Looking Forward at 2026
The Biggest Year Yet for Grinning Rat
Last year, right around this time, I posted an article titled Looking Forward at 2025:
I’m going to follow roughly the same format as last year, with me talking about the stuff that got done this year first, followed by a bit of a preview of next year’s offerings.
On with it then!
Looking Back at 2025
The Grinning Rat Newsletter
What is there to say here except incredible!
This time last year, we were hovering around 560 subscribers—now we’re nearly triple that at 1,400+.
Given that I pretty much do zero cross-posting or marketing of the newsletter, I find that number very humbling. But you all continue to show up and listen to my rambling, so, thank you! From the bottom of my heart.
Some other bits of info you might find interesting:
I did a reader survey back in the middle of the year that was very illuminating as to what kinds of content you want to see. More than 200 folks provided their thoughts and it was an incredibly helpful level-set to read through.
The newsletter went from 5 to 11 paid subscribers. Given that I’m not offering much in the way of “paid” content, this means a lot to me. Being supported for simply throwing my ideas out there is an incredibly privileged position to be in.
I published 47 posts, effectively resulting in me only missing five weeks of posting the entire year. Not bad in a year where you launch a crowdfunding campaign and welcome a new kid into your life!
There’s a few other things noteworthy in the newsletter, but I’ll touch on them in their own sections down below. All to say, what a great year for the blog!
Certain Fathoms
The big one. My first crowdfunding campaign that dove into another system I didn’t write.
I started working on Certain Fathoms back in June of this year alongside an incredibly talented group of folks all vying for entry into Mothership Month. You can imagine how excited I was to be selected!
The funny thing is, I somehow underestimated just how much this game was going to change my life. How many people I was going to be able to meet and befriend. Just how many connections one can make when you stop focusing on your own silo and start inviting people in (or getting invited in yourself).
If there’s any takeaways from Certain Fathoms:
Get involved in a community. Matt Colville has a fantastic video on this that’s suitable for just about everybody who wants to make stuff in the hobby and have a community around it.
Spend time trying to make your thing look as best as it can. If you have 100% to devote to it, spend 75% of your effort on vibes, killer art, and aesthetic and 25% of your effort on words. In a world of tens of thousands of games, you don’t need to explain your dice mechanics up front.
Talk about other people’s stuff you like. Its a big tent and we’re all in it, so a lot of times goodwill comes from goodwill. Point to other projects and try to figure out how you can interact with their fans in an earnest, real way. If you’re approaching this with the goal of earning more money or backers, you’re doing it wrong.
All in all, Certain Fathoms also helped me realize I like sci-fi a lot more than I thought I did—potentially even more than traditional fantasy (thanks Tangent).
Zemaryth
In the back half of summer 2025, I made an invitation for writers and worldbuilding fans to get together on a shared-setting called Zemaryth. It gained, for me, quite a bit of attention!
I didn’t know this then, but it also came at the exact worst time it possibly could have.
Basically, when I was first working on the bones of what would become Zemaryth (largely the community-building aspects, platforms to discuss it, and CC license), I had an inordinate amount of free time. I was still on parental leave from work, so I had all day to transcribe things, respond to ideas, and work on graphics.
That ended when I went back to work, my daughter stopped sleeping consistently through the night, and my priorities shifted to the launch of Certain Fathoms.
At this stage, despite the initial excitement, I just think I’m not at a stage where I can put in the community-building time necessary to facilitate it.
That said, I really love the ideas people put together—and hope that they can take that into their own games, their own settings, or even the possibility of someone stepping in to steward Zemaryth!
If that sounds like you, reach out to me via DM or comment below.
Itch.io Games, Freebies, and Others
I spent a lot of time on itch.io this year!
14 projects were uploaded to the platform, the majority of which were worksheets that tied directly into articles on Substack. I enjoy this sort of work, and it seems like readers do too. I started to shy away from it in the latter half of the year due to all the other big projects going on, but I’m excited to see where this ends up next year.
There’s also a project here I want to highlight in the 2026 part of this post, but I want to give it plenty of room to breathe in its own section so for now we’ll just say: itch.io output was pretty good!
Collaborations
2025 was full of fun collaborations as well! I ended up doing some interviews with some creators I look up to, put in a contribution towards a physical zine I adore, and managed to set up some working relationships with some folks out there I’ve always dreamt about working with.
In the summer, I provided FISH—a little mechanic on fishing in RPGs—to TUMULUS by Exeunt Omnes.
In the latter half of the year, I interviewed both David over at Copy/Paste Co-Op of ECO-MOFOS fame and Alex over at Der_AJZ | Golem Productions—two folks that are doing some really cool sandbox-adjacent design.
Finally, I managed to set up some guest writing for Certain Fathoms with some folks who are huge inspirations to me: Snow, Sam Sorensen, Alfred Valley, and watt. I’m so excited to share how those things shape up in the new year—what I’ve seen so far is very encouraging!
This was probably the year I worked with the most people outside my direct group of day-to-day peers, and I’m really looking forward to doing more of it in the future.
Looking Forward to 2026
Adamiir (now known as Inheritor)
I just posted about Inheritor last week, so if you want more specific background on the project I’d go check that out. In it, I mention more specific timing coming in this article, so let’s dig into that.
My goal for Inheritor in 2026 is two-fold:
Provide playtest documents for chunks of rules set in distinct locations.
For the magic rules, provide a playtest packet that includes everything necessary to play magical characters and a location that would interact well with them. For the downtime rules, make a packet that allows for new or past characters to be ported in and engage in that aspect of the game.
Have a content-complete “alpha version” sometime mid-year.
The tail-end of the year is going to be more or less focused entirely on more commercial endeavors, like Mothership Month, Pocket Encounters (see below), or other surprises. So, that means Inheritor needs to get off the runway by summer.
I see Inheritor as being a phased project:
The alpha version of the game will be the core rules and the region of the Mistlands—one of five total regions that make up the playable world. This will include the rules for creating characters, playing the game, ~30 keyed locations across a hex map, and a ton of appendices for magic, languages, currencies, monsters, etc.
Once we get here, the game will be set to $5 and no longer be available as Pay-What-You-Want. Anybody who has the game added to their library before that gets all future updates (even after Inheritor goes paid!) for free.
Future versions of the game add more regions (the Echolands, Drylands, Fanglands, and Oldlands) and more appendices for reference. Here is where we add region-specific ideas (like new types of magic, ancient relics, different factions, etc.) Each addition to the game will be roughly the size of the alpha version, around 30 keyed locations and so on.
Each new release will bump the price up a bit. Again, if you download it during the pre-alpha phase you get all this for free.
In January, the first playtest packet “Iron and Blood” will be uploaded to itch.io.
I’ll be posting about it leading up to release, so stay tuned!
Pocket Encounters
Ah, my sweet Pocket Encounters. How I’ve missed you!
Yes, Pocket Encounters is still happening. Yes, DC Stow is still doing the art. Everything that got you hyped about it in the first place is still happening.
If this is the first you’ve heard about it, well, it’s a spiral notebook with 100 fantasy encounters suitable for old-school play. Each are illustrated by DC Stow and they’re heavily inspired by the work of ktrey’s (aka, D4Caltrops) hex project from a number of years back.
The goals with Pocket Encounters:
Provide random encounters that can further be randomized—bumping 100 encounters upwards into the realm of tens of thousands of permutations.
Don’t just provide combat encounters—from smart-mouthed minstrels to mermaid funerals to councils of woodland animals, offer more than the violent fare.
Lots and lots of art—each encounter lavishly illustrated by the best-of-the-best, DC Stow, showing one possible permutation of the encounter.
This is a fun, simple project. Initially I tried to over-engineer the thing—but I think keeping it exactly what it says on the tin is the move. It’ll be crowdfunded over on Kickstarter most likely, though my experience with BackerKit the past two campaigns has somewhat drawn me in over there.
Expect more on this once we get the momentum on Inheritor moving and Certain Fathoms is largely fulfilled digitally. For now, you can follow the project here:
Follow Pocket Encounters →
Surprises
Can’t say the back-half of 2025 ended up where I thought it would—so it’d be dumb to assume I knew what 2026 had in store. I can say I want to do all of the following in fairly equal measure:
Do another big collaborative crowdfunding campaign, whether it’s Mothership Month 26 or something else.
Run a big Mothership freeplay campaign (like 20+ people) that uses A Pound of Flesh and Certain Fathoms.
Run a Game Jam
Play more games in public places (bars, libraries, parks, etc)
Give more stuff away
Go to a con
We’ll see where the new year takes us! For now, however, I’ve got to get back to work.
Thanks for reading.🟦
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