• 28 Dec, 2025 *

I frequently find myself looking forward. Usually this foresight is a good thing; I pride myself on being a good organiser and planner. That said, I’ve felt a little burnt out recently–mostly professionally and personally. Whenever this happens, I find it productive to take a break from planning ahead and instead take stock of how we’ve gotten ourselves here in the first place.

In this spirit, I’ll be taking a look back at my 2025 in RPGs. While it doesn’t feel like it at times, I’ve done quite a bit this year! This year was one in which I really stretched my wings in ways I haven’t done before, but which I have wanted to for years. Well, without further ado

Editing

Early this year, I found myself engrossed by the Zungeon phenomenon. While I did not end up publishing my own Zunegon, I did participate in the creation of The Court of the Shivering Moon.

This experiment was led by jfur and was a playtest of sorts for their Exquisite Crypt method of dungeon design. I wrote a room and edited a substantial amount of the manuscript–which was praised in the Idle Cartulary Review of the finished zine.

During this process I discovered something about myself–I really enjoy editing! I shouldn’t have been surprised about that–after all, I am a high school English teacher. But specifically the developmental and stylistic editing I did during this project was incredibly enjoyable! It made me want to push myself more into the editing world.

And oh boy did I. Over the course of the year, I somehow wound up on the chief editorial team at the Sprigs and Kindling zine. Starting with the April 2025 issue I was an editor at the zine, and starting with the Autumn 2025 issue I am the Deputy Editor for the zine, mostly responsible for initial slush reading.

S&K is dedicated to content for the Gauntlet Publishing suite of games–notably Brindlewood Bay, The Between, Public Access, and Trophy. Our chief editor, Amanda Mullins, has created a product here which is truly a gift to the RPG community at large. I’ve never seen, let along be a part of, such a professional operation. And we give all this content away for free! I value the approach S&K takes to publication, and am proud to be involved with it.

I am also proud of all of the contributors who have submitted things to the zine over the year. Carved from Brindlewood games are at their best when the modules and materials are creatively written. The amount of great writing I’ve been exposed to over the year of working with these folks is incredible.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out Sprigs and Kindling yet, please do, especially if you’re a fan of Carved from Brindlewood games!

Writing

But editing was not the only creative outlet I had this year–I also wrote quite a bit!

Carved from Brindlewood

This year I dove headfirst into the world of Carved from Brindlewood, mostly through Sprigs and Kindling.

My first project of the year was an investigation for Brindlewood Bay. In "Cardio Makes the Heart Grow Stronger," the Murder Mavens investigate the Swell Life Gymnasium after a lonely man was found dead–strapped to a treadmill!

The theme of this one was toxic wellness culture. I’ve spent a lot of time in gyms, and commercial gyms in particular love to prey on the insecure and vulnerable. This dynamic lent itself well to Brindlewood Bay, where so many of the mysteries are really about the insecurities that come with ageing. You can find "Cardio" in Issue 3 of Sprigs and Kindling

But Brindlewood Bay wasn’t the only CFB game I wrote something for. This past spring, I collaborated with Josh Domanski of Liminal Horror fame on a Public Access Lost Transmission which we called "Parasomnia."

This Lost Transmission was for the Gauntlet Double Feature Writing Contest, and our inspiration were the films "Jacob’s Ladder" and "Phenomena". Taking place in a Catholic boarding school, the players take on the role of teenage girls who are investigating the disappearance of some of their classmates. Of course, demons are involved.

We really went ham with the gaillo influence, and I think we really came up with something special here. And The Gauntlet seems to agree as well, as "Parasomnia" was a runner up in the contest! You can find "Parasomnia" in Volume 4.2 of Sprigs and Kindling.

Game Jam Entries

Over the summer, I wrote The Yaksha’s Sigil for Cairn as part of the Appendix N Jam. I’m pretty pleased by how it turned out, as well as by its reception! While it was nowhere near winning the Jam, I was very pleased by how it ranked overall, and it sold well too!

It was fun to write a classic dungeon, although I do find that I struggle writing in that particular genre more than I do when writing horror. I think one of my New Year’s resolutions is to read more fantasy. I used the dungeon generation rules from Cairn 2E pretty faithfully, and I think that the dungeon overall works. I am, however, less impressed with my layout on this project. I did my best to fit it in the limited page count we had–as with all forms of writing, its harder to write something short than long.

My final major project of the year was for the Liminal Horror Horrors of the Americas Jam. Some backstory first–my partner got a really strange job over the summer. She was working at a botanical garden outside our city, and one of the things she had to do was walk around the garden after hours making sure that nobody else was there–something she would often ask for my help with.

These nighttime excursions were pants-shittingly terrifying, and I focused that energy into For Every Flower A Garden. I had a lot of fun writing this one, and even learned some cartography skills to make the map happen. I think with every one of these modules I make, I’m getting slightly better with the layout and design–although I know I have lots of work yet to do.

Games

Professional Gaming

One of the most interesting developments this year was stumbling into running games as a professional GM. I have mixed feelings about taking money for practising my hobby, but considering some professional struggles this year I felt like it was overall a good decision.

It started innocently enough–I was called in by my FLGS to step in for an educational program they were running called Talequest. Basically, in collaboration with a local author, a GM would take a group of kids through a one-shot. That story would then be a springboard for a creative writing exercise.

Their usual GM was sick, and they figured I could do a good job.

And I did!

I also ran a drop in youth program at the same store where over 9 sessions I ran The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford with the most murderous group of children you could imagine. Meanwhile, I was also running games for my own students as part of my day-job.

I have lots to say about these games for children, and I plan on writing a blog post about it more in-depth soon. For now, I want to move on to the main game I ran professionally–a Brindlewood Bay campaign.

This campaign was not only my first as a professional GM, but it was also the first time that I ran a full campaign of a CFB game! I learned so much from this campaign, not only about CFB and my own personal style, but also about running games publicly. I did not anticipate just how much impact the various personalities gathered at this table would both clash and sing together–we had some tough moments, but I think overall we came out of the experience with a memorable experience that was (hopefully) worth the price of admission.

Homegames

My main home was Impossible Landscapes for Delta Green.

This module should need no introduction, but if you’ve not read it yet I really recommend you do. I first got my eyes on it during 2020, and it’s been sitting in the back of my mind ever since. While it isn’t really game able in the way I’ve come to expect from other styles of games I play, the way that Landscapes is written really just worms its way into your brain–fitting for an investigation into The King in Yellow. But this isn’t a review of the book, nor is our campaign done yet.

This campaign has also spanned the whole year–we started it late 2024. I anticipate we’ll finish it this year.

The players in this campaign are my partner and three friends I’ve gamed with for a really long time. We’re all incredibly comfortable with each other and as such trust is at the forefront of this game. When we make big swings, we trust that we are all acting in the best interest of the story.

For my part, this risk taking has manifested in major departures from the text as written. I introduced a True Detetive style frame narrative–where the investigators from later on in the narrative can interject into the gameplay. Vast time-shenanigan related vistas have opened up as a result, and I think overall our game is the better for it. We also completely jettisoned the third part of the campaign as written. Instead, I’ve set the investigators loose in the Dreamland to find the entrance to Carcossa. Before our next session, I need to map out this Dreamlands version of America–inspired by the actual short story collection The King in Yellow, which was a near-future setting when it was written.

But while this game has been going well, I’ve certainly noticed that I’ve somewhat outgrown this type of cinematic trad gameplay in favour of other styles. I mentioned above that my table trusts each other to tell a good story–I bristled as I wrote that line. I’m no longer sure that "telling a good story" is the criterion of a good game, as I once did.

Which brings me to my other homegame: Lost Mines of Phandelver for 5th Edition.

I really don’t want to write about this one. But let me explain myself first–it’s really for my work. A whole bunch of my co-workers have really gotten into Critical Role and Dimension 20, and know about my hobby stuff, so they asked me to run a game for them.

"Sure, I can run 5E," I foolishly thought.

"Lost Mines worked for The Adventure Zone. It can work for me too!"

Oh, how wrong I was.

I won’t let this be a review of Lost Mines. It’s bad–don’t run it. I’ve done a pretty good job of making it an actual open world, and I’m happy with the content as I’ve presented it so far. The main issue is the play-expectation miss match between myself and my co-workers. Or, at least, one of them.

She’s disruptive. She doesn’t pay attention. She interjects. She mocks other players’ decisions while undermining the rest of the party with her own decisions.

And I can’t get rid of her because she’s my boss. Oops.

Well, all is not lost. We still have fun! We’re just not...really playing D&D. I’m keeping my prep short on this one, and not worrying about it too much. It’s just that I know the other players are interested in experiencing games. When not everyone can make it, we do one-shots of storygames such as The Quiet Year and they loved it. If we keep at it, and my boss gets bored and quits, we could probably have a really fun time with a PBTA game! I know they’ve expressed interest in Monsterhearts. It’s a good thing my co-workers have the type of relationship where a game like that would actually work.

But for now, we gotta get through these stupid mines. I expect we’ll get through that around June-ish.

Games I played in

I also spent a lot more time as a player this year than I typically do.

Firstly, I’ll get my decade long 5e game out of the way. I won’t sugar coat it–I want this game to end. However, the rest of the table seems to disagree, and we keep escalating the plot. I need to find a way out of this one, but it is one of the few links to these friends that I have, so I want to keep playing for the sake of our regular connection if nothing else.

However, I did play with strangers a lot more than I usually do. Not only did I play games at several conventions, but I even participated in a few open tables in my local area! Wild, I know!

I’ve recently become enamoured with the idea of an open table. Part of me wants to run a Liminal Horror open table, but the Dolmenwood Box Set also came in soon. Maybe this is what I’ll do professionally next year, who can say? Next year I want to run a game at a convention at any rate.

Also, I am playing in a game of Cloud Empress! One of my regular players is running it, and so far we’re having a blast just exploring the hex map. I’m glad that another person I know wants to run OSR games.

Misc and final words

Other things of note– I met a bunch of local game designers, including some really famous ones! I volunteered at a convention! I agreed to go on a podcast!

Like I said, I’ve been busy. Some of these things I had forgotten about, or thought took place further back in time than they did.

Next up, I’m going to write out my intentions for the New Year. I did a lot this year, but I have even more planned for 2026. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see ya next time!

Peace!