If this blog does not make it too clear, I love tabletop role playing games. I tend to spend almost all my free time thinking about them, playing them, and making content for them. So when I think of them, I have a habit of circling around the same tools and models of thought.

Unfortunately, this can mean that I get a little stale sometimes. The prime example is that I tend to look at other RPGs for inspiration instead of books, movies, history, or mythology, which means I am basically getting my inspiration fed to me through a second hand process where it was already filtered through someone else. This is a problem.

To that end, I’ve been reading a lot more, and watching a lot more. I have started Frank Herbert’s Dune, which truly is the thing that is most different than all the stuff people have told me it was. Chock full of weird words with no explanation, a plot that seems to be already halfway through with itself, and a world so dense in detail it makes my world builder heart salivate at the thought. Honestly, if it released today, I don’t think it would appeal to most readers.

In terms of watching, I’ve got a list of several movies that I am committing myself to seeing. Originally, the idea was any movie that people say, “you’ve never seen x?!” with a incredulous look goes on the list. I’ve now seen Ghostbusters, Alien, Borat, Demolition Man, Grease, Shin Godzilla, all three Bill and Ted movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Pleasantville. Alien was frankly amazing and will be a movie that I return to for years. It’s hilarious to me that I have ran 5+ sessions of Mothership RPG having never seen Alien, so when I did see it, it was the ultimate “ohhhh I get it now.”

However, one of my biggest blind spots is that I never seem to leverage the skills I have outside of RPGS to be better at RPGs. My career is in adult education and virtual presentations that don’t suck, which I specifically pursued because of how much they felt like a direct application of what I already do for fun, but I haven’t done the reverse much!

So, to that end, here is a product of my attempt to do so.

I tend to make a lot of infographics and visual presentations for my educational needs, and so I tried to do that for elf games. It’s certainly not perfect, but that is never the goal when I make these things – it’s usable, it’s pretty at a glance, and it was fun to make. I hope that you can use it too!

If you love RPGs too, I strongly encourage you to go find some inspiration out there in the world too! Whatever passion or skills you have can be applied to RPGs, and that is one of the things I love most about them. This is a space where nearly every art can be applied without the need to be perfect about it – you aren’t making a product after all, but fun and memories.