Surface Level

It's that time of the year again!   The Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam 2025 has wrapped with the highest amount of submissions to date–28! I'm delighted to have been apart of the game jam again this year and am even more excited for next years (as well as some potential smaller jams along the way). As always, a huge shout out to Sammy J for running the jam and helping folks nail down their submissions in the Sci-Fi RPG Collective discord . As with last year's jam , I've gone through and reviewed each and every submission, giving my overall thoughts, what I liked, and some feedback. These mini-reviews are bit less structured, but should give an impression about what makes each submission special. If you're reading this and have submitted something to the Jam, (first of all, thank you!) don't be discouraged by my criticism: no adventure is perfect and I'm only trying to get you to make the best art you possibly can. In no particular order, here's my roundup of the s...

Howdy! The Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam 2024 has wrapped-up and was a huge success! There were 19 entries including one by yours truly , and there are some real bangers in there. I've read through each one and written a mini-review with some thoughts and feedback. I've also provided my thoughts on the game jam in general in a companion post to this one, which you can read here . I've tried to keep these reviews relatively short. Keeping in line with the theme of "Stellar Phenomena", each review contains what I liked and what I didn't about it, or what was Stellar and Not-So-Stellar , along with an Overall opinion at the end. The reviews are listed more or in order of release, but I've saved some standouts for the end. Without further ado, here are my reviews!

 Howdy! The Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam 2024 has wrapped-up and was a huge success! There were 19 entries including one by yours truly , and there are some real bangers in there. I've read through each one and written a mini-review with some thoughts and feedback, which you can read here . But I also thought it would be worthwhile to go over the Jam in a bit more detail. I'd love to take credit for organizing the Jam but alas the glory is all on Sammy J ( Staggered Amusement Machine ) who did an excellent job putting together the jam this year and getting it up and running. That said I've been along for the ride providing help and feedback along the way since the first HyperSpeed Adventure Jam in 2022. Back then it felt like there was a lot less, and especially less readily accessible sci-fi RPG content. Following the success of the One Page Derelict Jam and the Delta Green Shotgun Scenario contest (which has been running since 2005!), a sci-fi adventure jam seemed like a good ...

I recently released a generator for making solar systems in a style I had been using for some Drier Deserts, Hotter Suns content. With such a simple style, I thought I could probably automate the process, and as I'm planning the next leg of my home game using such maps, I thought I'd take a crack at it. Anyway, the tool is now done and released! It's available for free on itch.io and runs in the browser. I should also note that any content you make with this generator is public domain, so go nuts and use it however you see fit. Minimalist Solar System Generator by Robotic Topologist And by the way, If you've been keeping up with me on this blog, you should really consider following me on itch. I tend to post project updates as devlogs there. In fact, I already wrote a devlog for this generator as well . Cheers, - Dan

Two years ago today I released the first public version of Drier Deserts, Hotter Suns. Immediately after that, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Vancouver, where I was living at the time. As I had been working on the project on and off for about eight years at that point (making 2022 now year ten!), it was awful timing. It really killed my motivation to work on games. A bit of playtesting has happened, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. You see, I came to learn very early on during those days that I absolutely hated running games online. As a referee, I am very active . I love to stand up, walk around the table, make big gestures etc. That really doesn't work online. It was also hard gauging people's reactions to the new awesome rules I had just written. These might sound like excuses but there's no denying the fact that I was having a whole lot less fun playing RPGs and making them. It really hurt the project and my playtesting efforts. It's not all bad though! The playtes...

In sci-fi games, it's pretty easy to forget that the player's ship is their literal home. I'm always a fan of it being their "home base", but that can often be overshadowed by it's utility as a people mover. To make it feel more lived in and homely, I'm experimenting with the bottle episode . Essentially, trying to set an entire session aboard the ship.   The easiest way to accomplish this to set the session during the time it takes to travel between two locations. This works great for a lot of reasons. You can easily lead into it from the session before (ending that session just as you are departing), and it can lead into the next session easily (the session ends when you arrive at your destination). Like a filler episode, it nicely slows down the pace of the game and gives a sense of scale on a temporal level. The other benefit is that if the session doesn't go well, you can fast forward to the destination. Alternatively, they can be set onboard the ...

Announcement time! I'm rebranding. Shocking, I know. I had originally wanted to just release everything I made under my own name, but I've realized that that's not the best idea. For starters, I have a pretty generic name. More relevant is the fact that any collaboration just shouldn't be released under my name. I want to share things I think are cool, and don't want to imply that someone else's creative work is totally mine, especially as I reach out to artists and get help on things like layout and promotion. With that said, welcome to Surface Level , the Robotic Topologist Blog. Previously Wodan Gaming by Daniel Harris. Robotic Topologist is my new name to put on any and all gaming content I'm going to release. I think it's a pretty good name, especially the topologist part. I'm fascinated by the study of topology and like the implication of table-top-ology. The robot part is there since I'll mostly be focusing on sci-fi stuff, but robots ...