Letters from Afar | 10-15-25
I'm in Chicago, taking a week off from work to try and rest, unwind, and generally distance myself from the near-daily stress of my current workload. It's been very nice! I've seen some fun stuff and had a good time hanging out with friends. Expect a photodump sometime when I'm home.
I already feel like I'm really ready to throw myself into a big TTRPG project again soon (although I have a couple small-to-medium in-progress things that I should shore up first.) I'm trying really hard not to think about what's going on at work while I'm gone. What if something goes wrong? What if I could've been there to fix it, but wasn't? What if people make a decision without me and it's the WRONG decision??
Letting myself rest when I know I could be working -- SHOULD be working -- is very challenging. I like being busy. I'm comfortable being "on" a lot of the time. But the cost of taking a break from work is probably smaller than the cost of pushing myself to the breaking point while I'm AT work.
Probably.
kastel via the imaginary engine review: repeat the ending: where do personal games go?
Despite its small but ardent following in the interactive fiction community, Repeat the Ending doesn't have a home in the general space. Although it ranks 49th on the 2023 Top 50 Interactive Fiction of All Time list, this article will be the first write-up it has received in the games media writing space. The world is indifferent, if not hostile, to works like it. There is no place for it in the history books. I don't think the way we write criticism is going to let titles like it be anything more than a curiosity. If anything, outsider art exists because our expectations of art are not at all inclusive.
I really enjoyed this write-up of a recently-revised piece of 90s interactive fiction and its place in the online games ecosystem.
clayton via explorers design: the explorers' awards debrief
For many, myself included, the Ennies' outcomes are unsatisfying but tantalizingly so. Most years, I'm frustrated, confused, or numb to its presentation, nominees, and winners. I don't like how unorganized it feels. I don't like how scrappy it looks. And I don't like how nominations often lead to outrage on social and very few conversations beyond that. It's this dissatisfaction that led me and many of my friends, to ask, "What could we change about the Ennies to make it produce the results we like?" Or to put it another way, "If the Ennies is our game, how would we redesign it to produce the gameplay we like?"
Anyone interested in the Ennies - easily the biggest, most recognized TTRPG awards in the industry - owes it to themselves to read Clayton's postmortem on what it was like to be a judge, and how Clayton's professional experience informs what the Ennies are vs what people want it to be.
and that's it for now! byee