CATMAIL #1

03 Feb, 2026

Look what the cat dragged in.

Yeah, that's right another newsletter.

I figured I'd surprise my 40 odd subscribers who've never gotten an email from me with a little treat. This is a lightweight monthly digest: what I've been working on (accountability so I don't procrastinate) plus a pile of great posts I've read.

If that sounds like something you are interested in and want to get email updates feel free to subscribe!

In this issue

• Two recent posts from me
• Blogosphere graph updates
• Featured reads with blurbs
• A pile of loosely categorized links + some older bangers

The Yarn Ball

What I've been doing!

New on the blog

In case you missed it my latest posts on the blog:

• Common, Recalled, Obscure: I take the Landmark, Hidden, Secret framework and use it for knowledge rolls—inspired after reading Recalling Knowledge in OSR/NSR Games by Random Ape Encounter.
• 2025 in Blog Data: I used my RSS reader database to pull out some fun stats for 2025 (posts per month, blog survival rates, etc). I also had a lot of fun making the diagrams for this one.

Blogosphere Graph Updates

Since my Mapping the Blogosphere post, I kept working on the graph through December:

• Redesigned the info sidebar.
• Reworked the stats and info to be more useful, with highlights for each tab.
• Added a bunch of missing blogs (did you know there are GURPS blogs?)
• Got Substack and Ghost backfilling working reliably. Blot works too, but it's fiddly. I have to tweak the script for each blog, so I've only added a few so far.
• At this point, Tumblr + very DIY sites are the main remaining gaps; otherwise most blogs have been backfilled.

The dataset was updated on January 31, 2026, including the first batch of 2026. I'm planning to keep doing updates at the end of each month.

I'm not planning more major work on the graph right now (I'm a little burned out), but two features I'd still love to add eventually:

• Deeplinks: shareable links that jump straight to a selected blog's details.
• OPML feeds: download an import file containing the feeds of the selected community for your RSS reader.

Community: Bloggies

Submissions for the Bloggies were running throughout January, and I've been busy nominating posts (I think I submitted over 130). I've also been sharing a few nominations each day on Bluesky in this thread if you want even more blog recs.

On Monday, we'll find out which posts have been nominated. Then we'll have a week to read before voting starts!

Things I Dragged Home

My favorite blog posts I read this month.

• Write Encounters in Networks — Bommyknocker Press
  I love a good scaffolding method, and this one for encounter tables really goes for it. It connects entries to each other instead of treating them as isolated units. It also inspired me to write a post about filling hexes (hoping to finish it this month).
• Gifts of Food and Shelter, Not Gold and Silver — Nrdblog
  A really inspiring post about gift economies in games. The real value is that it doubles as a framework for community building. I'm keen to try it out and hack it apart.
• The Slumbering Castle Devlog 1, 2, 3, 4 — Tree Climber
  I really enjoyed these devlogs about a dungeon with only one enemy (a dragon, of course), but it's still dangerous and terrifying with challenges in a quiet, eerie place. I'm very curious to see where this goes.
• Cities, Circles, and Venn Diagrams — On Unnamed Horizons
  Using Venn diagrams to design cities is such an obvious idea in retrospect. You can map public access, factions, and how circles overlap to show where influence and permission actually lives. Genius.
• Overloading the reaction roll — A shrike for my dreams
  I'm not usually a fan of overloading dice mechanics, but turning a reaction table into a matrix gives you a ton of variety with almost no extra complexity. And the visual presentation really sells it.
• Spell-Circles — Behind the Helm
  Yo! This slaps. I've tried designing bespoke magic systems before and they can get hairy fast, but this one stays diegetic and simple: draw circles, sacrifice something. Want more impact? Bigger circle, higher cost. Very Fullmetal Alchemist.
• Mythic Bastionland Syllabus — DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER
  A living one stop document for referees looking for advice, resources, and content for Mythic Bastionland. Huge effort, and super useful.
• Intergalactic Skills — BASTIONLAND
  Anyone who's talked to me about TTRPGs long enough knows I'm not a big fan of abstract skill lists. But Chris McDowall landed on a design that immediately made my brain buzz. Skills become your attributes, and different characters have different skills. Asymmetric in a really juicy way. Also have I mentioned I'm extremely hyped for Intergalactic Bastionland.
• Against Dominant Mechanics — Explorers Design
  This has been living in my head rent-free. Some mechanics monopolize play and become the thing you do, which is neither good nor bad. It's a great reminder, though, to design with intention. What do you actually want to happen at the table?
• The One-Hour Game — Patchwork Paladin
  A great showcase for short sessions. Scheduling gets easier, you can play more often, and prep drops way down. Works best with small groups who stay in touch between sessions.

Shiny Things

The rest of the month's links. No blurbs (for my sanity), just the good stuff (links).

Among Cats

Scene, events, community posts

• Afraid of Encounters: Afraid of Communities - Indonesian Tabletop RPG scene & LFG
• Connecting the Fictional Dots: Blogosphere 2025 Wrapped
• Mediums and Messages: The Winners of the 2025 Gloggies
• Carouse, Carouse!: The Carousies
• Madman's Menagerie: A CHALLENGE FOR 2026: THE STARTER B⬡X

Among Books

Theoryslop, essays, guides

• Anxious Mimic: Marks: What if Saves, Stats, and HP were all the same thing?
• The Dolent Chronicle: Play Worlds Manifesto
• TRAIPSE: Vivid Worlds Will Kill You
• All Dead Generations: The Future - 2026
• To Be Resolved: On The Nature of Treasure
• TOUCAN'T BLOG: Where Does Mausritter Exist?
• The Garden Below: DQ&D Design Diary #1
• Peasantry: The Five Room Dungeon Expanded
• Skeleton Crime Collective: Gradient Descent and Economic Horror
• Dungeon Mecha: Solving the 1 HP Goblin
• Dungeon Mecha: I Turned Into the Odd into a Story Game
• The Play Reports: Epistle Maps, An Exquisite Hamlet
• save vs total party kill: The Lonely Fun of Mythic Bastionland
• Playful Void: What to randomise when you're randomising
• The Weeping Stag: Creating a Dynamic City Crawl for Traveller: Stealing from the OSR and Mothership
• The Novel Game Master: Pacing and Random Encounters in the Sandbox

Playable Bits

Rules, procedures, drop-in content

• Rotten Pulp: High-Impact Enemies in Mythic Bastionland
• DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER: Mythic Bastionland: Knighting Ceremony
• Prismatic Wasteland: The Rankin Bass Hexmas Crawl
• I CAST LIGHT!: CRYPTS OF DOLMENWOOD: Using The Timeline to Determine Motifs of Tombs, Dungeons, And Undead
• To Be Resolved: Ballroom Blitz - Tactical Court Intrigue
• TOUCAN'T BLOG: A Rich Man's Game
• Beneath Foreign Planets: Calendar-Weather/Weather-Calendar
• Patchwork Paladin: Making Hexes With Your Players
• Dungeon Mecha: Knowledge Rolls are Good Actually
• Hobloglin: So You've Been Convicted
• Blog of Forlorn Encystment: Creating a New Regional Sandbox for B2: The Keep on the Borderlands
• Mazirian's Garden: Monster Presentation
• Pool Time with Swim Allen: Arcana Academia
• Pool Time with Swim Allen: Hand, Full

Cat Curios

Reviews, play reports, oddments

• Valeria Loves: The Electrum Archive is Prescription Medication
• Traverse Fantasy: LOTR is Strange
• Goblin's Henchman: Broken Monster Manual a Second Life in Colour
• Distracted at the Table: In the Age of Faster-Than-Light Travel and Total Surveillance, Can Folklore Still Exist?
• Familiar Waves: Random Encounters in Small Dungeons
• save vs total party kill: First Mythic Bastionland Session
• Idraluna Archives: Castle Mordengard Postmortem
• Sam Seer: Tim B, or How I Learned to Stop Hating and Be Super Curious About Matrix Games
• The Old Dog Blog: The visual design of Blades '68

The Cache

Older banger posts that resurfaced for me this month (one way or another).

• Mindstorm Press: A Person-Shaped Hole
• A Knight at the Opera: No Foolproof Illusions
• idiomdrottning: Blorb in Principia Apocrypha?
• Luke Gearing: Reputation Tables
• Goblin Punch: THE UNDERCLOCK: Fixing the Random Encounter
• Was It Likely?: laws of the land

That's all! Catch you next time.

#catmail