Poring back over holiday activity to harvest a bumper crop of shiny links. For yet more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

The Madman's Menagerie proposes A CHALLENGE FOR 2026: THE STARTER B⬡X

Orthopraxy writes Eating the Book--a response to 'We Need to Talk About Goodman Games'

Shuttered Room asks Secret Santicorn 2025 - What the fuck do adventurers eat?

Unlawful Games gives us Godawful Griffons

Seraphim Seraphina asks What do we mean when we say a game “supports” play?

Archon's Court gives us Rota Fortunae Retrospective (Handling Active Faction Sandboxes)

A Room Containing 1d6 Goblins shares The Underdog Bonus

Connecting the Fictional Dots writes The Human Game Manifesto

The Dolent Chronicle shares Play Worlds Manifesto

Being An Asshole To A Goblin (BAATAG) gives us The Verbs of Play

Brackish Draught writes Answering the Perpetual Questions of RPGs

Spiceomancy gives us Clerics get the sex dice (class)

Crow’s Corner shares Table-Tested Review of The One Ring’s “Tales From the Lone-Lands”

Explorers Design compiles The Bloggies Hall of Fame

Dungeon Mecha gives us Solving the 1 HP Goblin

Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes Play Environments, Power, Complexity, and Agency in D&D

HiskiH gives us The NWOF Promise

Eleatic stranger on RPG.net writes Resting Pressure: Rules that prompt new problems for characters /a>

mindreader's digest gives us Quality of life, rulesets, and fatigue

Trick's Tales shares Weather Worm Adventure I: A review of Deluge at Drizzle Distillery

Throne of Salt compiles Public Domain Roundup 2026

Traverse Fantasy shares Cinco: Bibliography

Being An Asshole To A Goblin (BAATAG) gives us Elements of a Key 2

I Cast Light! shares CRYPTS OF DOLMENWOOD: Using The Timeline to Determine Motifs of Tombs, Dungeons, And Undead

Francesco Cacciatore on Polygon writes After 8 years of playing D&D nonstop, I've finally tried its biggest alternative

A roster of links recommended from peoples backlogs this year - wisdom that has stood the test of time - also a 'mulligan' edition for me while I am back in the aul sod for the New Year.

For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

I Cast Light! gives us RPG'S TONISBORG COELACANTH: Or The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg & The Preservation of D&D before D&D, a Review

Links to Wisdom asked What are assumptions about how to play an OSR adventure that you think might not be commonly held as desired?

Rise Up Comus gave us GM Principles

Coins and Scrolls shared Sci-Fi: Squishy Space

@inbabylontheywept gave us Babylon's 6 D&D Tips

DIY & dragons asked Who is the GLOGosphere?

Was It Likely? shared iconography and alignment

Rise Up Comus wrote c o z y

d4 Caltrops gave us d100 - Connections & Coincidences for Character Convergence

Rise Up Comus wrote Advice for Running Horror Games

False Machine shared Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

DIY & dragons gave us Learning from Boardgames - Tokaido and Things to do on a Journey

ars ludi wrote Grand Experiments: West Marches

Thalian Musings shared Hexcrawling the Blogosphere

Don't Split the Party gave us Modern Minds and Medieval Distances

Archbrick shared Hexmap Terrain Generator

Ars Magisterii gsve us Your Giant Spiders Are Boring

Rise Up Comus wrote Conversational Spirals - Closure in RPGs

Jay Dragon gave us Systems of Relation

Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux shared A Metagaming manifesto

DIY & dragons gave us Roguelike Advice for Tabletop Games from @Play and Golden Krone Hotel

End the year with more shiny links. For yet more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

Alone in the Labyrinth launches City '26 Megapost

Ben Hollingum on Guinness World Records gives us Inside a Canadian professor's 43-year-old Dungeons & Dragons campaign

Save vs Total Party Kill writes Advice for Running a Hexcrawl, A Decade Too Late

Revivify Games shares How to Run a Sandbox Adventure

Wacky Weasel gives us Universal Character Sheet

Newt Young writes Lions, Foxes, Wolves – A Set of Procedures for Political Play

Seraphim Seraphina asks What do we mean when we say a game “supports” play?

Dragon Peak Publishing Newsletter gives us Hexcrawling non-geographical landscapes

Habeeb shares the infrastructure of magical convenience

Diceless gives us Embracing Colonialist Dungeons

The Madman's Menagerie gives us PEOPLE TO KILL AND HOW THEY WILL KILL YOU (Bandits)

Links to some serious thinking as people purge their draft folders before the end of the year. For yet more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Alone in the Labyrinth launches #City26 challenge for next year and also gives us City of 100 Gods, Traders Wake: They Who Store The Grain (35); The Deep One (36).

Viridian Void Productions shares Die Hard is OSR

Binary Star Games gives us Conflict as Motivation and Resolution

Billhook Blog writes In Praise of the Pit

Gorgon Bones shares “Boring” Combat is Fine Actually

Methods & Madness gives us Old school swarms/minions (B/X, OSE, AD&D, etc.)

dungeon doll shares Elves

Kill It With Fire! gives us Rotating Players, Stable PCs Campaign Plan

Habeeb (@beeboobubie) writes the default dungeon is colonial

Afraid of Encounters gives us Anti-colonial Dungeon

The Dododecahedron shares Crossing the Dungeon Rubicon

Patchwork Paladin asks Why Go Hexcrawling?

Old Men Running The World gives us How to get better at improvising

Connecting the Fictional Dots shares The Grand Table of Settings – and a Christmas Game

MurkMail gives us The Stakes of Grimdark

Links from around the web. For yet more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Grackle Court gave me a most generous GLoGmas 2025 post: EXTRA Shiny TTRPG links - delve into the best links of all previous 254 collections!

Did you game at all this year? Have you a blog? Share how your year went with The Endie Awards from Lady Tabletop. Some examples so far from MixUpPixels with A Landmark Year - The Endies 2025, Luck Roll and Indie RPG Newsletter

Sam Seer's Blog proposes JOIN THE BLOGWAGON: Your Rule of Three!

The greatest poster in the world launches Gloggies 2025 nominations

Only the shiniest links out across the blogosphere. For yet more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Explorers Design announces The Bloggies 2026!

Quasiwizard gives us 12 Hexes

A shrike for my dreams shares Pruning 5e: A response to '5 Cuts To 5e That Make The Game More Interesting'

To Be Resolved asks Conservation of Game - How Resilient is your Prep?

The Ice Queen's Throne writes AD&D isn’t a burger, it’s a meatloaf

Says Who gives us METT-TC for Faction Play

Rise Up Comus shares [Early Worm Campaign] The Backstory of the Castle Automatic

Meticulous Mezzanine gives us Villages, resources, and gm facing tools

Coins and Scrolls writes OSR: Treasure for Dungeon / Room Stocking

TTRPG Insider gives us Pay-to-Play: The Business of the Professional Dungeon Master

More shiny links from around the web. For yet more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

d4 Caltrops gives us d100 - Brainfood for Burgeoning Blogs

Trick's Tales writes Seven Part Pact: An Extremely Complicated Game about Extremely Complicated Men

Connecting the Fictional Dots shares Character Death and Play Cultures

Fluorite Guillotine gives us quantum ogre reborn

Zedeck Siew Writing Hours shares TO DRINK UP THE SEA

Tree Climber gives us Alignment as Rock Paper Scissors

Messages From The Far Havens writes Being a Good Gamemaster at RPG Conventions

Wayspell gives us [HMtW] Encounters Upon the Astral Sea

Dungeon Bison shares The Map as a Tool for Conversation

monkeyX's games blog writes Gothic Feelings, Urban Nightmares: Playing in the Shadows of Buffy, Liminal & Vampire

To Be Resolved gives us Bee-Sized Anchors of Wilderness Play

I Cast Light! shares LAW, ORDER, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Gameable Suggestions from English Medieval Law

More shiny links from around the web. For yet more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Zedeck Siews Writing Hours releases CHAPTER SERF - get it while it is going!

Valeria Loves shares How to Replicate Over/Under

The Dododecahedron writes The OSR Onion

Fluorite Guillotine gives us generic play: revisiting cortex prime

glorified notepad shares d20 Ways to Get Un-RPG-stuck

Playful Void gives us How to Write a Module: An Incoherent Play-by-Play

Shadows of NyOrlandhotep asks Better Mysteries: Who cares about who did it?

Halfway Station gives us Retrospective Review: Dungeons & Dragons

A Knight at the Opera writes Happy Birthday Knight at the Opera: 6 Years of Blogging

Coins and Scrolls gives us Review: HEXplore It: Fun-Like Experiences and Shadows in the Cave

Shiny links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Save vs Total Party Kill gives us Over/Under is Over

Archbrick declares The Old-school 5e Renaissance Has Begun

Luke Gearing writes Violence at the Street Level

Beneath Foreign Planets gives us d20 dungeon critters you can just snatch up and gulp down

Playful Void asks Got no game: Should your module be system agnostic?

Roleplaying Tips shares Bake In The Pokey Bits: Design For Interaction

Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us The Implied Setting of AD&D Towns & Cities: Four Themes

HiskiH writes New Wave of Fantasy - NWOF

All Dead Generations gives us Dungeon Design Note: Obstacles Support Exploration

Tales of the Lunar Lands shares The Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink Setting

subjunctive moods gives us unfair initiative

Anb's Logs writes Brief perspectives on rule density and 5e

Shiny links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Chaoclypse’s Substack writes BEAR WITNESS!

Traverse Fantasy gives us General Update (Icon0clasm and more!)

TRAIPSE shares The 10 types of special rooms

Alchemist Nocturne gives us Guns in fantasy

mrmagusjester shares D&D Rules Cyclopedia, the best-ever edition

Sage's Sanctum gives us Handling Factions in a Hexcrawl

Play Material writes Varieties of Scenes in TTRPGs

Afraid of Encounters gives us Gamemasters are Game Designers!

Observations of the Fox shares Crossovers between Seasons

Nordic Larp writes Accepting Limits: The One-Hour Online Role-Play Experience

Dice Goblin gives us Sub-Hex Design: Seven Anchors of Wilderness Play

Shiny links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Swan and Raven Studio hosts the last days of the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid.

Of Dice and Dragons launches this months RPG Blog Carnival with Feasts and Festivals in Your TTRPG Campaign

Of Dice and Dragons also shares Wanted: Hosts for the 2026 RPG Blog Carnival!

LootLootLore gives us Diagetic Bingo

Congas.blog writes Finding my community

Chronicled Scribblings of the Itinerant Overlord gives us AD&D Training Costs: A Common DM Unforced Error

Sage's Sanctum shares A Calamitous Random Encounter Alternative

Old Men Running The World asks What Makes Me Want To Run A Game?

Grumpy Wizard shares Five Lessons About the TTRPG Business From Mike Mearls

Fluorite Guillotine gives us minimalist jam post-mortem

Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes Strangers in a Strange Land

forestsofcernutis gives us Proto-D&D

Bruce Heard shares D&D Castles: Operating Costs

Crow’s Corner gives us Halloween One-Shots: Read, Played, Reviewed

Fresh links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Swan and Raven Studio hosts the last days of the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid.

DirectSun Games hosts the Puzzle Dungeon Jam

Sam Sorensen launched Mothership Month 2025 Wargame: OVER/UNDER which is where all the noise about that has come from.

Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us Alignment Languages are Socially Repulsive

Fight in the Shade shares Minimal D&D Stats

Crow’s Corner writes A Taste of Tabletop Roleplaying Games about Vampires

New School Revolution proposes Let's Make a Forest

Viridian Void Productions writes In Praise of Idle Prep

Play Material gives us The Ancient Game of Riddles

Rise Up Comus shares A Camping Procedure

Leicester's Ramble gives us Yet Another Mass Combat Hack - Using "Field Combat Rules for Shadowdark" in OSE

Improved Initiative writes Dungeon Design Tips: You Need To Make Social Skills Viable If You Want Players To Use Them

four letters at random gives us One-shot Good Society: Changes

The Robgoblin wonders Why adventure? Ask the CIA!

Fresh links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Swan and Raven Studio hosts the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid

Fail Forward gives us Coloring Book Game Design

400 independent bathrooms shares rules that expand

Ward Against Evil writes Shield Walls – from Someone with “Riot Control” Training

Tales of the Lunar Lands gives us Timekeeping in the Lunar Lands

Puzzle Dungeon writes We need more puzzle dungeons!

Methods & Madness gives us Random stopwatch encounters

Dungeonfruit shares ONCE (A Worldbuilding Game)

Farmer Gadda's TTRPG Hayloft asks Crash Course: What is the OSR (And Why Do I Care?)

Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us Speak with Monsters: The Languages of AD&D and the Adventurous Linguist

Save vs TPK shares The New Novelty

In My Campaign gives us Other Worlds: Trapping Construction

This Vorpal Coil writes Two Perspectives On Bleed

TTRPG goodness from about the internet. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Swan and Raven Studio hosts the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid

Fluorite Guillotine gives us fabula ultima was made for me

Bat in the Attic asks What is the point of the OSR?

@alexanderwales gives us Majority and Minority

Blog of Forlorn Encystment shares The Monster Economy of AD&D

Ever & Anon publishes Issue #4 of this successor to Alarums & Excursions

World Building and Woolgathering gives us Another Return to Yoon-Suin

Idraluna Archives writes Footnotes in RPGs

PhD20 gives us Unprepared and Never Better

Your Scent Has Attracted A Bear shares Leonard Cohen's Advice for Novice OSR Referees

False Machine gives us A review of The Golden Peaches of Samarkand

Valeria Loves asks Why Don't I Hate Fabula Ultima?

Creighton Broadhurst shares GM Advice: Three-Tier Design for the Busy GM

Garamondia gives us SimAnt Cataphracts - the roughest outline and follows up with More Bugaphracts

Things I found interesting over this last week online. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Swan and Raven Studio hosts the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid

@molomoot gives us Crossword Dungeons

Sly Flourish shares Go Easy On Yourself

Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes Warring Guilds and Rogue Assassins Plague the Streets of AD&D

Dungeons & Possums shares Things to Support With Your #$%* Disney Money

d4 Caltrops gives us d100 - “Bottle Episodes" - Seafaring Scenes & Situations

What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse... asks Are You Missing the Forest for the Trees? Plant an Orchard.

The Wondering Monster writes How to Help Your Players Investigate Rumors in an OSR Campaign

Arcane Mutterings gives us The Gap in TTRPG Culture

Smoldering Wizard shares Musings on the OSR Blogosphere and Forums

Shiny links from about the internet. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

I Cast Light! asks WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives

Patchwork Paladin gives us How to Read Blogs

Elven Enchantress writes Folkloristics of Playing RPGs

Grinning Rat shares 100 Ways to Improve Your GMing

Verdant Core provides a design for a Lectern Book

Sly Flourish proposes Use Agnostic Tools

Crow’s Corner shares Table-Tested Review of "Cyberpunk Red"

Son of Sun Tzu blog gives us Lessons From Running a Hybrid Megagame

5th Dimensional Tavern writes Warlock and the allure of complexity

Trick's Tales gives us I published a game (and have cool friends)

Dozens and Dragons shares Diplomacy in FKR and open-strategy matrix games

Hill Cantons gives us Oiorpata and Battle Barge Contest

Patchwork Paladin writes Stop with all the rolling already

Hobloglin gives us Sunday School DM

ars ludi shares The Star-Pattern: a Pitfall of GMing

dungeon doll gives us A Small Combat Matrix

Blog of Forlorn Encystment shares Advanced Diseases and Diagnoses

Leicester's Ramble gives us Create

Bundle of Holding offers discounted Weird Wizard

Shiny links from about the internet. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Prismatic Weekly gathers dozens of respondents in Bandwagon Roundup: The Appendices Ns

Sealight Studios gives us Fun in the Stun: Alternatives to Paralysis Mechanics

Epic Empires asks Save vs Poison Or Die?

A Knight at the Opera gives us How Do You Handle the "Inside" of a Hex? (George Lucas Special Edition)

Fluorite Guillotine shares boss relative: telegraphs & radial positioning

Taskerland writes The Hollow Valley Method

Fail Forward shares The Hex Crawl as a Stamp Rally

Spiceomancy gives us Witchlance

Blog of Forlorn Encystment shares It Did Not End with a Mere Slaying of Ogres: Treasure as a Source of Challenge in D&D

Sea of Stars gives us Adding Many Faces to Fear in D&D 5E

Castle Grief writes Building A "Real" Fake World

Fresh links from about the internet! For more, see last weeks deep-time trawl found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Cats Have No Lord hosts launches Onegeon Jam until Dec 31st

Grumpy Wizard shares Why and How I Connect Adventure Locations To Everything Else In a Sandbox Campaign

Ruckerworks gives us Best Dungeon Master’s Guide for Creating Adventures: AD&D to 2024 Compared

Meg Zone creates A mental inventory for occult horror campaigns: an HPless system

This Vorpal Coil gives us Party Geometry

PhD20 writes D&D's 4th Pillar

glorified notepad asks Wanna be a better DM? Try Practicing.

Connecting the Fictional Dots writes People Who Only Play D&D Have a Point

Crow’s Corner gives us Playing With Care: A Guide to RPG Safety Tools

Jay Dragon shares The Expressionist Games Manifesto

Some more deep-time blog-trawlings while I am away. For more, see the previous list found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Roles, Rules, and Rolls gave us Analog, Digital, Procedural

How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less shared Why D&D Has Lots of Rules for Combat: A General Theory Encompassing All Editions

ChicagoWiz's Games gave us The 3 Essential Elements of the Perfect D&D Village/Town/City

Prismatic Wasteland wrote A Better Approach to Deadly Games

Rise Up Comus asked What are you holding? - The GM's Most Important Question

Hill Cantons shared AD&D's Apocalypse and Domain Game Index

Start September with some shiny links. For more, see the previous list found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Aboleth Overlords gives us Action-Oriented Interaction

To Be Resolved writes Breaking Bad Habits - Turning a Plot into a Situation

Sam Seer's Blog shares [An OSR Pattern] One, Two, or Three Exits

BASTIONLAND gives us The ICI Doctrine: Information, Choice, Impact

I Cast Light! shares DOWNTIME DEMANDS OF SENTIENT WEAPONS: Or The Care & Feeding of Excalibur

Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes Adventurers Are a Threat to the Established Order

A Room Containing 1d6 Goblins gives us Crawling Ever Upwards

Glyph and Grok writes Make Your Quests "Mythic"

AMONG CATS AND BOOKS gives us Running Mythic Bastionland

Busy Wyvern gave us Is Your Game a Prophecy, or a Blank Page?

Mindstorm shares Sicko Worldbuilding

Castle Grief gives us Lordes: Dark Arthurian...ODND?

No Foes, No Traps writes BENEATH! TOWER ELVES! (A RARE HERITAGE IN DUNGEONFLOOR: ACCELERATED!)

Tito's Geekery gives us RPG Worldbuilding: stealing from my 10-year-old self