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And finally, the Meta bracket's winner is: "Mapping the Blogosphere" by Among Cats and Books elmc.at/mapping-the-...

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The Theory bracket's winner is: "WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives" by I Cast Light! (An unprecedented two-time winner!) icastlight.blogspot.com/2025/09/why-...

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The Gameable bracket's winner is: "RANDOM ENCOUNTER TABLES AS ADVENTURE RAM: Adding “Memory” To Encounter Checks" by I Cast Light! icastlight.blogspot.com/2025/03/rand...

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The Critique bracket's winner is: "How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design, Part 1: Pre-Jaquays Dungeons" by Pathika pathikablog.com/2025/04/26/h...

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

The Advice bracket's winner is: "Writing Rooms in Pairs" by Failure Tolerated. www.failuretolerated.com/writing-room...

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The Bloggies. The Bloggies never changes. 154 votes. Let's get it to 200. Voting form here: forms.gle/sGnGSLvHe7Mx...

A pie chart from the fourth round of the Bloggies. It's 50% and 50%.

A pie chart from the fourth round of the Bloggies. It's 51.1% and 48.9%.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Three hours ago, I shared the Bloggies' razor thin margins. I'm proud to announce, after a surge of new voters, the results are now this: If you haven't voted yet, and you'd like to flip these leads (again), you can vote here: forms.gle/T4WKkZxC9Rih...

A pie chart showing the vote split in the Bloggies' third round.

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The Bloggies this year continue to produce razor thin races. This round is still any blog's game. Vote here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

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I voted (in the Bloggies). forms.gle/juxmJ4fTH7db... (Credit: Ulster County 2022 "I Voted" sticker by Hudson Rowan.)

Scary looking head with multicolored hair and teeth, red eyes, and crab legs for a neck.

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Finally, we have the matches in the new category: Meta. There were three close calls here. The manifestos were decided by 2 votes. The 2nd by 7 votes. And the last one by 1 vote.

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Theory was the usual slugfest. People love to write and read theory—it's undeniable. The "Why I Like" Matchups were decided by 9 votes. The combat matchups by 2. And the last matchup on the right by 10.

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Critique was a little more normal. Most of the posts were less than 5% apart, though. Gameable had some close calls like Advice. The one on the left was decided by two votes. The one on the right was decided by 4.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

This year's Bloggies might be the most competitive yet. Let me show you some of the matches from round 1. Let's look at the advice bracket. The difference between these was no more than 8 votes. The matchup between A Lock with No Key and Don't Write Lore? Decided by 1 vote.

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The Bloggies this year lasts 2 weeks. The 1st week is the tournament. The 2nd week (next week) is Best Debut Blog, Series, and Overall Post. You can find the whole schedule and the most up-to-date voting forms on this year's homepage. This week is the big one. One bracket every 24 hours! 2/4

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

My month in a nutshell: (Official nominees announcement tomorrow!)

Wesley Snipes crying meme about The Bloggies brackets. It was very hard to pick nominees.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Interesting thought from an architecture book: Floor plans are great for conveying organization, flow, and arrangement, but sections or "cross-sections" are better for conveying space, scale, and feel. This is why I think many Mausritter maps benefit from being sections, and OSE maps floor plans.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Bloggies 2026 nominations are about to close in 30 minutes. After that, I have a lot of reading to do. (I've been reading ahead, thankfully.)

screenshot that says "responses 764" for best blog post in the Bloggies.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

By the time I finally have an article, the thumbnails are the relaxing part. I get a lot of joy out of depicting the article in as few pieces as possible. The goal is to use my brand colors for >50% articles. Sometimes the images are literal. Sometimes they're metaphorical. A few of my favorites:

Rectangles representing covers. "The Art of the Cover."

A single key hole with many strange keys around it. "Designing locks with more keys."

A single package surrounded by axes, flails, and arrows. "An rpg's guide to surviving shipping."

Maps, compasses, and other tools on a table. "The Explorateur."

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Reminds me of this old classic.

A board game with plastic cars in a traffic jam.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Making some roughs today between day job projects. That means no downloading fonts or trying to make the paper texture on this thing look real. What are good names for a classic Murder Mystery game? Daggerbacks? Murder Mystery Theater? Murder?

Yellow book with a finger print on the cover. Title says Daggerbacks.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

The illustrations even include a self-insert. Thanks for reposting! I learn as much writing them as others do reading them. My blog is basically my notes.

illustration of a mustachioed dude reading a book at a distance.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

I wish I could change the spacing more on my blog more so that the image pairing is more obvious.

A screenshot of Explorers Design showing a page with hyperlinks.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Here's the episode summary in pictures. Should clear some things up:

Magritte's Painting, The Blank Signature

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Can't stop thinking about how Saul Bass, the famous graphic designer and artist, signed his name.

Saul bass signature with a picture of a bass (the fish) with Saul's face.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I'm working on an article that outlines my personal tastes in rpg design—mostly to pick them apart—and I'm tempted to model it after Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design. If you don't know who Rams is, he's an industrial designer. His list is tailored to that industry. I'd tailor mine to rpgs.

A record player designed by dieter rams.

A collection of products designed by dieter rams, including a coffee maker, radio, speaker, calculator, and rolodex. They're all very minimalist with simple geometric shapes. They look like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Brad turned to the nearest stranger and did this after tapping send.

Emoji of person twirling their finger around their head to indicate that what just happened is coo coo bananas

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

The challenge with writing about awards is that it's complicated and contentious. Even if it weren't the Ennies and instead was Origins, Crit, etc. My goal for this series is to illuminate what's already out there. Inform the discourse. Award shows are here to stay, so what do we want out of them?

Different awards laid out on a colored background. The Awards Debrief 2025.

The Award Debrief Table of Contents.
Part 1: Why am I writing a debrief? We are here.
Part 2: How do the Ennies work? (Coming Oct 7th)
Part 3: How are the Ennies designed? (Coming Oct 8th)
Part 4: Where do rpg awards go next? (Coming Oct 9th)

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

What I love most about rpgs is that it's hard, maybe impossible, to remove the sincerity. Designers can keep one foot outside, hide behind sarcasm, or try to professionalize or optimize it as something else—but it will always be playing pretend. And I like the work that knows that's a feature.

Preview image of The Explorateur: Issue #12

A preview image of the article's opening paragraph titled, "The importance of being earnest."

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

I’m at the ENNIES Booth 114 until 3. Stop by. Find out what I look like. Ask me about these cool games.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

It was a lot of fun making this cover. Especially because I got to do the classic pulp cover thing for the actual pdf by making Amanda P.'s name bigger than the actual title.

A book cover for Amanda P.'s adventure, The Eternal Empress.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Thanks Ryan! I still haven't had a chance to download your submission and check it out, but that cover is 👌 Now that I'm not staring at a preflight panel I can actually enjoy the other jam submissions. For anyone curious: outrider-creative.itch.io/curs-of-the-...

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

I'm labeling it "early access" because I plan on expanding this adventure after the jam. Not too much, just enough to make it easier to run for the GM and make it more accessible than it already is. Compatible with Cairn 2E. Still reading this? Here's what's inside this two-page micro adventure:

The cover of invaders of Atlantis. Designed like the Tales from the Crypt Magazine. Features a gold octopus with a laurel crown. A featuring section includes portraits of the adventure's factions. Lord Blubub XXV, the Atlantean octopus. The Mummy Akhenaten, a Boris Karloff-style mummy, and Poxlin Skuggs—the pirate and raider.

A promotional image showing the cover and inside spread of the adventure which features a diagram map with short pithy entries.

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Clayton @explorersdesign.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

ENNIES voting has begun, so let's get the word out. What nominees, publishers, or judges do you want others to vote for? Sound off with some quote-posts and comments. vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2025/

Orson Welles with a glass of wine. The worlds "For Your Consideration" laid over top of the image.

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Design finds and primes audiences with certain expectations and tolerances. My takeaway in this latest design delve is that micro-adventures are often imperfect, but I'm more likely to tolerate their shortcoming, because they're easy to fix. The shorter the adventure, the more slack you get.

A screenshot of the final thoughts from today's design delve.

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The thing that got me interested about The Royal Art Gallery Heist was this inherent tension in the work. It is short and dense like most micro adventures, but it's laid out with type and graphics that are orderly, spacious, and clean. This makes it a visual outlier within the form factor.

Screenshots of the four pages of the game.

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After leaving Twitter (and doing quite a few design delves), I've gotten less interested in rehashing the "building blocks" of a game's design in favor of more conceptual analysis. Right now, design delves have three acts: the delve (analysis), the lore (design background), and loot (lessons).

An excerpt from the article titles "Delving into The Royal Art Gallery Heist."

An excerpt from the article titled "Design lore."

And excerpt from the article titled, "Design loot"

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When I was on Twitter, I used to breakdown games into their visual design components. Things like format (page size), typefaces (fonts), art, and layout. I still do a bit of that. Especially in this delve. Royal uses some iconic fonts to give itself a real bold but clean look that's approachable.

A screenshot of two typefaces found in the project, futura and helvetica neue. These two typefaces are also shared with examples.

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