December 31, 2023

The Everything Wrapup of 2023

Here we are, at the end of the year.

I write a lot on this blog — this year represents a full 365,000 words, more or less. I cover a range of topics, too, with ideas like the interactions within queerness and politics, the life of a fundamentalist Christian, game making, writing, media analysis and of course, by volume, tons and tons of Dungeons & Dragons nonsense.

Chances are, at the end of the year, you haven’t read everything I’ve done. I have, but I’m just one person, and therefore, statistically negligible. What if you want to read a bunch of stuff on my blog, but don’t know what I made this year that you’d think is cool?

Let me give you a run-down on my favourite articles of 2023, then! Get ready for some links!

First of all, the articles about Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote about the prestige class system, which wound up distorting the game around it, and oh look it’s capitalism again. I wrote about the way that D&D gets you playing with its ideas before you ever touch a dice, and the way that DMs should give players a meaningful mechanical anchor to a story type they want (ie, a boyfriend). Also, in the vein of a stuff I felt like I should have addressed a long time ago, this is the year I decided to finally grapple (hah) with the grappling rules in 3e, which I have been joking about for years.

Then I took things to the other side of the screen in 3e, looking at the idea of action economies, through one of the most broken 3e spells, Haste, about what monsters imply about the world with the question of what an otyugh means; not what it is or what it does, but what it means when you see one. There’s also an article to inspect the confusing worldbuilding presented by gods with an incentive system, and a consideration of the monsters from the epic level handbook, my favourite part of that book.

I looked at 4th edition a lot, of course, because it’s the best edition. This year though, I made a change from my usual content of ‘explaining how this works’ to people, and instead started on talking about ways I expand it, or execute on it. For example, I talked about using ideas from Blades in the Dark for skill challenges that normally seem very singular, and I dumpstered one of the worst classes in 4e D&D for fun, and explained the ability scores part of D&D, something that I feel needs to be how it is even if there’s no good reason for it to be this way. Also, since it was going to be necessary for eventual consideration in some How To Be articles, I figured I’d examine the critical hit system of 4e D&D, and how to take advantage of it.

I suppose if I’m talking about the year in review and I’m already in Hasbro territory, have the articles about Magic: The Gathering that best represented my feelings about Magic: The Gathering, a game that has released twenty sets in the past two years, of which I have liked three, and hated the rest. There was my 20th year anniversary playing mtg and the anger and despair I felt about it, there was anger and despair at the lord of the rings cards and then, since I wasn’t done, a bunch of anger about the dr who cards as well I guess.

That’s D&D in the general though, what about D&D in the specific? Ie, my D&D, the D&D that’s about the world I made and play in, and have been playing in since I was a teenager?

I have been actively trying to present Cobrin’Seil as a whole place, examining systems and places and all that stuff. That meant a lot of what I was doing was finally formalising and writing down cultures and places because how do you belong to a world if you can’t point to the nearby parts of the world and know what’s over there?

First, I decided to describe the boundaries of the country of Dal Raeda, the importance of the Eresh Protectorate’s Kings’ Highway, through the story of the city Lagan. Heading north, into the vast sprawling forests of the north, I spread out across the continent, showing a host of the countries and cities there. Then I showed you Mosetto, a zeppelins and airships driven cogcore country inspired by Nausicaa, and the Mykin that live in their canyon. Further north and in the biting colds, there’s Torrent, a city of constant lightning storms, and the jock weedsman war monks that live there and refuse to die. Back south to the ocean coast, but not into Dal Raeda, across the coastline, you see the archipelago country of Kyranou, a nation inspired by Greece and Avatar, and continuing along that coastline, across the neck that leads to Dal Raeda, there’s the magepunk roaring 20s country of Visente. South from Visente, into the ocean, there’s Uxaion, a dreadful mage-necro-cyberpunk island city for players to adventure against unfair things.

The biggest and most prominent change to the geography of the world was the project that started when I resolved to to strip out my old region with the weak name of ‘kryphaneos,’ and turned into a three part article examining that new location, and its particular locations and cultures. That was how I created my new favourite thing in the setting, the horror peninsula of the Szudetken, a place that is informed by a vision of horror that speaks to Christian Fundamentalism of the 1990s. Of course, once I’ve described the Szudetken, how can I guide players to belonging in those places? Player themes!

While I was doing large multi-part articles about varied cultural groups, what about The Beast People? Well, first, why the setting has those terms, and then, a consideration of those people , in two parts. I also looked into the assumptions about orcs and language, and even wondered whether or not ‘straight’ is the default in the world, at least as a created and reasonably communicated orientation. What’s more, while talking about the assumptions of language, I examined the economics of a ‘gold piece’ in a world and what that means about the assumed universality of capitalism.

But finally, and probably the most fun, and the one I want to use as a template for future examinations, I finally wrote up the Halfling Hulks and the player faction of the Northumbrians after them. I love this so much because I love the way it gives a player an experience of living in the world they are. The story of loading and unloading a boat, of the people you know around the docks, of the everyday normal for people, and the degrees of what a player character can be used to or expect. Sure, you probably know about ‘the big halfling boats’. But if you’re really familiar you might know the Northumbrians, by name. You might even be one.

When talking about fundamentalist nonsense, I feel the writing is less fun but no less important. Particularly, there are some ideas that people don’t seem to realise are present in Christian spaces, and assume that surely, that’s not a thing. Things like the seemingly absurd idea of suicide denial. This article wound up being about self-immolation? Which is not a non-bummer, lemme tell you.

I tackled the idea, and my framework for all consideration of Christian fundamentalism, in that I am firmly convinced that all fundamentalism is a grift. Any genuine believers are feeding into a system with a grifter upstream. Sometimes that grifter is after control, like they want to control people’s lives such as causes the horrorshow of dating while in a fundie church, and sometimes the grifter is trying to sell a particular product. Like, you know, the eerie conspiracy theory lurking underneath assumptions about translations and therefore why you should only buy the one they’re selling.

What about games? I make games! I love talking about games! Setting aside the Game Pile (and there was a video compiling those a few days ago), I also wrote a bunch about game making. In fact, this year featured a lot of design sketches for whole games:

And then, removed from specific game designs, there’s my article considerating what parts of a game are or aren’t interface, which is based on a consideration of Donald Norman. Another article on how your game represents speed and therefore time, Bloodwork articles examining the ongoing design of a game about vampire gangs and what vampires are for, and probably my most well-seen article this year, a treatment of how the idea of ‘the magic circle’ is pretty much just privilege.

Media, media, media, I like media, you like media, we all like media and I sure talked about a bunch of media! I did an examination of the ship of Jessie Teamrocket and Ash’s Mom, which isn’t a joke, and is very much a well-supported ship, I wrote a long form examination of an incredibly tedious dude from a very mid anime who was nonetheless incredibly influential, a discussion of the character of Bridget Guiltygear and how boys might now feel alienated from her, an article about Goncharov, the movie that tumblr made up and had fun with and then the whole rest of the internet declared ‘cringe’ while we were having fun, an article about Halloween, the original one, which was so much better than I expected, an article about Lie To Me, a tv series built around a pseudoscience masquerading as real science masquerading as real magic, an article about how we perceive a series like Lycoris Recoil, the absolute beast of an article about what I still think of as ‘the first half’ of Megatokyo, the series of articles about My Hero Academia, a show that gets worse the more I remember it, a series of articles about Person of Interest, my article about the truly excellent anime Summer Time Rendering and then my article about the There She Is!! web animation that’s also about racism.

You know, the easy stuff. Then I went on to present a consideration of generative art, with ‘Smooth Alex Jones,’ my thoughts about Chernobyl and the idea of measuring harm not by deaths but by lost life because of that whole pandemic and global climate crisis haha, why racist colonialism was part of the horror of Lovecraft’s work and therefore you can’t just ‘ignore’ it, and hey, while we’re talking about how we perceive reality, I also wrote about the miserable feeling of watching reality bifurcate in front of me and realising I will never not be angrier. Don’t worry, though I wasn’t stuck with downers, because I was able to also write something about a fun little glance at the Confederacy’s currencies, which are bad, because Confederate art consistently sucks, and a queer reading of Wreck It Ralph’s only interesting plot.

This is also the year in which I finally became a fan of The Locked Tomb series, which remains weird to me because of my childhood with the author, who I haven’t spoken to in – well, a few months, but before that I hadn’t spoken to her in decades. Anyway, I read the Locked Tomb books this year, and gosh I liked them a lot!

If you wanna follow my journey, starting with the first book, then articles where I just kinda had more opinions on things that just happened to suddenly become about The Locked Tomb. Like how the way The Locked Tomb reflects my experience growing up wrong, then questions about how the mind and body relate to one another, and, as someone who grew up under a cult leader, an examination of the type of person Jod is.

Know what The Locked Tomb gets people talking about? Well depressed lesbians and sexy cannibalism, but also it’s the thing that leads to people talking about world building! And I’ve written about world building! I made a bunch of articles about doing a better job with world building.

Like how you can force variety into your world with math, the implications of magical genetics and how to avoid like, making wizards into eugenecists, the types of magic you can do with goo and why that’s cool as hell in my fantasy settings, considering how food works in worlds with sentient foodstuff based on Pokemon, and of course, bringing Star Wars in for a beating when I ask why you make a slave race that can feel pain, you weirdoes.

The two most important worldbuilding articles I wrote this year, in my opinion, the piece about The Major Difference between the Warlock and The Paladin. These two articles are in my opinion my best work and I still reference the Paladin one for people to give them ideas for approaching the identity of an idealistic warrior.

Finally, and this does follow on from The Locked Tomb I swear, I wrote about writing this year. And I’ve been thinking about writing a lot because of how that book makes me feel about my own writing. Basically I want to write better because oh my god they’re so good.

Anyway, I wrote about thinking about relationships in terms of who reacts and how you can make them react. I wrote about boys who are just generically positive in a way that suggests nothing about themselves, and how characterisation is more than being enjoyable to look at. I wrote a short fiction about mars conspiracy theories. Then, directly, I wrote about treating myself seriously and reflecting on writing after reading The Locked Tomb, and an attempt to improve my writing through an exercise in descriptive voice. Finally, and most importantly, I wrote about the importance of treating your work like it’s worth treating like it’s work.

That’s it.

That’s the year.

By a quick count I just linked you to a hundred thousand words’ worth of free reading. It’s good! I liked doing it! You should read it if you like! And if you don’t, I don’t care~!