I’m sure you’re looking at the title and thinking, what does that have to do with game development or the creative process? Well… nothing! Today’s newsletter is just a bit of a brain fart, but I have some important news to tell you as well, so make sure to stick around.

As I’m chipping away at a choose-your-own rules framework for roleplaying, I’ve been thinking a lot about… well, rules. Coincenditentally, or serendipitously perhaps, a friend sent me an interesting podcast about humans’ need for guidelines but distaste of bureaucracy. Let’s take a look-see.

This week’s newsletter took me a bit by surprise because I was so busy chilling out. But I still have narrative thoughts I want to talk about. Let’s dive briefly into what makes a story human and conversely, non-human.

It’s a short one today. Just like me, a lot of creative folk struggle with burnout. In today’s piece, I want to briefly touch upon how I experience burnout. We’ll get into crossing the line between hobby projects and work.

I’ve been playing tabletop roleplaying games for a little over a decade now. They’ve phased in and out of my life, but for the past two years, I’ve been pretty consistently playing and running campaigns. Naturally, this affects the way I think about games.