The Idle Digest #12

Idle Cartulary's Digest for October 2025

It’s the 12th Idle Digest, and hence is our one year anniversary! Yay! This month has been chaos for me personally, so I’ve been less able to do creative work, although I’ve managed to play a bit more.

A reminder: I’m still taking submissions for Critique Navidad, where I review a game a day for the whole of December, as a gift to all of the game designers out there who wish they’d had a thoughtful critique of their work! Here’s the form to submit. I’m excited about Critique Navidad — I read a bunch of games last year that I never would have typically, and some of them really blew my mind!

Lonely Play

In October, on Playful Void, I wrote:

• I wrote five Bathtub Reviews:

  • Manic in the Monastery, a beer and pretzels dungeon full of really fun encounters.

  • What Ho, Frog Demons, an aging but still excellent classic.

  • Emergence, a really fantastic funnel for Mothership with some fascinating ideas and unique visual design.

  • The Witch of Drithwyn Weald, a sadly quite disappointing forest module, nevertheless filled with compelling writing and ideas.

• I wrote a review of Harvest by Luke Jordan, an excellent game let down by our industries reliance on specific packages and formats to cram games into, although I enjoyed how they leant into the non-ideal format.

• I also reviewed Spine by Asa Donald, a solo TTRPG that is easily the best game I have played or read this year. It stretches the limits of solo TTRPGs in a really exciting way, and even if solo TTRPGs aren’t usually your jam, I encourage you to buy a copy (only $10!) or split one with a few friends.

Pickpocketing

In other news, October’s writing was a little quieter, I suspect due to Over/Under taking up everyone’s time:

• Der Ajz suggests pacing in OSR games is the primary function of wandering monsters in Wandering Monsters Never Sleep.

• Rowan wonders what reviews are good for, in response to my post from last month.

• Brackish Draught teaches us some basic dice math

• Gem Room Games makes factions more load-bearing

• Most importantly, Directsun is running the Puzzle Dungeon Jam, accompanied by posts and support on how to write your own puzzle dungeons — this is an exciting one, and I hope it gets as much uptake as the Appendix N and Zungeon jams got earlier in the year!

Gamespotting

Crowdfunding is going off, with 2 months remaining in Mothership Month, and Mausritter Month about to begin:

• An Eco Mofos collection, Islands of Weirdhope, is coming soon, which I understand will be edited by Zedeck Siew.

• You can still back The Saintly Hollows, sequel to Valley of the Flowers.

• Duginthroat Divided is the next module from Daniel Harila Carleen, who’s a fascinating author and an amazing artist.

• Mausritter Month is looking more promising this month than the last, with new work from Josiah Moore (author of the best Mausritter module, Tiny Fables), and Diogo Barros (author of the excellent Isle of Hex). I’ve heard good things about how Mechritter uses the inventory system in Mausritter for mechs, too!

• As part of Mothership Month, I wish I was backing Certain Fathoms, Terminal Directive, and Roach Hotel, but it’s been tight this month.

Enjoy November! Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter!

Idle Cartulary

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