Orthopraxy

Intentions for 2026

The other day, I wrote a bit about what I had been up to in 2025. Today, I want to spend some time manifesting my intentions for 2026.

I have a laundry list of things I'd like to get done in the game space this year. Will all of this stuff actually happen? I dunno. But it's probably healthy to get them out into the world.

New Modules

I should probably start with the item I'm working on--a Trophy Gold incursion for RUIN, an anthology of Trophy One Shots.

The team behind this anthology is amazing, and I'm thrilled to be working with them. My incursion is called 'See the Stagnant Waters', and is a crawl through a plague infested town. Treasure hunters will not only find relics of the town's former greatness, but will also piece together the sequence of events that led to the town's ruin. Oh, and they should probably avoid the plague.

The direct source of inspiration for this incursion is Between Two Fires, a horror novel set in medieval France during the plague years. One of the things I love the most about this book is the way that it plays with causality. Small events will compound upon themselves in a way which makes the outcome seem inevitable in hindsight. My goal for 'Stagnant Waters' is to replicate this feeling through exploration. While the Treasure hunters won't be able to do anything about the town's collapse, hopefully they can get a good view at who's fault it is and ensure that the town's heroes get their just memorial.

Also in the fire is a Liminal Horror module I'm calling "From Our Imagination." It's based on Barney the Dinosaur of all things.

Last week, my partner put on a rather silly sounding Youtube video--in it, a fan theory was detailed which framed Barney the Dinosaur as a mind parasite similar to the King in Yellow; one who relied on imagination to manifest in the real world. While I'm not one to take fan theories all too seriously, this got my gears turning and soon enough I had the rough sketch of a module featuring "Marley the Mammoth" slowly taking over a small town--one backyard at a time.

"From Our Imagination" will mark an interesting milestone in my module writing--it will be the first for which inspiration rose naturally. All of my other modules have been written for a distinct purpose--usually for a game jam or, as is the case with "Stagnant Waters", a collection. I have no timeline for this one to be completed, and no expectations to fulfill except my own vision of the project. I'm hoping I can let this one ferment for some time, and really make something special.

Expanded Modules and New Tools

Speaking of my old modules, there are two in particular which I have some serious creative regrets about--Thrown Voices and The Yaksha's Sigil.

Thrown Voices was my first module--I wrote it as part of the Storytelling Collective's Call of Cthulhu investigation writing class. It's good--I think--for a Cthulhu module. But that mode of play isn't really something I do anymore, and the layout is quite...elementary. It's pretty hacked together, if I'm being perfectly frank.

As for Yaksha, I just wish I had a little bit more space to work with here. Not much--but a couple more pages would really make it sing. I'd love to set it in a small hex crawl, for example, and flesh out the area around the Moving Museum.

But I also have another purpose for wanting to revisit these modules. Last year, I moved all of my personal devices to Linux. It's been great! I have almost no complaints about it--and overall it's been a much nicer experience than using Windows. It's just that there exists no good layout software for Linux quite yet. I've heard rumblings about Affinity eventually getting a port, but for now we have basically just FOSS tools.

Chat--I'm going to try to get good with FOSS tools.

First on my list to get proficiency in is Scribus. I tries and failed back when I was writing Thrown Voices to use Scribus effectively. But at that time, I had the pressure of the module writing class pushing me to work quickly. Now, there is no such limiter. I think that reformatting these modules that I've already written would be an excellent way to get familiar with the software.

Thrown Voices comes first. I also want to convert it to Liminal Horror so that I don't have to abide by the Miskatonic Repository licensing agreements, and can put it up on my Itch page. Maybe I'll update it to the modern day? A sequel of sorts? Friendly Quince Strikes Again? I actually don't hate that...

Simmering behind all of this is my largest project to date--something I'm calling So Long Arcadia. I'm not sure if this is a Liminal Horror setting, or an original game all of its own. But I want to take the Mythic Bastionland structure and apply it to modern suburban horror.

The pitch is this--the players are teenagers at the local high school who are interested in the paranormal. After school, they investigate their small town in search of Rumours. I imagine these Rumours will take the form of something like the Myths in Mythic Bastionland--intrusions into the game world which will escalate if not dealt with in a timely manner.

When will this happen? No idea. But I hope to get a town map and a few rumours generated so I can start play-testing by summertime. Hey--if you're interested in play-testing this, let me know!

Expanding the "Business"

2025 was the year in which I first made a significant amount of money doing game stuff. Not, like, a huge amount or anything. But between sales of my work, contest winnings, and running games professionally (especially that last one), I have made about half of one of my regular pay-cheques in this calendar year. That's not nothing!

If I want this whole thing to be sustainable, I think I need to think about this hobby as a bit of an enterprise. If I'm going to be charging cash, then I am a business, as much as my anarchist sensibilities bucks against the label. I want to separate out game money form my regular money. With the proper organization, I can both expand my ambitions with my writing, while not eating into my personal finances.

Terribly needed as well is a method of accepting payment for my professional GM services. My FLGS took payment for the Brindlewood Bay campaign I ran for them, but with them being a small business it often took some time for me to get cash-in-hand. That's not a slight against them--just the reality of having a middleman. I also plan on doing games outside of that FLGS, both online and in person, so I should probably find some sort of solution sooner rather than later. If anybody knows of one, please let me know! It would be really nice for drop-in games to just accept tap payment on my computer maybe? Does Square cost money to set up? Much to consider.

On that note--one of the things I want to run this year is a drop-in open world game at my FLGS. I don't know yet if this will be Dolmenwood, or Liminal Horror, or maybe that So Long Arcadia game I mentioned above, but the idea of an open table has intrigued me, and I'm going to get one off the ground this year--that's a promise.

Oh, and this includes editing. I want to edit way more in 2026 than I did last year. In fact--I'm going to get on that right after I publish this post. There's still lots in Sprigs and Kindling that needs to be edited for the January issue.

But hey--if you need editing done, drop me a line! I'll be interested to hear what your projects are, and maybe I can help out.

Con aspirations

I'm also gonna run a game at a convention. My local area has three somewhat big gaming conventions--last year, I volunteered at one of them. It was fun, but I kind of regret doing that because I didn't get much of a chance to play.

This year will be different. Not only am I going to intend to run games, but I even know what games I'm going to run.

First and foremost, I have work yet to do on Yaksha's Sigil. Con games sound like a great opportunity to play-test those ideas, if-I-do-say-so-myself. Likewise, if I can get From Our Imagination in a playable state, then that would also be a great opportunity for testing. Heck--there will even be opportunities for promotion. With Ruin coming out, it would be a good step to actually pitch the book that I have a module in, right?

More than anything, I want to play with more people in 2026 year, even if just for a single session. I learned a lot this year about running public games, and I want to continue learning more.

Future blog topics

OK--Rapid fire style (and in no particular order), here are some ideas for blog posts I've had recently. I do want to blog more, so this is a way of keeping me accountable.

So, onward to the new year! These are all my intentions for my hobby space--I've privately made personal and work-related resolutions too.

I hope you all have a happy new year, and best wishes for whatever you get up to in 2026

-Peace!