Enter the Robotic Topologist

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 come up in my other genre interest of weird fantasy. Also, I just think it sounds good and is less stuck up than Wodan, which I was considering before.

Surface Level Games is this blog. You'll have to update your bookmark url to match I'm afraid.

It's been a long time coming, and I soft launched the new name with my itch and a new twitter. Links are as follows:

Or just follow my linktree.

I'm planning on releasing a bunch of new stuff this year, and if you've been paying attention, you've probably already seen some of it. Stay tuned on to this blog for lots of big exciting announcements (and more content too).

- Dan

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2 Years of Drier Deserts, Hotter Suns

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Starship in a bottle episode

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

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