THE BLOGGIES 2023: FINALISTS
(If you just want to skip to the list of BLOGGIE finalists, scroll to the "Who Are The BLOGGIES?" section below.)
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WHAT ARE THE BLOGGIES?
Awards for some of the best tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) blog posts to come out in 2022. There will be five awards: Best Theory Blogpost, Best Gameable Blogpost, Best Advice Blogpost, Best Review Blogpost, and, the biggest one, Best Blogpost.
I won Best Blogpost, last year. So I am hosting the BLOGGIES, this year.
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WHY ARE THE BLOGGIES?
Blogs are worth celebrating. Barring the actual playing of actual games, they are our most fertile field, our most volatile laboratory. Longform, text-based, and informal---they are a place to jot down our most outre design ideas. Free and publicly available---they are a vector for open debate and serendipitous discourse. Perhaps most importantly: relatively free of algorithmic social-media pressures---they are the best chance we have at a cultural memory.
I got into TTRPGs because of blogs.
The BLOGGIES are, at best, an affirmation of the above. At least, they are a way to celebrate 64 excellent blog posts from the last year, and maybe get them in front of people who did not read them the first time.
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HOW ARE THE BLOGGIES?
Nominations: I put an open call for blog-post nominations on Christmas 2023; I also canvassed the TTRPG communities I am part of. Nominated posts had to be from between 1 December 2022 to 31 December 2023.
I closed the nomination period on 1 Jan 2024 with 149 blog posts for consideration. I read / re-read them all.
I chose a slate of 64 finalists, according to the following metrics, in order:
Enthusiasm---a post got multiple nominations;
Diversity---no one blog was allowed to be a finalist more than once in a category (except the Reviews category, where this rule was tied to individual writers, due to shared review blogs);
Notability---a post was extraordinary in presenting a novel idea, addressing an important subject, or reflecting a community current.
Obviously, that last metric is highly subjective, and limited to my knowledge and perspective in the scene. I did my best.
I will not have final final say. Finalists will go head to head, vying for to be anointed best of the best by ballot. The bracket was seeded in order of number of nominations received. The BLOGGIES await your vote, o TTRPG folx.
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WHEN ARE THE BLOGGIES?
Throughout January 2024! Voting will happen on Google Forms on the following days (I will link to the forms and result threads as I post them):
First Week January - THEORY
3 January: Round of 16
4 January: Round of 8
5 January: Round of 4
6 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category)
Second Week January - GAMEABLE
10 January: Round of 16
11 January: Round of 8
12 January: Round of 4
13 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category)
Third Week January - ADVICE
17 January: Round of 16
18 January: Round of 8
19 January: Round of 4
20 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category)
Fourth Week January - REVIEW
24 January: Round of 16
25 January: Round of 8
26 January: Round of 4
27 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category)
31 January - FINALS
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WHO ARE THE BLOGGIES?
Your BLOGGIES 2023 FINALISTS are (presented in bracket order):
(High-res version here)
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THEORY
(1) being a problem - playable orcs at the limits of humanity, from Majestic Fly Whisk Some deep thinking about the racialisation of the orc in elfgames, why mainstream fixes fall short, and ways to move beyond.
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(16) #132: Axes of Game Design, from The Indie RPG Newsletter An exploration of the design axes / spectrums on which every TTRPG may fall.
(8) The Genres the OSR Can't Do, from A Knight At The Opera Sketching the limits of the OSR playstyle by looking at genres which are too differently-bound for it to emulate.
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(9) RPG Transcript Analysis: Critical Role, from Trilemma Adventures Examining a style of play through transcript analysis (looking at what is actually being said during a session), with Critical Role as case study.
(5) Critical GLOG: Base Resolution Mechanics, from Goblin Punch A deep dive into dice and resolution mechanics, and what they do in practice.
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(12) My favorite problems, from Failure Tolerated A list of design problems in TTRPGs, and a case for game design and theory to be driven by problem-solving.
(4) Roleplay Is Folk Art, from Wizard Thief Fighter An impassioned call to consider TTRPGs as folk art as opposed to corpocratic walled-garden IPs.
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(13) ART, PRODUCT, BOARD GAMES AND MAUSRITTER, from Fail Forward Critique of reviews that accuse TTRPGs for being too slick; interrogating the assumptions behind the label “commercial”.
(6) Toolbox Design, from The Dododecahedron Considering the principles of designing TTRPGs like toolboxes, through the lens of Cairn RPG and similar.
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(11) Mario vs ActRaiser vs Final Fantasy vs Zelda - Types of Advancement in RPGs, from Rise Up Comus Identifying some general types of advancement in TTRPGs, using videogames as a comparative lens.
(3) Posters, Posers and POSR(s), from Prismatic Wasteland Relitigating whether the OSR is dead, and defining its successor, the Post-OSR.
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(14) psychosis is badly written in tabletop games, from paper cult “Attempting to mechanize something so intensely personal, different, and mutable as mental illness is complicated. I think that makes these depictions bad!”
(7) “Rules Elide” and Its Consequences, from Jared Considering the implications of the maxim that "a game is about X when you have rules for everything but X".
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(10) Models of High-Level Play, from Benign Brown Beast Loose but useful classifications for types of high-level play: domains; god-like play; etc.
(2) OSR Rules Families, from Traverse Fantasy Sketching the landscape of the OSR, how various systems function, and how their attributes cluster and trend together.
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(15) Moralising and manipulation in tabletop roleplaying games, from Playful Void The importance of having design preferences without tying these preferences to moral judgments.
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GAMEABLE
(1) Flux Space, from Papers & Pencils A point-crawl procedure specifically designed for labyrinths / dungeons that are architecturally confusing / samey.
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(16) Generating Elevation in a Hexcrawl, from Traveler's Rest Procedures and advice on how to generate a mountain-crawl: hiking-focused adventure geography.
(8) The Autumn of Summers, from False Machine God-monsters born of summer, the hunting culture around such beasts, and random tables to generate their attributes.
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(9) MIMICS, from Vaults Of Vaarn A spread of novel pretender-creatures, with ecological and social implications.
(5) Another take on demihumans as social constructs, from Cavegirl's Game Stuff What if we consider fantasy races not as separate species, but as differing social roles?
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(12) The Apocalypse Archive, from Bearded Devil An unfinished by exemplary #dungeon23 attempt that includes wonderful maps and soundtrack notes.
(4) Pointcrawling Character Creation, from Rise Up Comus A framework for tying character generation to a geography, generating history and familiarity with campaign locales.
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(13) how to be erased, from Straits Of Anian Procedures for getting lost and getting led astray, and the kith and spirits one meets in those places.
(6) Dungeon Skirmishing, from All Dead Generations Feature-complete skirmish combat mechanics for OD&D, and the design rationales thereof.
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(11) Zelda-Style NPC Personalities, from To Distant Lands A system of generating quick and punchy NPCs, inspired by the way Zelda videogames present NPCs.
(3) GULCH, from Mindstorm A starter town specifically designed for contemporary (horror, urban fantasy, non-fantasy) campaigns.
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(14) Down the Road: Local Situation Design, from Deeper In The Game A procedure for quickly generating a powderkeg situation in a local geography of play.
(7) Laws of the Land: meaningful terrain via in-fiction limits and conditions, from Was It Likely? A method to generate meaningful diegetic terrain and tone in an adventuring region.
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(10) False Equivalent Exchange, from The Graverobber's Guide A novel magic system, done in natural language, with discussion on how it could be used in play.
(2) Deeper Catacombs, from Benign Brown Beast Iteration notes and a presentation of a comprehensive dungeon tracking procedure.
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(15) Inadvisable Decisions (GLΔG), from The Nothic's Eye An evocative alienist character class, based on drawing the attention of alter-describable things from beyond.
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ADVICE
(1) How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM, from Goblin Punch Comprehensive notes on to run non-combat encounters without resorting to boring rolls.
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(16) GM Pointers: Live-Text Games, from Shadow & Fae Good reminders on how to run live-text games better, so they are better coordinated and don't take forever.
(8) ONLY Roll Initiative, from Bastionland Considerations on how to adjudicate combats, if initiative were the only dice roll in a combat system.
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(9) Action Mysteries, from A Knight At The Opera Asserting that good TTRPGs mysteries involve action---not just figuring out the truth but opposing the antagonist's goals.
(5) Modular Ecology, from The Graverobber's Guide A practical approach to including gameable ecology in TTRPGs, by tying materials to specific locations and conditions of the world.
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(12) ULTIMATE ANIMIST MECHANIC: EVERYTHING IS A REACTION, from Alone In The Labyrinth How to run a game where all actions are resolved by reaction roll: everything in the world responds by how much they like you.
(4) Game Mastering Like A Park Ranger, from SILVERARM Advice about GM-ing, based on the real-world work experience of being a park ranger.
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(13) An OSR approach to Spotlight, from Permanent Cranial Damage The suggestion that intentionally spotlighting characters solves the real-life problem of spotlighting players nicely.
(6) #Dungeon23, from Win Conditions The idea that spawned a thousand notebook dungeons, plus salient advice on how to start / keep going.
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(11) The Storyteller Technique, from Possum Creek Games When writing TTRPGs, imagine your game text as a diegetic artefact in the world of the game.
(3) RANSACKING THE ROOM, from Mindstorm A simple and powerful three-step method to handle room-searching in games: inspect, search, and ransack.
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(14) Cairn Crash Course, from Widdershins Wanderings A masterclass example on how to write player guides to a game, for Cairn RPG.
(7) AN EXAMPLE OF FKR (NEAR-)DICELESS COMBAT (WITH COSMIC ORRERY!), from Underground Adventures Describing combat in a Free Kriegsspiel Roleplaying (FKR) game, useful in understanding that playstyle.
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(10) Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction, from sachagoat Figuring out problems with wilderness exploration, and applying a mental-map framework from urban-theory academia.
(2) Dungeon Design, Process and Keys, from All Dead Generations A detailed process to designing and keying a traditional dungeon adventure.
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(15) THE D&D IN MY HEAD: In Only 6 Load-Bearing Numbers, from I Cast Light! Identifying the essential and minimum rules you need to remember, to run D&D.
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REVIEW
(1) An Empty Africa - PF2E's The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism, from Majestic Fly Whisk A review of Pathfinder’s "The Mwangi Expanse", and a discussion of Black Atlanticism's fraught relationship with its sourcelands.
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(16) What Hull Breach Teaches Us, from Mazirian's Garden An assessment of the Mothership RPG third-party "Hull Breach" anthology as a "new standard for anthology companions".
(8) Grave Trespass - Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, from Bones Of Contention A review of the Labyrinth RPG. It’s got all these things which are "bad" in RPGs, so why does it work?
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(9) The First Rumor Tables, Part 2: Caverns of Thracia or Caverns of Quasqueton?, from Tom Van Winkle's Return To Gaming An investigation into the origins of rumour tables in TTRPGs. Did TSR plagiarise Jaquays?
(5) Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 1), from Mythlands Of Erce A full-throated defense of D&D2E, viewing it in the context of its time and as a refinement over 1E.
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(12) Systemcrawl: Break!! RPG, from Widdershins Wanderings A review and system analysis of Break!! RPG, which marries JRPG and OSR inspirations.
(4) Dungeon Crawls in Cinema, from Directsun Games Evaluating several films on the basis of how well they function as dungeon crawls.
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(13) Reasonable Reviews, from Rise Up Comus A general overview of TTRPG reviews, and what may or may not make them useful.
(6) Deep Dive: A|STATE, from The Indie Game Reading Club A review of a|state, and how it builds on and departs from the Blades In The Dark formula.
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(11) I Read Cloud Empress, from Playful Void A review of Cloud Empress, the first descendant of the Mothership RPG ruleset.
(3) Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022), from Traverse Fantasy A forensic analysis of how Unconquered plagiarised Ultraviolet Grasslands and Vaults Of Vaarn.
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(14) Rod, Reel, & Fist (Review), from Benign Brown Beast A substantial review of Rod, Reel, & Fist, a "system-forward fishing simulation RPG".
(7) Pedantic Wasteland - Vampire Cruise, from Bones Of Contention A review of Vampire Cruise, a largely system-neutral horror-comedy adventure set at sea.
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(10) Dragon Magazine: Player Advice Collection Overview, from Attronarch Athenaeum A comprehensive read-through and rating of 143 Dragon Magazine advice articles.
(2) Spire: The Monstrosity of Empire, the Necessity of Violence, from A A Voigt A comparative-literature analysis of Spire RPG through R F Kuang’s spec-fic novel "Babel, or the Necessity of Violence".
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(15) MICROBLOG: CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND TABLETOP GAMES, from Fail Forward Considering the influence of children’s books on TTRPG designers and works like "Barkeep on the Borderlands".
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It is difficult to describe how hard it was for me to whittle down the list of nominees to these finalists. I consider each of these 64 a landmark in 2023's TTRPG thinkings, and the folks from which they issue essential reading, going forward. They already deserve a prize.
So here it is, dear bloggers: a hand-carved linocut "finalist's pin" graphic you are free to use on your sites / posts, should you wish:
(High-res downloadable version HERE)
Thank you for writing! And good luck in the coming rounds of voting!
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CORRECTION: A blog post from 2021 (Not All Crunch Is the Same, from A Knight At The Opera), was included in the soft-launch posting of this list. An error on the part of its nominator, compounded by a data-entry error on my part. It has since been replaced by a post from the same blog with the actual most nominations (The Genres the OSR Can't Do). I have also double-checked my lists and all finalists. Apologies for my error!
