The Idle Digest #14
Idle Cartulary's Digest for December 2025
I had a chaotic and exhausting holiday season; I hope yours was joyful and full of gaming goodness! I’m going to collapse in a heap now, see you next month!
The Bloggies
In January, the Bloggies happens! Please, nominate me, for best series (either Bathtub Reviews or Critique Navidad) and whichever other posts really impacted you this year. Here’s a reminder of some of my most popular and impactful posts of the year, if you missed them the first time around:
Should your module be system agnostic? Guides you through making a difficult decision.
How to write a module is a moment-by-moment guide through my development process for the Cat-Vats of Gatraxas.
Don’t Wait to Create, Don’t Wait to Learn implores all of you that are holding off to write or design your own things, not hold off anymore
The Zungeon Manifesto both invites you to make a dungeon zine and steps you through how to make.
When is the cake baked? Talks you through how to recognise if your game or module is incomplete, and then how to fix it.
The Idle Cartulary Awards for Excellence in Elfgames
They’re here, if you want to know what my favourite stuff this year is, from modules, to video games, to books!
Module Month
I only wrote two Bathtub Reviews this month, the fewest ever, because I was focusing on Critique Navidad (more on that later!), but I reviewed a bunch of modules as a part of Critique Navidad:
Castle of the Veiled Queen is a fascinating political castle crawl, in the world of Corny Gron.
The Moss Mother’s Maze, a weird crawl through a strange maze, by an exceptional writer.
Carved In Stone is a spectacular book reminiscent of children’s history books, mixing exceptional setting design with academic rigour.
Mandog is an immensely well written module, which is worth reading just for the vibes, but both the system choice and the level design choices are at odds with the investigative hook.
The Model Minister is a fascinating mission where Spire’s house structure betrays some really cool NPC interactions and spaces.
The Cycle is a prison break module for Mothership, where you’re kind of in a time loop.
Belle of the Bog is a steamboat gambling adventure with a fairy twist, that absolutely slaps.
The Knight Errant is a micro-module written for the Appendix N jam, that is good but needs expansion, and it getting it soon.
Pickpocketing
I wasn’t as on top of everything this month as I usually, am, but I nevertheless read some awesome stuff:
On the Between 2 Cairns patreon, Yochai and Brad posted an exceptional interview with Sam Sorenson regarding Over/Under.
Clayton writes about using signals visually in your design, and how to incorporate developmental editing and layout.
Toucan’t mashes up Risk and Tunnel Goons, which might not be for you, but I’m a big fan of the simplicity of Risk and mashing it into fantasy RPGs for a bonus epic component to high fantasy.
Sam finally wrote his own Intangible Tips, tackling a different perspective on developmental editing.
DirectSun continues his series of videos on building puzzle dungeons
I’m not aware of a summary of all the hexes in this collaborative Christmas hex-crawl, but I genuinely hope someone collects them all and publishes them. For now, start with Prismatic Wasteland’s Castle Claus, and then work your way about the Rankin Bass hexmap.
Gamespotting
Things are quietening down, but a few choice picks are upcoming:
The Castle Automatic, the first official dungeon for His Majesty the Worm, is preorderable now.
Tania Herrera of Crown of Salt and White Horse of Lowvale is teaming up with Johan Nohr of Mork Borg to make Formoria, an epic folk horror roleplaying game.
Critique Navidad!
December was Critique Navidad, if you weren’t aware, so rather than my usual review fare on Playful Void, I reviewed 31 games and modules, one for every day of the month!
Reviewing This Mortal Coil (necromancers in space negotiating with normies for souls), Boys Don’t Cry (Wretched & Alone powered adolescent alienation simulator), made me wonder about how game systems, themes, and their desired actions in play interact.
One-shot games like Othership (Mothership-on-a-sheet-with-a-module), Cryptid Keeper (run a cryptid zoo), Vengeance California (John Wick emulator), Time to Drop (time looping heist) and A Real Boy (collaborative Pinocchio sim) which made me wonder about the interactions between preparation and improvisation.
Solo games are better than ever right now, based on the number of unique and interesting experiments I was sent, including Moon Rings (witch navigating a labyrinth), The Bonsai Diary (mindfully keeping a bonsai tree alive through art), The Horrors Persist But So Do Aye Aye (ecological horror), Hardcase (cyberpunk slice of life) and Void 1680 AM (Welcome-To-Nightvale sim).
We Three Shall Meet Again (witches as a metaphor for disability) and A Stranger’s Just A Friend (queer and explicit enemies to lovers) that tackled complex themes and which made me consider the balance of prompts and concrete concepts in terms of world-building and characterisation in games that use prompts.
Fear and Panic (rules lite Call of Cthulhu), Assault Fleet Centauri (space commander sim), HyperMall Unlimited Violence (gritty cyberpunk Troika!), Shiv (basic fantasy adventure with roll-to-dodge), Oswor (solarpunk revolutionary OSR), and OddFolk (storygame-meets-OSR with a clever game-design twist) all brought their own twists to classic formula.
Late Stage Death Cultism (custom, post-apocalyptic Troika!) and Turn It Off (existential horror module for Knave) made me ponder how we can use simple OSR systems to tell intimate and specific stories in more interesting ways.
Some games were just plain excellent, and you should check them out. This includes The Lady, the Tiger and the Accused (better For the Queen), Chain X Link (the best revolutionary game, although needs expansion) and The Field Agent Handbook (solo, real time journalling game) are all insta-purchases in my esteem, although I can imagine a future version of the first two that will be even better.
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Idle Cartulary
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