Remember webrings? A deep cut bit of lore about me is that I wrote a moderately popular webcomic in college (a friend of mine who is now a professional artist did the art), and it took off because we got linked into a webring by a much more successful comic.

I’m super excited to be adding my blog to the rootring webring of ttrpg blogs, but I realised that I wouldn’t be able to do that on here without paying beehiiv’s frankly exorbitant monthly fee to upgrade my subscription. So I’m going to be trying out a new format for the newsletter, and sticking the actual content of the posts on a new website, dndramaturgy.com. Let me know what you think! I hope these will still be fun to read and receive, and that you’ll take the trouble of an extra click to read the full posts.

And speaking of which, I have a new post up on the blog. I facilitated a game of Extra Ordinary for some friends on a weekend away, and came away with a lot of thoughts about how to introduce GMless (or GM-full, as that game describes itself) play to players who are not experienced with that style, and also not experienced with GMing.

I’m really excited to be starting a new project in collaboration with the Campaign: Skyjacks team at the One Shot Podcast Network. While most AP dramaturgy takes place in pre-production and for the creative team, I’ve also often worked as a dramaturg in creating accompanying materials for audiences, and that’s sort of what I’ll be doing here. Basically, I’ll be listening through the show and making some analysis videos as I go. I’m really excited to see how the project takes shape, and you can watch my first video (and follow for more) below, or on TikTok.

(Ignore my horrible Instagram engagement, I’m still building that account, but the TiKTok embeds autoplay, so I’m going with these…)

I’ve been thinking about this bluesky post basically perpetually since I saw it. It has really unlocked a piece of the GMing puzzle I’ve been struggling with when it comes to setting up the kinds of games that I would also like to play. I’m a massively collaborative GM and like to really build the story based on what my players do, but I definitely leave too much space sometimes, and don’t give them enough structure to bounce off of out of fear of over-planning or railroading.

As a player, I like to feel like there’s a world around me, and hooks for me to grab onto and run with, and my fear of lore dumps and over-writing as a GM has sometimes stood in the way of me providing that for my own players. But this framing has been a total breakthrough for me in how to present a world that is solid enough to recat to while also not being a pre-packaged plot.

If you follow me on TikTok (or the Instagram I now have and never remember to update), you might have seen that I’ve been playing around with what I’ve been calling micro APs. They’re short form video, solo actual plays, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with the ones I’ve made so far.

I found some interesting things in the latest one, and I’m happy enough with how it came out that I think I’ll do a sequel arc eventually. You can check out the first (of six) on Instagram below (or, again, on TikTok).