Link Page

Here's a bunch of blogs, resources, or other cool things I think are worth sharing!

Anime Links

Anime Blog Tracker lets you search many, many anime blogs at once. I'd trust it more than Google at this point.

Anime Redshift Chronicle collected reviews and discussions of retro anime. While the blog itself only lasted a year or so, the resources it's collected are valuable.

Cutfilm Tovent has a bunch of AMVs. Sometimes you need a site with a bunch of AMVs. Looks like Subculture Diaries from the same webring is a similar resource.

Ideas Without End has many mini-reviews and posts I've found interesting, especially when it comes to mecha anime. The Eureka Seven Series Blog articles in particular are an insightful companion to one of my favorite anime of all time.

Scarecrow Video is a video rental service with a physical library of over 100k titles, many of which are out of print. If you are the particular kind of freak who mourned the passing of physical-disc Netflix (I am that kind of freak), this one's for you.

Yatta-Tachi is not my primary anime news source, but it is where I can find info on every manga released in English in a given month, or breakdowns of where various seasonal anime are streaming.

Yggdrasil Radio is an internet radio station that plays anime themes, J-rock, etc. They've got Miku Mondays, Throwback Thursdays, and Symphogear Saturdays. Multiple times I have been pleasantly surprised by their song choices or bumper audio, this place is special.

TTRPG links

News Updates

Cannibal Halfling Gaming is my current resource for more mainstream games and industry news. They have a long backlog of editorials and game reviews, and regularly post roundups of notable links from other sites. RSS feed available.

Indie RPG Newsletter is my source for smaller game news and topics of conversation in the indie space. RSS feed available.

Theory Reading

Chasing the Dragon, a ruthless evaluation of the incentive structures of Dungeons and Dragons over its various editions. My personal framework puts a little more emphasis on how non-systemized influences are still part of the game, but a worthwhile read regardless.

Games and the art of agency presents a way to understand "a game" as a cultivated or captured agency: a state of being where we take on a new set of permissions and restrictions. The paper, and the book with the same title that expands its arguments, does not limit itself to role-playing games, but I find its principles especially applicable there.

Goat Song features excellent investigations of game structures, especially the Beginner's Guide to Mechanical Literacy series and the Designing for Gamefeel series. I know the author, thon's great, keep an eye on thons work.

The Ghost Engine, one of my favorite pieces of TTRPG theory ever. An examination of how players desire and act independently of the defined rules-system, from the perspective of the rules-system itself. I know the author, she's great, subscribe to her blog.

Review References

Entropic Dreams reports on tabletop games published in Japan. These get relatively little coverage in the anglosphere, but I find their design space fascinating and worth digging into.

The Indie Game Reading Club has an archive covering many, many games, with an emphasis on indies from the "storygaming" space.

Life and Times of a Phillipine Gamer features deep-dives on many different mainstream TTRPGs.

RPGnet "Let's Read" threads often provide detailed breakdowns of the contents of TTRPG books. RPGnet has a separate review column, but it's not as detailed as I prefer.

The Something Awful RPG Writeups Archive is a collections of various reviews from the "FATAL & Friends" forum thread. Both the games and the reviews are a mixed bag, but the archive is massive and valuable.

TTRPG History Resources

Age of Ravens has an extensive series tracking TTRPG releases across various genres. Current site is here but some articles are awaiting transfer from the old site here.

A Decade of Indie Roleplaying from the Indie Game Reading Club, reviews each year from 2010 to 2019 and highlights significant developments in indie TTRPGs during those years.

Designers & Dragons is an extremely thorough series of articles on the TTRPG industry. There's a lot here, most of it is also available in print.

The G+ Archives is a set of exports from now-defunct Google Plus TTRPG communities. I have to approach these as an outsider, I wasn't involved in any of them, but if we can't remember the past we can't learn from it. A full directory can be found here.

Video Game Links

The CRPG Book Project, a massive resource for RPG history.

The Doujin RPG Database is one of the best resources I know for finding micro-indies, RPG Maker projects, and other RPGs made by amateurs and enthusiasts.

Fifty Years of Interactive Fiction, a set of articles walking through the history of interactive fiction and text-based video games.

Kastel writes extensively on subculture media,, and I recommend their work highly.

Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster has a big list of game reviews, including some that have yet to receive English translations. She first caught my attention reviewing Gunparade March, so that's the kind of thing I go there for.

Sraëka-Lillian writes about old-school RPGs and makes micro-RPGs that draw attention to very specific aspects of the RPG experience. I especially enjoy Cataphract OI.

Sylvie makes lots of weird little games and writes a lot of thoughts on game design that I've found enlightening. I also want to link this exploration of game design via S&M metaphor, from Sylvie's frequent collaborator Aria.

Tom James' dating sim essays provide very valuable context and insight for an often-overlooked genre.

Miscellaneous Links

Antonymph, music video by Lyra, is a treasure of an audiovisual experience. I said "music video" but that's underselling it. trust me on this one.

Marginalia is an experimental search engine that emphasizes "old web" results. Useful for particularly niche research.

Sadgrl's Layout Builder is how I made this site! or at least its bones.