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The Parasite. It isn't particularly dangerous on its own, but the moment it manages to find a host it becomes a real threat.

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When an Apex Predator Takes the Throne

What does a solitary apex predator want at the top of a society? Vaelezar is a dragon and a psychopath. Here we explore how that affects the people and her bloodline, where her children are prey.

Jelte ten Holt··9 min read
The Parasite. It isn't particularly dangerous on its own, but the moment it manages to find a host it becomes a real threat.

Beta Testers Wanted: A Halloween Horror One-Shot for The Persistence

Meet the Parasite, one of the monsters in our horror one-shot for The Persistence. We're looking for GMs and players to join a free beta test.

Jelte ten Holt··4 min read·art by kime bot

Magic Will Take Your Job

Magic would not sit on top of a medieval world. It would create something entirely new, affecting crafting, politics, culture, and what it is like for those without access.

Jelte ten Holt··6 min read

If Schrödinger Wrote Fantasy

The Flux takes a quantum mechanics concept as its world-building premise and follows it all the way down, to where wanting to be alone is a sin.

Jelte ten Holt··9 min read

Six Ways to Worship a God You're Afraid Of

In most fantasy, religion is wallpaper. Make the god real, present, and dangerous, and worship becomes strategy: six ways to live with what you cannot fight, flee, or love.

Jelte ten Holt··11 min read
Spell Lists Are a Failure of Imagination

Spell Lists Are a Failure of Imagination

A spell list is a menu. Treat spells as sentences instead, a verb on an object, and a handful of symbols covers a near-infinite range.

Jelte ten Holt··5 min read

The Problem With Immortality in Fantasy

Fantasy treats immortality as a gift. Follow the mechanism instead of the myth and you get something else: something beautiful, hard, and brittle.

Jelte ten Holt··5 min read
Worldbuilding and the Bandwidth Problem

Worldbuilding and the Bandwidth Problem

Every fantasy world I imagined came out like wallpaper — colourful, busy, and thin. The problem wasn't a lack of imagination. It was bandwidth.

Jelte ten Holt··6 min read
F*ck Immersion: A Story of How Our Roleplaying System Was Born

F*ck Immersion: A Story of How Our Roleplaying System Was Born

A rules-obsessed game master, a blow-up over fudged dice, and the table I walked away from — the origin of a system built on immersion first, rules a distant third.

Jelte ten Holt··3 min read