cumbersome playing on a controller, but that’s it. Otherwise 10/10, perfect game.

3) Animal Crossing

It’s hard to know what to even say about Animal Crossing. I feel like if somehow you don’t already know this game is for you it probably isn’t. It’s at its most fun if everyone you know is also playing, so there’s a huge incentive to get the new game when it first comes out and play it with your friends. The long tail of being the only person you know still playing Animal Crossing doesn’t pass the vibe check. If you haven’t played New Horizons yet, now isn’t the time to start, but keep an eye out for announcements of a new version and hop on the bandwagon early for maximum enjoyment. Minor quibbles include:

• I wish they would focus on fewer, higher quality interactions with villagers. Having 100+ possible shades of animal person that only share 16 possible sets of dialogue doesn’t do much for me.
• New Horizons was needlessly punishing about the rarity of some furniture spawns. I got bored and gave up before collecting some of the sets I wanted for various rooms. There’s only so many days I’m willing to launch a game and not see any new content. I realize there’s a limit on the total amount of content they could ever include, but there are sets I know for a fact existed in the game where no piece ever dropped for me, while I had seen 5+ repeats on the ones that did.

Slightly Sweaty

1) Valheim

On the face of it, Valheim is a game I wouldn’t expect to enjoy. And if I had played it solo, I probably wouldn’t have. However, in concert with someone who actually enjoyed the combat mechanics where I was mostly free to tend my garden and organize storage chests I had a lot of fun. This could be a good game for you if you either don’t mind the combat parts or can get someone else to do them.

2) Minecraft

For what it’s worth, I prefer modded Minecraft. It’s at its best as a playground for ideas and mechanics that aren’t quite enough to be a game on their own. I haven’t played since probably 1.12, and I think they’ve made the combat sweatier in ways I would not enjoy, so this has fallen in my ranking to near the bottom of things I might recommend. Ask me a decade ago and it likely would have been the top. It’s hard to recommend a specific modpack, because they change frequently and I’m now several years out from having looked, but the place I’d start today would be to see if Direwolf20 is still kicking around. Whatever he’s playing.

Games That Sometimes People Think I would Like But I Don’t Because They’re Too Sweaty

1) Terraria

It’s not for me. I’ve tried maybe 2-3 times, and I don’t enjoy the mechanics. I also think it’s sweaty. Terraria is Minecraft for people that want harder combat and more things to kill. No shade if this is your game, but it’s not mine.

2) Starbound

This is Terraria in space. I don’t like it for all the same reasons, despite the fact that it’s in space. I usually like space, but space won’t save a game I don’t otherwise enjoy.

That’s it. That’s the list. There are other sim games out there, cozy or otherwise, but I don’t feel the need to comment. Possibly I haven’t had the chance to play them. Possibly I know I wouldn’t like them for some of the reasons I’ve already attributed above.

I’m not really looking for recommendations for games at this time, I barely have any time to play them and I’ve committed to not buying anything new until the backlog is clear, but hopefully this helps someone figure out what to play next. Or at least what not to play next.

I’ve been away from home the last two weeks, give or take, smushing some personal travel together with some business travel to minimize my “suffering per airport hour” statistic as much as possible. If work’s going to pay for me to go somewhere, I’m going to try and get a mini-vacation out of it. I’m home for what feels like seven seconds, before heading back out on another mini-vaction-turned-actual-vacation next week.

What started out as the pre-vacation of a work trip became a vacation-vacation when the work portion of the trip got cancelled but my hotel was non-refundable. So now I’m going to Hawaii, and I know this is going to sound like crazy talk from someone who barely manages to sound sane most of the time, but in a perfect world I wish I weren’t. It’s a long flight for a relatively short stay in the fanciest and most expensive hotel I’ve ever personally booked on my own dime.

At least it’s all pre-paid.

I’m planning to use it as a chance to relax on a beach, like I’ve always said I wanted to, combined with my first quarter check-in / personal retreat. I’ll be barely just one month into the Year of Scales and Arpeggios, so I’m not entirely certain what a check-in will look like. But hey. Beach.

Other Updates

• I finished DAVE THE DIVER. Once I turned on the accessibility setting that removed frantic button tapping, I found it a lot more approachable. I hope this trend of accessibility settings to turn off the parts of games I find obnoxious continues.
• I started playing Roots of Pacha. This is the most time I’ve ever spent on a game that I wouldn’t recommend. It’s a prehistoric Stardew clone, and while it has some interesting ideas I think it fails to execute on the best of them while retaining the parts I like least from the overall genre. I tried to refund it after my first hour of playing and was denied because I had owned it for too many weeks. If I could go back, I’d still get it refunded. Nevertheless I’ve somehow managed to spend almost 40 hours on it? A lot of that time I think was me waiting to see if it would pay off on its premise, and I’m now deep enough to say that no it doesn’t but I might as well see my investment through to the end of its story.
• I’m also back on Fallen London, which is great. If you, too, would like to be stolen by bats, I’m looking for friends to infest with rats.
• I’m currently watching Tales from the Crypt for the first time as an adult. It almost entirely stands up all these years later, and I would put it in the pantheon of one of the best shows ever made.
• Somehow someone let me sign up to be a Librarian for Hardcover which mostly entails updating the details of books. I don’t anticipate this being a major ongoing commitment, but I’m detail-oriented and plan to at the very least update the books that I’m personally reading and tracking. If you’re looking to not be on Goodreads anymore, the app and community and vibe are all excellent.

An Opinionated Decision Matrix for Which TTRPG System to Use

If your primary concern is getting people together at a table to play at all, pick D&D 5E. Everyone knows how to play it, it can be molded to meet the needs of any table, and there are countless off the shelf supplements already available to help a current or aspiring Dungeon Master.

The reality for many people is that it doesn’t matter which TTRPG system they use, because the struggle is going to be getting four or more adults together in a room for two or more hours in the first place. Under those conditions, the path of least resistance is the correct path, and that is almost always going to mean D&D 5E. There is nothing wrong with making this choice. It’s more important that you have fun with your friends engaging with a hobby you love than just about any other consideration.

If, on the other hand, your primary concern is literally anything else, then there is always going to be a better system to choose than D&D 5E. The reality is that it doesn’t matter how you choose to define “better” in this case, there’s going to be something that rises to the bar. The so-called “world’s most popular tabletop RPG” got there in the same way that Kleenex became the most well-known facial tissue. It is the lowest common denominator. Ubiquitous. Acceptable, though not aspirational. D&D is “good enough” most of the time. But if you have the time and the inclination, you can do better.

Someone out there has lovingly crafted a TTRPG system perfectly tailored to tell the kind of story you want to tell, and they want nothing more than for you to experience it and find joy. The only limit is the amount of time you can spend trying to find it and whether you can convince your friends to play it.

2024W50 Week in Review

Resisting the urge to wait until I know exactly what I want to say before saying anything.

Spent the day on the couch playing Dave the Diver which I did not like at first, but which I think gets better, and watching Christmas movies. It’s a rare treat to get to spend a weekend day doing basically nothing, by which I mean doing only what sounds nice in a relaxing manner.

Speaking of Christmas movies, I watched 8-Bit Christmas for the first time, and it ended up being deeply touching. I cried. I think the premise is maybe a 6/10, but the execution has a lot of heart. If it sounds even remotely like something you might enjoy, it has my stamp of recommendation.

With two weeks left in the Year of Time, I’ve got one last cut to make. It’s time to say goodbye to comic books. I’ve done a terrible job of keeping up with them since I picked the hobby back up in May 2022, and rather than let them slowly continue to pile up in the living room I’m going to wind it down so that I can focus more on my keystone hobby goals for 2024. This Tyranid army isn’t going to paint itself.

It’s pretty clear that I still have at least three major time-sink hobbies, and I estimate that I could probably keep up with maybe two of them. One of the following probably needs to go:

• Warhammer 40K (unlikely)
• TTRPGs (unlikely)
• Lorcana (… possibly.)

Lorcana doesn’t take up that much time at the moment, because in practice I don’t actually play it. I’m collecting cards on the chance that a future version of me decides it’s more fun than the other options currently taking up that time. There exists a future version of me who wishes the current version of me were doing this, and until I’m certain I won’t become that person it’s cheap insurance. But I fully acknowledge I’m not actually doing anything with the cards at the moment.

Had an excellent conversation last night with Jerry Holkins from Penny Arcade about tyranid list building and strategy that has me reconsidering half my 10th edition list.