As seems to be a now-trend, I published fewer articles and stories in 2025 than I did in 2024. That drift towards being a consumer of writing more than a writer is one that challenges me in my soul.
Upon reflection unlike other slow periods of publication this is not because I microblog on social media too much. Instead it is a combination of stressful but wonderful work and helping Aslan recover from a back injury. Our beautiful red lab is now walking again, but it’s taken 90 days to get close to normal and will take a few weeks more.
The biggest win of the year is not something written — my presentation on how to use RPGs as training aids prior to natural disasters. I’ve now delivered it at AIRIP, GSX, the Global Security Briefing and in just over a week I’ll present a version to OrcaCon, a local-to-me gaming convention.
Let’s review my favorite writings of 2025
Full Moon Storytelling
These selections may not be what was most read on the blog. They are what I enjoyed writing the most.
Your players aren’t supposed to die – one member of my D&D campaign passed away last year. We celebrated his life by playing a multi-table, public session of the game he loves in public.
Potential – a personal essay on what it means to be anti-completionist, an essay writer, a blogger, someone with narrative thoughts without a novel.
Inkling Dragon – when Dragons of Wales offered sketched commissions I had to take part. A goal of mine is to eventually replace every standard D&D dragon in the World of the Everflow with Dragons of Wales’ style of dragons, particularly those from Deep Time. The Inkling Dragon is my dream of what a dragon who works as a writing assistant would be.
The Ferments: A campaign one sheet – my regular D&D group transitioned to me being a player, but we weren’t playing enough. Borrowing from the West Marches concept The Ferments has the action come to the players, who defend their homes from a world with threats like fire tornadoes, earthquake swarms and mud mephit slides. A large part of The Fermends involves Militia Actions, a way to include local forces in larger combats while centering the player characters.
Capturing the magic of the mundane Utilize action – the main campaign still runs with the 2014 5e rules as the baseline, but The Ferments uses a foundation of 2024 with dashes of Black Flag, Advanced 5e and 2014. One thing that’s fun about 2024 is that the Utilize Action can become a Blades in the Dark style clock. My review of the 2024 Player’s Handbook was my most read D&D writing of the year.
Review: Sanguine by Found Familiar Coffee – getting back into cupping at home reminded me of tasting something like 350,000 roasts and origins back in my coffee quality days. I’m doing this without publishing, but if people want me to cup more coffee and share my thoughts I’d love to do it again.
Published again with Homebrew & Hacking
PJ Coffey invited me back to write an essay about how to create backgrounds for the 5e ecosystem, including new creations for Crafting Heritages, Cultures and More: Worldbuilding. The two sports (The Pentiad and Throwing Stars) shared in that book are now my default to how I integrate sports into 5e D&D. They are a divergence from sports as a tool.
Sounder at Heart
My weekly column, the Ship’s Log continues. The nature of a weekly column is that most subjects are only relevant weekly. Four of the newsletters this year felt bigger than that.
Watching them grow up – when Danny Leyva transferred to Necaxa it was a crisp reminder that the young talents that came through Defiance, where I used to work, were teens, but now they are men, full on adults with wonderful path in front of them.
Humanity requires that we care – watching Reign FC lose in the playoffs I cried tears of joy. My home team, another former employer, lost. But I was happy because it was a symbol of the joy available in soccer when the world can be so harsh.
The Campaign of 2025 – of course I did a D&D+Sounders mashup. Similar to what happened the last time Wizards of the Coast released a new set of core books I created the key players for the Sounders as if they were D&D characters.
Factal
Work is mostly leading the blog, writing marketing emails, producing/presenting the Global Security Briefing and managing social (yeah, I’m a marketing generalist who does a little of a lot on a small team).
There are two things I helped write that I want to share with my D&D readers.
I didn’t write Security at the core of Amnesty International’s human rights work, but I was part of the interview and editing process. Factal helps more than 300 human rights and disaster relief NGOs for free. Knowing that we help tell these orgs where they are needed and help keep their people safe gets me excited to start my work days.
Why the LA fires have been so hard to respond to – and how Factal members met the challenge – between misinformation, information overload, false alerts Factal’s editors and platform helped those NGO partners and huge enterprise companies keep their people safe.
Factal North America lead editor Joe Veyera was on shift during Factal’s earliest alerts. “Finding information about the LA fires isn’t the hard part, but parsing what’s real and what’s not can be far more difficult. As a team of experienced journalists with experience covering large-scale disasters, we know which sources to trust and our members know they can trust our updates.”
I love what I do, because we are that wonderful intersection of ethical company that does lifesaving journalism. I complete year four there in just over a month.
Finally, I repeat my annual call to get rid of linktree or any of its competitors. Your link in bio should be to a place you own and control.
