BLOGGIES 2024 Concludes!
The Bloggies 2024 have come to a close, and what an incredible celebration of TTRPG blogging it has been! A phenomenal range of talent, creativity, and passion across all categories.
Over the past few weeks, readers voted for their favorite posts in Theory, Gameable, Advice, and Review categories, as well as in our new bonus category - Debut Blog. And after a thrilling final showdown, we have crowned an overall winner.
But first, I want to take a moment to recognize the winners across each category:
Theory Category
🥇 Gold: The 1 HP Dragon, from Explorers Design
🥈 Silver: In Praise of Legwork, from Sam Sorensen
🥉 Copper: Interesting Social Situations, or The Discourse Post, from Rise Up Comus
Gameable Category
🥇 Gold: Overloading the Random Encounter Table, from Prismatic Wasteland
🥈 Silver: The Bell Curving Encounter Table, from Pointless Monument
🥉 Copper: A Person Shaped Hole, from Mindstorm Press
Debut Blog (bonus category)
🥇 Gold: MURKMAIL
🥈 Silver: WOBBLEROCKET
🥉 Copper: Among Cats and Books
Advice Category
🥇 Gold: On People-Centered Adventure Design, from Weird Wonder
🥈 Silver: Setting up an OSR Sandbox, from Roll to Doubt
🥉 Copper: Monster Checklist, from Goblin Punch
Review Category
🥇 Gold: Deep Dive: Stonetop, from Indie Game Reading Club
🥈 Silver: The loss we gain from a Thousand Year Old Campfire, from Hendrik ten Napel
🥉 Copper: The Sci-Fi Special Edition, from The Soloist
Platinum Medalist: The Best of the Best!
For the final showdown, the four gold medalists from the main categories faced off in a ranked vote over the last 48 hours. And I’m please to announce the winner is…
🏆The 1 HP Dragon🏆, from Explorers Design
Congratulations to Clayton for winning the top honour this year!
Tournament brackets of the main categories
Winner Speeches
Below, we have words from our gold medalists across the main categories:
Clayton (Explorer’s Design), author of The 1 HP Dragon - 2024 Winner of Best of the Best, and Best Theory Post
Like many of the writers featured in the Bloggies this year, I wrote The 1 HP Dragon to excise it from my mind. This HP-free, damage-free, monsters-as-puzzles riddle has been in my head for years. I had no idea others would find it interesting enough to like, share, or vote for. It turns out, despite all the systems out there, a lot of us are still trying to slay the same dragon. So, thank you for reading it and bestowing it a gold in the theory category. The renewed interest in my ramshackle experiment has given me motivation to keep writing — which is maybe the best reward for blogging.
WF Smith (Prismatic Wasteland), author of Overloading the Random Encounter Table - 2024 Winner of Best Gameable Post:
I want to thank everyone who voted for my blog post, everyone who read my post, and the people who engaged with my post in any way, like stealing it for your own design or writing your own post iterating on it. I am proud of the post but frankly I am a father to all my blog posts and love them all equally. I think they should all get medals. If you loved this post, you should go read my whole backlog. Clear your calendar for tomorrow; it’ll be worth it.
Since I get the microphone for a moment, my message to all those listening is: start a blog if you don’t have one already and if you do have a blog, go post. Go write a post right now. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be yours.
Amanda (Weird Wonder), author of On People-Centered Adventure Design - 2024 Winner of Best Advice Post:
Winning this was a complete surprise as I was just speaking to what I am personally passionate about when it comes to adventure design and writing. I think we can make adventures rich with interesting people in dire situations. Thank you everyone who voted for me!
Paul (Indie Game Reading Club), author of Deep Dive: Stonetop - 2024 Winner of Best Review Post:
Reviews — critique, really — is the thing everyone says they want more of but nobody wants to support. Tough gig. Lonely. You don’t make a lot of friends doing it until you give their favorite thing a glowing report.
I’ve been a proponent of play-informed personal critique for 20 years. There’s just no way to really understand what a game is doing without seeing it in action. You have to feel it sloshing around in your own mind, watch other folks work with it, read and re-read and take notes and just sit and ponder. Where do the rules stop and my experience starts? How much lifting am I doing? Is the game fun, or smart, or inspiring on its own merits?
Critique exists in a three way conversation with creators and players. It’s gratifying to hear someone engaging with your work seriously, but growing from that engagement is what separates the pros from the wannabes. So a note to the creators out there: engage with the critic’s work as seriously as we engaged with yours. Share it, for good or ill. This is the only way the conversation can continue.
I hope more folks will consider getting into the critique game! The only way to start is to start. Be humble. Learn things. Consume everything you can get your hands on. Sit with it, chew on it, feel out how you engage with the work personally and not just write a thumbs up/down to eager buyers. It’s not your job to market for the creators. It is your job to take it seriously.
What’s next?
I just want to echo a lot of these winner speeches above and say a massive thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s Bloggies… whether by writing, reading, voting, sharing etc. There was a huge amount of engagement (even after a year that scattered a lot of online ttrpg communities).
Not to take away from our brilliant medalists but plenty of my favourite posts this year aren’t mentioned in this post. If you missed the voting rounds and want to read more than a handful posts, please go back to the original finalists and read away. You won’t regret it.
Zedeck’s schedule unfortunately meant that he couldn’t start the lino print prizes sooner. However, I can confirm that every Gold category winner will be getting a print. Huge thanks for Zedeck for his generous contribution here - the design looks epic!
Zedeck Siew’s official 2024 Bloggies lino cut (work-in-progress)
And finally, it is tradition for the Bloggies platinum medalist (best of the best winner) to take over as custodian of the competition for the following year - so it will be up to Clayton what happens next year? Will he host? Set up a judges board? Will he reinvent the procedures? Alter the categories? Rename it? Run it all on one day? Burn the whole damn thing down…? We shall see.
As for me, it has been an honour to host such a brilliant year for blogging. Thanks for all your patience and support.
Blogs are ours.