Afraid of Encounters
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isaacisafraid.bsky.social
Afraid of Encounters
@isaacisafraid.bsky.social
He/Him, Game Dev (Narrative Designer/Game Writer), Tabletop RPG Designer. I write, roleplay, and roll dice to tell stories.
https://isaacisafraid.itch.io/
https://afraidofencounters.bearblog.dev/

Nusantara, Maritime Southeast Asia
Pinned
The Knight Errant ranked 1st out of 227 entries in the Appendix N Jam 😭 This feels surreal!

Huge thanks to @dankdungeons.bsky.social & @jorphdan.bsky.social for hosting the jam, and to everyone who rated my first OSR adventure!

And congratulations to all the amazing participants and their works!
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
Bloggies voting has begun! This week is the tournament: the Thunderdome of rpg blogs. If you're thinking to yourself, "This is a lot of reading." I've got bad news: you're already running out of time.

Here's everything you need to know for this week... 1/4

www.explorersdesign.com/bloggies-2026/
The Bloggies 2026
A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.
www.explorersdesign.com
February 16, 2026 at 2:59 AM
My blog, Afraid of Encounters, have two nominations! Gameable category and Best Debut Blog category.

If you really like my Anti-colonial Dungeon blogpost and my new blog, please consider voting for them.

Awesome work from all the nominees! Let's celebrate an awesome year of Tabletop RPG blogging!
Bloggies Voting goes live Monday morning, but the voting forms stealthily go live today...

So, you might be asking, "What blog posts are in this year's Thunderdome?" You can find the whole list here.
The Bloggies 2026
A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.
www.explorersdesign.com
February 16, 2026 at 12:35 AM
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
Bloggies Voting goes live Monday morning, but the voting forms stealthily go live today...

So, you might be asking, "What blog posts are in this year's Thunderdome?" You can find the whole list here.
The Bloggies 2026
A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.
www.explorersdesign.com
February 15, 2026 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
Psssst, like right now.
Bloggies Voting goes live Monday morning, but the voting forms stealthily go live today...

So, you might be asking, "What blog posts are in this year's Thunderdome?" You can find the whole list here.
The Bloggies 2026
A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.
www.explorersdesign.com
February 15, 2026 at 6:41 PM
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Wondering how to get people to choose out of your list of 48 options without bias? This is how to make dice work for you: Equal Opportunity Edition. idlecartulary.com/2026/02/14/e...
Equal Opportunity Dice (Make Dice Work For You #2)
Make Dice Work For You is a series where I’ll regularly talk through a new way to use dice in your game. It came out of conversation surrounding What to randomise when you’re randomising, and what …
idlecartulary.com
February 13, 2026 at 11:06 PM
I attended a local Tabletop RPG event (yay, another one in Indonesia!). I played Electric Bastionland. The GM is a friend of mine, and it turned out the adventure they ran was a playtest for an adventure he's making~
February 15, 2026 at 10:49 AM
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Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
HOLY MOLY.

AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ BLOG POST!
"Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games" is the opening statement of my latest post, where I argue that players should stop playing games trying to have fun, and instead let the game systems take them where they will, and trust that the fun will come.

tangentjoy.blot.im/against-intent
Against Intent - Tangent Joy
Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games. I get frustrated, fairly often, with how people play games. It’s not a particularly serious
tangentjoy.blot.im
February 14, 2026 at 5:40 AM
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
I've also come to realize I like games (board, ttrpg, etc) where the possibility exists for a kind of bad, boring, underwhelming session. The possibility of a wide open, surprising, unpredictable narrative space basically requires the possibility of a kinda mid game sometimes. See: all sports.
February 14, 2026 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
It's a good post. I've heard people discuss the "tyranny of fun" before, in the context of say, handwaving the vestigial bits of old D&D stuck onto newer D&D. Encumbrance isn't fun, random encounters aren't fun, resource management isn't fun... (1/2)
"Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games" is the opening statement of my latest post, where I argue that players should stop playing games trying to have fun, and instead let the game systems take them where they will, and trust that the fun will come.

tangentjoy.blot.im/against-intent
Against Intent - Tangent Joy
Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games. I get frustrated, fairly often, with how people play games. It’s not a particularly serious
tangentjoy.blot.im
February 14, 2026 at 9:57 PM
Bloggies contender right here
"Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games" is the opening statement of my latest post, where I argue that players should stop playing games trying to have fun, and instead let the game systems take them where they will, and trust that the fun will come.

tangentjoy.blot.im/against-intent
Against Intent - Tangent Joy
Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games. I get frustrated, fairly often, with how people play games. It’s not a particularly serious
tangentjoy.blot.im
February 14, 2026 at 10:27 PM
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
"Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games" is the opening statement of my latest post, where I argue that players should stop playing games trying to have fun, and instead let the game systems take them where they will, and trust that the fun will come.

tangentjoy.blot.im/against-intent
Against Intent - Tangent Joy
Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games. I get frustrated, fairly often, with how people play games. It’s not a particularly serious
tangentjoy.blot.im
February 14, 2026 at 1:36 AM
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
Sharing my friend Habeeb's blogpost that triggered that end of the year colonialism and dungeon 💿🐎! Read by @velocitree2.bsky.social!

podcast.bloggies.org/@WeReadTheBl...
February 14, 2026 at 5:51 AM
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
The r/osr weekly blogroll - a touch late but all the better for you to share your great weekend ideas!

www.reddit.com/r/osr/commen...

#ttrpg #DnD #bx #OSE #DIYrpg #rpg #GLOG #OSR #POSR #NSR
February 14, 2026 at 10:08 AM
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Why is my blog called that? Well. Its complicated. This blog post attempts to explain it.
thegardenbelow.blot.im/what-is-the-...
What is the Garden Below? - The Garden Below
An introduction of sorts to a place of many hands
thegardenbelow.blot.im
February 14, 2026 at 2:35 AM
Sharing my friend Habeeb's blogpost that triggered that end of the year colonialism and dungeon 💿🐎! Read by @velocitree2.bsky.social!

podcast.bloggies.org/@WeReadTheBl...
February 14, 2026 at 5:51 AM
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Four days in, and 53 nominated Bloggies posts have already been read and recorded by wonderful authors and volunteers, then published on the We Read The Bloggies podcast.

Truly incredible!
We Read The Bloggies (@WeReadTheBloggies) • Episodes
We’re volunteers turning Bloggies-nominated blog posts into audio. So you can enjoy them anywhere, in a more accessible format.
podcast.bloggies.org
February 13, 2026 at 12:21 PM
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Hold on. Is this the soyjack pointing meme in this Robh Ruppel cover of the 1992 AD&D module?!?!?
February 13, 2026 at 1:00 PM
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Wrote a bit about making a dungeon book and how I'm starting to view dungeon crawls as a conversation between the dungeon and the players. And what that kind of storytelling means.

www.failuretolerated.com/talking-to-t...
Talking to the Dungeon
<p>Prepping dungeons is hard and while I’ve read a lot of great modules, I never seem to remember what I loved about them other than the vibe. So now, whenever I read a module and notice a cool monste...
www.failuretolerated.com
February 13, 2026 at 4:16 AM
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Extremely close to hitting the second/$2000 goal!

binary-star-games.itch.io/null-space
February 11, 2026 at 7:06 PM
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I wrote a d100 random advancement table for humans. Ostensibly for my Middle-earth Hexcrawl ruleset, I think this could easily be used for any fantasy adventure game. As I think that humans are the most warlike of peoples, this list could be used for your fighter random advancements:
Random Human Advancement
When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what humans get. You can either roll a d9 for your culture ...
riseupcomus.blogspot.com
February 12, 2026 at 3:16 PM
In tonight's Mythic Bastionland. @zedecksiew.bsky.social, my wife Cita and our friend Elegyst encountered a Warband of Knight-Catchers who wanted to put them in their museum. They were riding iron horses with wheels instead of legs.

I freaking love how bonkers this game is @bastionland.bsky.social
February 12, 2026 at 4:05 PM
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Five Tiers of RPG Publishing

Hasbro’s annual earnings came out this week, so I took a look. It is truly staggering how much Wizards of the Coast has changed the company since they were acquired; when looking at unadjusted earnings the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Games division was the only…
Five Tiers of RPG Publishing
Hasbro’s annual earnings came out this week, so I took a look. It is truly staggering how much Wizards of the Coast has changed the company since they were acquired; when looking at unadjusted earnings the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Games division was the only one that turned a profit in the entire company. Not only that, but Wizards is responsible for roughly 47% of the entire company’s revenue and over 90% of all revenue growth over the last year.
cannibalhalflinggaming.com
February 11, 2026 at 2:30 PM
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My takeaway here is that we’re not, by and large, and industry. We’re a hobby, and we should act like hobbyists sharing something they love, not capitalists trying to out-grow each other.
February 12, 2026 at 3:34 AM
Reposted by Afraid of Encounters
Remember that cool map of Bluesky accounts from earlier this week? Well, I wrote a quick n' dirty guide on how to use it to create solar system for your own sci-fi TTRPG setting on the fly! Welcome to... BLUESTAR! meatcastlegameware.com/blog/2026/2/...
BLUESTAR: Bluesky as Galactic Setting — MEATCASTLE GAMEWARE
Earlier this week, Theo Sanderson released a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users , visualized by follower patterns. Because I have some sort of cursed brain, my first thought was “ I wonder if I could...
meatcastlegameware.com
February 11, 2026 at 3:07 AM