… with great thanks.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing in my life. At the start it was novels. I have drawers with complete-but-not-finished manuscripts. One of the idle dreams I had about getting these things published was that I would get to write an acknowledgements page. I used to think about being able to thank all the people in my life, having all their names written down in a book that could exist (probably unread) beyond any of our time on the earth.

But today I have real thanks to give. I’ve been freelancing for a couple of months now and I’ve only been able to keep everything relatively normal at home because of the opportunities which I have been given by extremely kind people in the Tabletop Industry. I like to imagine I’ve been offered these gigs because I’m either a safe pair of hands, they like how I think, or because of my writing elsewhere – but I know it’s also because these are some of the nicest people in the business.

So, here’s an acknowledgement page:

• Thanks to John at Wyrd Science, who not only gave me tons of space in the upcoming issue of Wyrd Science – but also allowed me to write on two of my favourite subjects: Mausritter and third party adventures/modules. You should buy some magazines.

• Thank you to Matt and Tamzin Henderson at Loke Battle Mats who made me a early bird special. I got to put together what ended up being something like a regional setting across 12 months. The almanac is full of cool ideas for events, celebrations and adventure in a magically radiated rural setting. I think Loke will have it on sale on their site eventually, but for now: you should buy some maps.

• Thank you to Anna Blackwell for giving me the great privilege of editing For Small Creatures Such As We. I was tasked with picking up the last typos, making sure every page reference was correct and the usual editing stuff. It was 246 pages and we were aiming for a 6 day turnaround. And we did it. This is a solo game of space and self exploration with a scope I’ve rarely seen. It weirdly reminds me of Yakuza 0 – you can choose your own path through the game, explore the world and place your own meaning on things, but also there’s a million distracting mini games. You could be running a business, fighting evil, doing evil, gambling, podracing – you know, all that stuff! It’s a great work and pre-orders are open for small creatures such as you.

• Thank you to Chris at Beyond Cataclysm for letting me write an adventure for his incredibly innovative FÖUR BORG. You know what people say about MÖRK BORG right? “It’s simply too complicated” and “There are too many sides to those dice. Who needs 20 sided-anything?” Luckily for you, Chris Lowry has solved this by creating FOUR BORG. All dice are replaced with a D4s in an exploding dice pool system that is both brilliant and brutal. Chris let me write the rest of the included adventure, which happens in a pyramid of course. I think I’ve made a really good puzzle-or-die adventure. Buy four copies here.

• and thank you Charlie at Tabletop Gaming, who still puts up with my reviews :)

So, thanks!

Making a monster is hard. Apparently. Though I think I’ve just broken the back of the problem I’ve had with the FRANKENSTEIN MEETING SOCIETY HANDBOOK. I had sold the book as a 1-99 player game – i.e. a funny range that publishers like Big Potato stick on their game boxes to indicate it’s for everyone! I’m happy with the way I’ve planned out the solo mode (it’s a correspondence course for making monsters where you’re paired with another and very quickly generate their monster progress and news). But the multiplayer game just didn’t feel right, especially at two where it could be a bit slow.

Anyway, the conclusion I’ve come to is that we can use the solo mode monster generation to represent Absent Members who have posted in their news to boost the effect of having more people around the table. I’ve basically added ‘bots’ to the game, except they’re just a couple of dice rolls and look-ups on a table. It works nicely and give the host role a bit more of a ‘GM’ feel.

Anyway, progress on the game is finally coming along now, thankfully!

You might be wondering: ‘how do I get on a big sexy thank you list like that one at the start of this email?’

Well, you’re in luck. I am still available for freelance work!

• Adventure/scenario writing – Need a starter adventure for your game’s system? Need a campaign for your board game? Scenarios for your wargame? I’m in!

• Reviews, development, consultancy – Want to know if your game is good, finished, or correctly pitched? Let me tell you! I can provide extensive development feedback, mock reviews and useful criticism. Let me fix your rulebook.

• Lore, fiction, short stories, vibes, ephemera – Want more vibes? I’m happy to provide stories, in world documents, background and pretty much any style of fiction you need.

• I can make your kickstarter page not shit – Mostly by putting words in the right order and making your game’s proposition really clear. It’s easy to get muddled and think that your clever use of dice is why people want to play, when actually it’s because you’ve got a cool world to explore.

Email me at christopherjohneggett@gmail.com and we’ll work out what I can do for you!

Oh, and 12 D&D 5E adventures with maps!

You have only 24 (and a bit) hours to get one of the longest pieces of TTRPG writing I’ve put together so far. Loke Battlemats, the purveyors of the best battlemats out there, have comissioned me to create an ‘Alamanac’ to work alongside their 2025 Calendar of Many Adventures.

If you back the calendar in the next 24 (and a bit!) hours you get the Alamanac totally free as a PDF with it.

The calendar has 12 D&D 5E adventures in it, a battlemap for each adventure (that you can actually use at the table) and… all those calendary bits you can normally use for things like, I don’t know, scheduling your actual games.

Perfect, right?

The part I have written is a series of adventure hooks for the magically radiated region of Gossport. The river runs down from some mountains full of simply too much rotting magical power. It’s made things a bit weird, and this Almanac is designed to help locals deal with the magical and the banal by highlighting key festivals, events, warnings and, er, the weather!

The truth is, it’s kind of Welcome to Nightvale as a fantasy RPG setting. A mix of the rural/suburban with completely nuts elements treated as ‘something we just deal with round here’. And deal with it you will.

And the MEGA TRUTH is that there’s about 10x as much #content and ideas in this little book as there are in your favourite vibes-based indie TTRPG.

Also, I’ve been pretty funny in what I am now referring to as my ‘poundland Neil Gaiman’ style.

Get the calendar and the Almanac here, right now for the next 24 hours (and a bit!)

and if you like that, and this, or how I’ve told you about it at least, please share using this little button right here:

Elsewhere and elsewise:

• My friend Adam who lives in Berlin explained that many of his German friends would sometimes express things in the best non-native English possible because of slipped tenses and grammar. For example, rather than saying “let’s have a party” they might say “lets make party”. Anyway, Chris McDowall has written about ‘making the game happen’ on his blog. “Let’s make play?”, yes, sure.

• Also from Chris McDowall: Quinns who used to shut up and sit down who has realised the errors of his ways and now talks about TTRPGs instead. It’s a really good pod and includes a discussion of Chinese Murder Script games. I’m down.

• Sadly MADE IN HEIGHTS no longer has their stuff on Bandcamp, but luckily someone pirated it to soundcloud here. I love Ghosts, Death and Murakami.

• I am tiktoking with a heady mix of poetry book recommendations, indie ttrpg stuff, and tapes.

• Tim’s Korean book cover is bangin’.

• There is a deep well of love in my heart for all game designers out there. Except for those who make rubbish games like this on that has been reviewed by Dan on Space Biff. Read for a really entertaining and enthusiastic kicking.

• Sorry, this is good.

But what now?

We finally launched the Kickstarter for THE FRANKENSTEIN SOCIETY MEETING HANDBOOK. You can get the physical game for £10 and the pdf for £5. It’s a stupid game about creating monsters with your friends, without becoming so embarrassed with your work that you need to chuck your monster away! There’s a button below that will take you to a page where you can back it. Magic!

I’ll not bother everyone about the game again (until it funds and ships at least).

I’ve got a cool draft of a post about my Game of the Year 2023. Spring 2024 is when these things drop right? That’s what is coming up next.

I did a TikTok, for my sins.

I also have a couple of reviews coming up in Tabletop Gaming magazine, including Banish The Snakes and Halls of Hegra – both of which are amazing in the right context.

And then I’ve got a biggish Mausritter thing in the always excellent WYRD SCIENCE.

If you’ve got a project ongoing at the moment, I’d love to read about it in the replies here.

Creating monsters in a supportive community of auteur scientists since 1851

We’ve made another another dumb little game. This one is a roleplaying party game of abomination creation. Players take the role of mad scientists at a community meeting where they share their work with others in the group, secretly hoping that no one is making a monster that would directly defeat theirs.

Use the button below to get notified with the campaign starts. It’s going to be a weird little A5 zine full of horrible collage artwork.

Here’s a sample of what’s going to be on the Kickstarter page:

THE FRANKENSTEIN SOCIETY MEETING HANDBOOK will tell you everything you need to know to run your very own society meeting. You too can create your own community of likeminded geniuses interested in the noble pursuit of creating previously unimaginable life.

The handbook provides advice on:

• How to run a society meeting for you and your friends

• How to discover invite like minded ‘cut and stitch’ enthusiasts to your group without causing alarm

• The 5 best ways to obscure your dark secrets from prying investigators

• How to avoid common meeting pitfalls like someone getting eaten

• How best to describe your creations

• Mitigating large electricity bills

• Scheduling and book keeping

WHAT IS THIS?

It’s a group roleplaying game where each player takes the role of a ‘ethically curious’ scientist – someone who is interested in making monsters, abominations and creatures whose existance is an affront to god they/themselves! Who knows, you could even create the creature that kills god and lives inside it’s divine entrails! All of this, and more, awaits.

You will need a group of two or more likeminded students of the craft, a set of rolelpaying dice, pens, paper, and somewhere to hold your meeting.

WHAT’S IT LIKE?

It’s somewhere between a party game and a roleplaying game. Think Blood On The Clocktower but without having to close your eyes while someone shuffles around the room. There’s space for elaborate stories to come out of the game because of the round themes and secret agendas – no one is quite who they seem. 

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The host introduces the meeting and this gathering’s theme and begins the timer

Everyone presenting writes notes on their monster, they write two strengths which they will reveal on their turn – and also a weakness the monster has. This is recorded secretly, never to be revealed.

(During this stage, players should consider the theme of the meeting as well as any secret agendas they might have.)

Then, when the timer goes the host invites members one by one to present a short speech on the strengths of their monsters.

If, during another member’s speech, one of their monster strengths would directly take advantage of your creature’s weakness – mark a wound. Three wounds and your monster is a failure, time to scrap it for parts and start again. Bring a new monster to the next meeting.

While there are no winners in the society, there comes a time when a creature is so reality-curvingly powerful that an ancient evil will slip into the driving seat and take it for an apocalyptic spin. In these events the society will often issue a special badge of merit.

Plus some links to websites!?!

I’ve been on holiday in the sun. For the first time in many years I’ve actually relaxed. I feel for the first time since my daughter was born and maybe since the pandemic I actually got to clear my head.

I’ve spent some of this very offline time writing up game designs I’ve been thinking about for a while. Here’s a little tour of them.

THREE GAMES

The first is a cup-of-coffee driven solo game for Beyond Cataclysm’s ISBN COFFEE, which is still running right now – you can go back it here.

The game is a solo ‘idle game’ experience where forgetting about the game (in the same way you forget your coffee and let it go cold) is part of playing it. Create a character, set them off on adventure and record their attempting action or goal. And then – the next time you have a sip of your coffee – you check the oracle and various table to see how things went, before creating their next step. It’s ben interesting as there’s some ethical concerns around how you make someone drinking or not drinking coffee a success variable. You obviously don’t want to encourage people to chug away at their coffee or drink more than they need or want to. As such success can’t be ‘scold yourself with nuclear strength caffeine water’.

So far it plays well, and hopefully get to be a kind of consumptive DieDream once finished off.

(Bonus game: DieDream is a really excellent solo roleplaying game that you can play in your head as you fall asleep by Alfred Valley. In my case, it was on the flight. Falling in and out consciousness while resolving an adventure entirely of my own early-morning imagination was brilliant. I think there might be something really revolutionary within this system (which is simple enough to store in your head, and tricky enough to still feel like magic). Get it here.

The second game is an OSE solo procedure that riffs on the Dark Fort game which MORK BORG is based off. In Dark Fort, you would roll dice to see how many exits there are to the next room, and then do an encounter if relevant. It’s a very simple and satisfying crawl experience. A napkin’s worth of adventure. I’ve created a version of this for OSE which reference pages in the various books of the manuals for the game. With the procedure players will be exploring and mapping out a weird dungeon as they explore it. They’ll discover the denizens of each level as they descend and deal with encounters as if their party was being run by a real GM. It’s a simple system with loads of discovery in it, while staying as close to the vanilla OSE rules as possible. I’ve got an idea to print it at a size where it’s just a bit slimmer than the OSE books so that it can slip inside the front cover without poking out. Maybe this is how all solo modules should be? I’ll likely do a swift and low-target kickstarter for this just for the print run.

And the third game is something a bit bigger. I’m trying to create a journaling wargame where you’re writing reports/letters home/a diary between each mission. The idea is that your force is being deployed on these missions, but you’ll have to work out the end goal of your higher command. It’s also currently setting agonistic; that being decided by the player as they start journaling. In theory this means it can be a game about roman centurions, a fleet of spaceships, five kids getting revenge on their bullies over a summer, special ops nonsense, or fantasy. I realise that this is a dangerous place to be in terms of design – crunchy specificity (tm Tim Clare) is what makes stuff interesting – but as I hope to take this to a publisher I think the theme can be developed later if one is needed.

This game is, again, primarily solo, but can also be run as a two player game too. It all runs off a single card deck at the moment and does one of my favourite things in games, which is the ‘committed deck’ thing – as all aspects of the conflict consist of the same deck (except for troop/civilian/target locations which are of course little cubes) it means that there’s always cards that are out of the draw pool. Players will collect relics for permanent improvements to their forces and play cards out to form their battlefield – locking out those cards from being used during the battle itself. This is something that happens best in Oh My Goods! A card game that sees you use cards as the currency, the goods, the locations, and also a kind of shared resource pool. I’m trying to fold this idea into a campaign game (which actually exists for Oh my Goods! in the form of Expedition to Newdale). I’ve got the core systems sorted and it’s now a case of writing 52 relic effects and, you know, #content.

YOUR MISSION

I’ve just filled up a folio society notebook I was given by a colleague a couple of years ago. It was a freebie to them, they slung it at me across the pile of books that protected them from me. Thanks Duncan! It was a great notebook because it was able to lie flat.

Your mission is to recommend me a notebook that actually lies flat really nicely. Please reply to me here or just tweet me. I am CJEggett everywhere, even if its a place where there are no tweet.

ELSEWHERE

The Job. Possibly the first game by Andre at Games Omnivorous since 17th Century Minimalist? Looks like a banger.

MORK BORG, but it’s only D4s.

The Man Who Invented The Roll Under System (don’t fact check this) Chris McDowall has a new game. It’s beautiful and it’s got hexes. Chris is woefully far away from his target of £12 (don’t check this) so please back if you haven’t already.

Always trust your vibe check. That guy who acts weird? Probably weird.

My mate Sam has a book about the ultra cool rare disease she has. It might be the only book on the subject and contains first hand accounts. Get in on the ground floor.

Saw this game about being a hireling for a (now dead) hero around three seconds ago, looks cool. Its opening line is:

You were all hired by a big Hero, naïve and optimistic, to help explore a dark hole in the ground. “I just need you to hold my torch and carry my bags for me ” he said, “it will be fine”. Well, now the Hero is dead.

CLOSER TO HOME

I’ll put this on sale on Friday, if you don’t already have a copy. It’s the slug game again.

If you do have a copy of it in physical form only, then please reach out. I’ll send you the PDF for FREE.

2024 is the year of the WEBSITE. Please let me know about any websites you have enjoyed. I might list them here in the future.

I am on BlueSky, I am on Twitter, I am cutting and sticking my own print and play version of Rocky Mountain Man. I do all these things under the ‘handle’ CJEggett.

I’ve got a review or two in Tabletop Gaming coming up, and I’ve also got a really cool piece in Wyrd Science. Make sure you pick up the next couple of issues.

If you like this email, send it to a friend.

Two videos, one cup

Hot isn’t it?

Last week people were having some quite annoying arguments about criticism in games. It might partly be to do with this long video essay.

I did watch all three hours of it in the end, and I think it’s pretty good. It’s entertainingly made, explained some boring things about the past of TTRPG design and highlighted a particular approach to game design which is a bit crap. It took a decent swipe at Root The RPG and for good reason as far as I can tell. It’s a book without heft and weight and seems to be there just for the Kickstarter.

Vi engages with the text of the work, and indeed, the meta-text that is the play that the text creates. Vi seems to suggest that there isn’t really a way of attributing play to the rules – at least, not in a very strict sense in the way a board game might – and instead this being something entirely (?) apart from the rest of our understanding of the game.

It poses the question of what can we even critique when it comes to games.

As someone who has provided a lot of criticism of ttrpgs over the years I can only add this: in all circumstances in games writing and reviewing we are reviewing play – the generated element, the vapour of action which rises above the board or above the table. And then we may look to attribute the parts of the rules or the text of the setting or adventure as to why play happened in the way it did.

It’s why, I think, it’s mostly GMs that review games, rather than players. Because they’ve read the text and they’re the only one implementing the rules and setting as written.

(Or because of the way it’s written. Because I think that’s one of the things that’s being discussed in Vi’s essay – that there is a belief out there that game rules are to be followed exactly and to deviate is to do it wrong. Which is obviously wrong in itself and those who believe that are usually socially maladjusted and not much fun to be around. It misses the point of games at all. There is a threshold where ‘taking it seriously’ does effect how fun the game is, but it’s got nothing to do with whether the rules are perfectly implemented. There is a misunderstanding in some of the hobby which assumes that people can’t make choices of play at the table and indeed, shouldn’t. It’s clear to me that every game is interpreted by those playing it, just as a novel is imagined in the mind or poetry is performed differently at home.)

I wonder what player side reviews of games might look like. The Rolled Standard reviews games after each of their actual play series – and maybe we get a glimpse of it there.

This aside, it turns out I love a three hour video essay when presented as thoughtfully as Vi’s. I only really would want this for bigger ideas which include the kind of roaming tour through a few ideas and texts. But it gave me chance to think properly about most of the things being said – which I can’t say is always true of things I enjoy on the internet.

Similarly, Tim Clare, who has a massive reserve of compassion, enthusiasm and interest in games has started his own YouTube channel. The first video, about Joraku, a trick-traking area control game sees Tim take us on a tour of this seemingly brilliant Samurai game with a deft hand. Tim manages to do something here that we rarely see in the gaming space which is intelligently and entertainingly explaining how to play the game while telling us why it’s good and how it’s personally effected him. Tim manages to make the understanding of the game’s rhythms part of understanding whether it feels good to play, or if it will bring about some change in you (which I guess is what we’re asking of all art, right? ‘Go on, change me, I dare you.’)

Tim’s channel with be worth subscribing to and sharing around, so if you have the means to boost one of the best voices in games at the moment, do!

Lads, my car is megadead. As such I would like to remind you that I am available for hire as a games writer, kickstarter consultant, or general writer-for-hire. I’ve doubled the money a designer made on their KS once because of my feedback on the actual page, which is pretty much my only sort-of testimonial at the moment. I’d love to write an adventure for your game, design a solo mode for it,

I also have games you can buy.

Next time I hope to write up some more thoughts around how games are themselves metaphors and how I link them to literary theory. Or I might send something fun instead, like the intro to our next game…

I’m going to be at UKGE today. I am on the Talking about Books about Games panel at 11am in the Panda Theatre. Hopefully I will see you there, and if I don’t, maybe I’ll see you roaming the halls.

All the hot girls are asking their boyfriends: “would you still love me if I was a slugiraffe?” and if you don’t know what that is here are three great ways to get in the know and be able to answer your hot girlfriend…

• Buy a copy from Beyond Cataclysm. They’re going to be at UKGE, so you could just pop over to their stand 2-944. I also contributed to Lucky For None, if you wanted more of my words.

• Find Me At UKGE on Friday 2nd. Just send me a DM on Twitter or something. I’ll be bringing approximately 10 copies of the game with me. I am happy to barter a copy of my game for a copy of your game. Theoretically I would take cash too, but that’s a bit weird.

• Be A Bit Weird. Buy the game digitally or physically using those links I’ve just dropped.

And that’s that! I’ll hopefully be able to update you on our next project in the coming weeks. I think it’s going to be a banger (as the kids and old people say).

But not out out, it seems.

This is my first newsletter from outside of the games industry (or publishing, or magazines, or whatever). I assumed everyone would immediately blacklist me now that I can’t necessarily splash games across beautiful pages in a national magazine, but that doesn’t seemed to have happened just yet. Which is great!

We have a few new subscribers – all of which are handsome and delicious. You should check out the games page over here: https://adapress.itch.io/ . The Taming of The Slugiraffe might be why you’re here, but if not have a look.

We’ve sold two copies of this game digitally. We think that’s a bit mad, as it seems to have happened totally organically and isn’t linked to the originl crowdfunding in any direct way. Thank you if you’re one of those people who bought one of our games.

I’m going to be at UK Games Expo on Friday, I’ll be on the Talking about Books about Games panel, it’s on at 11am in the Panda Theatre. We’ll be working out whether it’s worth writing anything down about games at all. Join us to find out our verdict! If we decide ‘no’ it will become illegal to write about games, so it’s pretty nailbiting stuff for those in the industry.

Beyond that I hope to be able to wander the halls a bit. If you’re also wandering around at UKGE on Friday, get in touch, I might be able to play a game. Imagine that! My DMs are open on twitter.

These last couple of weeks on Twitter people have been saying weird things like ‘there’s no/little criticism in games’. These comments and the people agreeing with them are often people who don’t seem to be in the same game circles I am in where I consider the level of criticism to be quite decent (even if no one reads it). Importantly I don’t mention this as a way to say those people are wrong or otherwise, but just to highlight that there’s so many circles, groups, movements and distinct ‘communities’ within the hobby/industry and the overlap between each of these can be minimal or non-existant.

I wasn’t part of the Google+ era of TTRPG communitites, but I was on the platform and studying it (I worked in online marketing/comms/content/communities at the time). And all it was missing was a reason to be there. For some people they found their community (like in the TTRPG community, or for drone flying specialists apparently). It was a failure in the end because it thought it was twitter or facebook of the time – a kind of mass media that’s for ‘everyone’ or where ‘important stuff gets talked about’. Had it been seen as what it should have been by Google, an innovative way of sharing multiple community interests and been kept on as such, it might well have been the perfect thing for right now.

I’m sure that Google+ isn’t the answer to the disparate way that the TTRPG community is spread out, but its death has something to do with the way the community is so dislocated now. The answer is probably to just have a few too many books in your house and to talk to real people in the community around you. Whatever happens online is probably just for fun.

Thanks for reading.

And there’s nothing you can do about that last one…

Hello once again.

This is a very quick update to say that:

1. We’ve got a Board Game Geek page now, please add the game to your collection, add any pics you might want to, leave a review if that’s of interest. You know, all that good stuff you can do on BGG!

2. We’re in a YouTube video! Check out Geek Gamers having a bit of a flick through the game. We’re at the end and that link should take you to just before our bit. Watch the whole thing if you’re interested in other solo games!

That’s it! If you do anything cool with the game, please let us know and we’ll let everyone else know too! Film it, talk about it, play it, set it on fire, whatever! Let us know!

Also, if you like Tunnel Goons, then please enjoy this twitter dungeon for your next session: THE GREEN DUNGEON. I was trying to do somethign simple and quick, but obviously I have failed at that! There’s too many words!

This is the next thing I am hoping to finish. It was just an attempt to do two things:

1. try out the PUSH SRD, which is a cool little system

2. try to make a game in google slides, as I remember hearing someone did that?!

Anyway, it will be free/pwyw and you should be able to get hold of it soon. Follow Ada Press on Itch to be alerted (I assume there’s alerts?) about new games!

Thanks for reading!