One.

Let me start by being honest. This is Becca's fault. We discuss often - as two owners of media empires¹ might - the subject of reaching people. I've had success on Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Mastodon, and Discord, and she on Instagram and newsletters. Today, she told me I needed a newsletter, and I am in the habit of believing her. And this one is that.

The thing about newsletters is they're a bit like assholes. Everybody has one and they're often full of shit² . I, being a white man with a podcast, do not fear treading where thousands have marched before, but I held myself back because I didn't have a niche⁴ . Making it big, all internet advice begins, is about finding one thing and doing it to the exclusion of all else. They continue by suggesting one puts oneself out there, whole-cloth, honest and real.

But that leaves me at a paradox, because I've never been one for niches. Some have made compelling arguments that, perhaps, I have undiagnosed ADHD, because I can't seem to stick at one idea too long before another dances before me like Tinkerbell, or a bloodied dagger. And so, being a man possessed of good hobbies in want of a niche, I held off.

Then I thought about some creators I enjoy, I thought of Penny Parker, Erin Brioche, and DefenderOfTheBean. None of them do one thing to the exclusion of all others. They enrich themselves, and me, with a smorgasbord⁵ of ideas.

Maybe niches have been over-sold.

So here's me, in a series of one things:

• Comedy - I am a known enjoyer of shit-posts, absurdist humour, of double-entendres, and jokes too clever by half. I pretend I don't like puns, but secretly I love them.

• Games - Video and tabletop are my preferred experiences. I built a #brand around live-streaming video games. I am a professional Dungeon Master. I have successfully run a live Actual Play.

• Politics - I'm socially left but also economically left, too. I know that I know too little to opine about the state of the world, aside from complaining to my friends, and that’s the extent to which this newsletter will reach.

• Writing - I write my own adventures. Most of them are best-sellers.

• Game Design - I made a game once. Rock Paper Shotgun liked it. I still think about game design, but mostly in the tabletop space.

• Science - I have a PhD in biology and medicine. I don't recommend people study PhDs.

• Food - I'm an avid lover of food and an aspiring bread baker.

• Music - I listen to everything but, as my listening habits are so often fueled by YouTube's algorithm, my habits come in spits and spurts.

I hope at least one thing interests you, and that my enthusiasm for other one things will help you broaden your horizons. If this proves popular, I’d like to get guests in to talk about their topic blorbos⁶ , too. If you like that sound of that, welcome in.

I Can't Believe I've Edited This

This week has seen me continue a long-running project, editing Monster Manual Smash Or Pass, and creating the intro for a new tabletop project, The Monitors.

The Monitors is a game of intrigue. It's Conclave crossed with Game of Thrones, about five kingmakers flexing soft power during the election at the Holy Roman Empire. Naturally, I gravitated to the idea of a spider's web, and have begun the complex task of creating one in 3D using my tool of choice: DaVinci Resolve.

I recently started creating video snippets where I go behind the scenes or interesting edits called Behind The Bits. Once this intro is done, I'll be sure to explain it all!

Monster Manual Smash Or Pass continues at pace, but it's in an early stage where graphics are few and far between. So have this quote, and understand that the full video will be just as unhinged, if not more.

Terrible.

I Can't Believe I've Played This

I have played a lot of Metaphor: ReFantazio. I picked it up over the holiday period and have since invested over 70 hours in the game. For those unfamiliar, it is a fantasy spiritual successor to the Persona series of games, in which high school students attend school by day and deal with extra-dimensional threats at night. Metaphor strips out the real world trappings and high school angst and replaces them with high fantasy and even higher fashion.

The gameplay loop has reached perfection in this iteration, and I realised while playing it that there is much we tabletop game masters might learn from Metaphor. You see, through its liberal use of competing deadlines and time-blocked actions, Metaphor instills a sense of choice and urgency to the game that modern tabletop roleplaying lacks.

Gary Gygax, infamous bigot and progenitor of most of tabletop fantasy, spoke at length about the importance of time limits. Dungeons & Dragons and many of its spin offs are, at their heart, resource management games. Wizards cast a certain number of spells per day. Fighters have only so much healing available to them before they must rest, and so on. But here's where it breaks down: outside of game master interference or plot contrivance, you can rest at any time. It costs eight hours, but what's eight hours to somebody with no time limit?

Metaphor's time limits are lenient. Unless you do particularly badly, you have ample time for every side quest and dungeon, but they force you to think about how you spend each day. Some days are better for side quests, while others are better for dungeons. When the weather is terrible, dungeons will be harder, but offer better rewards, while on Sundays, shops in town offer discounted goods. Choices and consequences. Choices and consequences.⁷

I Can't Believe I've Seen This

Last year, I caved and bought one of those cinema golden tickets that lets you visit as many times as you want for no extra cost. I love movies, so this seemed a wise investment. In thanks, my local cinema closed, and so the ticket is now worthless.

Nonetheless, I got to see some good movies, like Challengers, Conclave, Monkey Man, DUNE 2, Kneecap, and Sonic 3, some classic movies like The Matrix, Predator, Commando, Die Hard, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Priscilla: Queen of the Desert.

I also saw Megalopolis.

Megalopolis is about five films in one, each executed badly. The acting is broadly good, though Francis Ford Coppola could have asked for a second take sometimes. His reticence to demand retakes lends the film a school project vibe that jars against its clearly exorbitant budget.

It is telling that one scene the studio felt was good enough to showcase is also objectively bad.

But put aside the poor directing, mish-mash stories, and terrible dialogue. Megalopolis doesn't know what it wants to say. Film critic Darren Mooney described it as a movie about how Hollywood should have let Francis Ford Coppola reinvent cinema, but it doesn't even say that convincingly. Instead, it mixes itself up in a fall of Rome analogy, with only the thinnest veneers of subtext employed⁸ .

In mixing these metaphors, the film's ultimate moral instead appears to be that Elon Musk could save the world if we just stopped getting in his way. And, speaking of Elon Musk…

I Can't Believe They've Done This

Politics is fucking weird right now. If I find who monkey-paw wished for interesting times, I am going to Luigi them. We've got the US run by not one, but two drug-addicted morons who do say the first thing that comes into their heads, and now they entertain the ideas of annexation. Sadly, it is

Meanwhile, the most successful Guy Who Tries To Fight You At A Bus Stop, Andrew Tate, has created a political party in record time, with a manifesto chock full of fear, AI art, and really, really stupid ideas.

We should not view this as a serious attempt at politics. Andrew Tate is playing one of two games, or possibly both at once.

1. He saw that Trump avoided conviction by achieving power, and seeks to do the same.

2. He heard that a 100 million quid donation to Farage's alt-right party is probably falling through. If there's one thing Tate's good at, it's grifting extremely divorced men out of their money, and he sees the mother-lode of divorced moneybagses.

But let's end on a high note, and for that, you'll need a soundtrack. Hit play below and then read along with me.

A Ukrainian F-16 fighter pilot shot down six cruise missiles in a single sortie. As Discord plane expert SuperTaliaDX noted: Some of the world's best pilots don't shoot down 6 missiles in a career.

During the engagement, he ran out of missiles and had to resort to shooting down two of the missiles with his cannon.

At the same time!

That's all for this week's I Can't Believe I've Done This. Perhaps next week will be about different things, perhaps not! It will certainly be shorter. The only way to find out is to subscribe by making a big mistake:

Or read it on the website. You do you.

1  Okay, I accept that media county is more accurate.

2  Except my own, of course, which through the miracle of Crohn's disease expels everything in it faster than a Bag of Holding placed inside another Bag of Holding³ . Little nerd joke for you, get used to it.

3  If you put a Bag of Holding inside another Bag of Holding, it creates an inter-dimensional tear that ejects its contents into outer space.

4  People who pronounce this as "nitch" please unsubscribe.

5  Jimmy Buffet's Swedish cousin.

6  https://screenrant.com/blorbo-from-my-shows-meaning-tumblr-meme-explained/

7  I will speak at length on this on my new ersatz podcast, most likely. A thing that appears and disappears, a little like a wandering shop, perhaps it will return soon, perhaps not.

8  I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards.