just a gigantic spider

The USPS posting a NINE BILLION DOLLAR LOSS!!! sounds terrible. Certainly worse than if you said "USPS costs thirty dollars per person per year" even though that means the same thing and more accurately describes a government service

Is this all sustainable? Probably not. There are still many problems I have with how crowdfunding perpetuates certain existing inequities, but I'm choosing to get in the holiday spirit a little and focus on some of the positives.

I've come around on them slightly, as you'll see at the end of the post. Still have my concerns about them, but I realized that I'm getting too caught up in the raw money raised than in celebrating the number of games that are getting made, which is higher than ever.

...is fortunately still punching far below its weight class. There's more of it than ever (in terms of Novembers, at least) but the average money raised from each of those projects is lower at least.

I also continue my examination of Mothership Month and RPG Party now that both of those are over

This month I compare three (3) Novembers' worth of TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns to see where things stand after two years of work on this project. Things look...good overall. Kickstarter is on a slight decline but still quite a bit ahead of Backerkit. There are more projects than ever. And the AI...

November 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective Mothership Month 2025 and RPG Party are officially done, Mausritter Month is nearing its conclusion, and (sigh) OSE Month 2026 is on the dis...

It's not only time for the November TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective, it's also the 2 year anniversary of the project! 🥳🥳🥳

To commemorate this special occasion, I bring you...basically the same blogpost as usual: ttrpg-spider.blogspot.com/2025/12/nove...

This update includes information you may find upsetting. Please take care when reading. From today, it is with a heavy heart that we announce trans girls will no longer be able to join Girlguiding. This is a decision we would have preferred not to make, and we know that this may be upsetting for members of our community. There will be no immediate changes for current young members, but more information will be shared soon. Most adult roles - including unit helpers, district helpers and administrative support - are already open to all, so we are confident that no volunteers will have to leave the organisation. Girlguiding believes strongly in inclusion, and we will continue to support young people and adults in marginalised groups. Over the next few months, we will explore opportunities to champion this value and actively support young people who need us. We stand in solidarity with trans girls and women.

i hope every single person who still buys harry potter merch or engages with that franchise is happy that they're literally making girl guides cry

girl guides uk have been forced very much against their will to exclude trans girls. full statement is here: www.girlguiding.org.uk/information-...

she went to state legislators, TPUSA and conservative media outlets within a few hours of getting her grade, if you can’t identify the bad faith that can be seen from space, you need to get your eyes checked

“AI is clearly sticking around so you have to get used to it” wrong. I don’t have to get used to shit. I am a practiced hater and I can keep this going for decades if I am required to

I think this bit has gone on long enough. It's 2025. We can all just admit that Die Hard is a Ghibli movie.

4 panel comic Panel 1: Red Guy looking way way too happy yells “Hey Guys! Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” Blue Guy next to him calmly says “Shhh” Panel 2: Blue Guy tenderly puts his arms around Red Guy and says “You don’t have to do this” Panel 3: Blue Guy still holds Red Guy tightly and repeats “You don’t have to do this every year”. Red Guy begins to break. Panel 4: Red Guy dissolves into Blue Guy’s embrace, sobbing. He finally feels the weight of Christmas Discourse lifting from his shoulders. He is finally free.

i’m setting you free. i’m releasing you from the discourse

The Endie Awards #Endies2025

You're into RPGs.

You've maybe played one this year, or ten, or... sixty-two?

What if you told us about them?

Like, in a blog post, or on here. Tell us what you played, maybe for how long. You could say if you liked them and why. You could even hand out awards.

Welcome to The #Endies2025.

im sorry but dungeons and dragons is not a game where you can "do anything". the game where you can do anything is freestyle roleplaying on the neopets message boards

“Slop” is such a charged word and I absolutely wouldn’t use it for anything outside of AI whether I think something is well-designed or not

That said, I’m often not impressed with PBTA games. They suffer from being many people’s first game design bc it’s perceived as being easy to hack

so I'm in Germany and my finances are dire because my money is worth almost 7 times less than Europeans'. because imperialism etc.

so if you have any writing gigs, hit me up!!! I'd love to work while turning into a popsicle!!!

(if not, maybe buy my games or help me pay for groceries? 🥰)

Can’t possibly say how incredible it feels to be quoted in a Rascal piece, especially with such a lofty title as “crowdfunding researcher” (as accurate as the sorry that follows it lmao)

"Realistically depicting the isolation of queer existence and how queer people aren't perfect angels makes me want to buy into the grooming panic. This is the author's fault."

DNGN Club Birthday Bundle Today I turn 39. For the next 24 hours, 16 of my games are free!

In the spirit of hobbit birthdays, have some free games!

Surely giving someone struggling *more* responsibility could never go wrong

If you have thoughts, I am more than happy to hear them! Please help me figure out how to make this a (relatively) reasonable amount of work for the judges, whom I deeply love and appreciate for being the people to actually make this project run

Most people didn't hit this limit, but if The Awards even gets back to where it was in 2022 this time around that's a significant increase in material to get through. I present several possible modifications in the blogpost, but I'm not yet convinced by any of them

For 2024, I instituted a 3-item and 50-page limit of reading *per submitter*, whichever you hit first. Longer stuff could still get in, but judges weren't obligated to read more than 50 pages. This was a good policy, but still a lot to read (78 submitters in 2024 meant a max of 3900 pages)

The central problem is that being a judge is a LOT of work and reading, spread out over ~5 months. The bulk of that comes in the first 3, when judges have to read through all of the submissions we receive.

In 2022, that was 197 submissions.
In 2023, it was 333.
In 2024, it was 104.

Design Diary #2 is here, and it's all about judges!

I'm hoping to both clarify what the job of a judge for The Awards entails and thinking through some modifications that I can make to make said job easier.

ttrpg-spider.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

i think if you want to have those disgusting LED headlights on your car, you should have to do a test where they blast you point blank with your own headlights and then you have 15 seconds to successfully complete some sort of vision-based task, and if you can't do it they push your car off a cliff

hoot hoot hooray

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work.

Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

The Awards

The reason they have to keep making Wizard of Oz prequels is if they went *forward* then they'd have to let people know about Ozma, and Hollywood will not, absolutely will *not*, ever allow that to happen

Glad I got to become disabled in a world that already had Alice Wong @sfdirewolf.bsky.social in it. I learned so much from her incredible writing & activism. May her memory be a blessing, & may we all continue her work.
Easiest way to do it? WEAR A MASK. Protect yourself & the vulnerable around you.