I have worked and played in the board game space for a little bit of time, a couple of decades, and I have noticed a widening need I hope I can provide. Too much of the games space is plagued with insincerity. Every board game given a rave review by those whose livelihood is dictated by reviewing board games. Advice that preys on insecurities to make one feel less than only to turn around and sell you a solution. The plague of artificial intelligence creating a dystopian ecosystem where it is robots who write and play while humanity is forced to toil.

I want none of that and looking around, I haven’t found a solution. This condemns me to step up and fill that void. I have tried that in the past with coverage on two lifestyle games: Corvus Belli’s Infinity and Knight Model’s Batman the Miniature Game with the blog Crits Kill People. Now, my eye turns towards the lack of resources for a particular style of role playing game: a sandbox or more colloqualy known as West Marches.

I arrived here from trying my hand at working in the hobby space. I helped develop Gray Eminence as a way in to board gaming but I was only paid in product, which for some reason a landlord wasn’t keen to accept. Seeing as board games were too cheap, I gave a shot at developing something with Unity after being really impressed with Wildermyth as that is something I want from my games: emergent storytelling. Let’s just say there’s a reason why I didn’t get a degree in engineering as I learned far too much about Euler Angles without anything to show for it. That is when I met the designer of Creature Comforts and took far too much of her time with questions she had the grace to patiently answer. She gave me the confidence to try my hand at writing Dungeons and Dragons modules.

With my brand being terrible timing, I launched my first module a few months prior to the Dungeons and Dragons OGL fiasco which fractured what was a stable community. With Dungeons and Dragons losing the title of reigning champion in the RPG space, I took time to step away and rethink. I was running my own West Marches game after being inspired by Matt Colville going over details. James Introcaso’s video on Colville’s channel laid the blueprint and now I know how to proceed. I just gotta follow through.

You may have already noticed my acerbic tone. That is a promise to myself as much as it would be to you, my would-be and mutly accommodating audience. I much prefer ugly truths to beautiful lies. I can offer advice and put something more precise behind a Patreon, as I would like to eat. And no AI shall grace my works, as I know you much prefer an artisinal touch to the painfully bland dribble AI spouts because you deserve such efforts, like when a cat proudly presents its own a dead insect.

I hope to provide a stream of useful, if forceful, ways to approach your own cardboard addictions. Put your fists up, as I hope to hit you with content.