It might be nothing.

But it seems like it might be something.

You know how some dreams are easy to decode? You’re reading a book, bingeing a show, having a long conversation with a friend, and suddenly those pieces show up in your dreams like they paid rent.

Maybe it’s because I’m working on a podcast episode about muses and inspiration.

Maybe it’s because I had catch-up conversations with two different friends that stuck.

Maybe it’s just my brain trying to keep me from doing the work I actually needed to finish.

But while I can’t tell you exactly where inspiration comes from, I can say: when she arrives, I know what to do. There I was paying bills online, renewing licenses, doing the boring adult admin shuffle — and SHAZAM!

Out of nowhere: an answer to what is my contribution to cultural RPG design.

My hit list of games I’ve played in this bucket:

I love what each of these games does, mechanically, narratively, and all the cultural positioning and setting, but where is my Black cultural RPG?

And now I know.

I know what it looks like.

I know what the game experience is.

Right now, I have rough notes on big paper, scribbles, tangents, diagrams, and math… but I can see it.

Best Christmas present ever.

I miss in-person gaming. I miss sitting around a table with snacks, dice, side conversations, and that low hum of shared attention that only happens when everyone is physically present.

So I’m putting the old new group back together.

And like every adult who’s tried this, I’ve immediately run headfirst into the real boss fight: scheduling.

We all have jobs. Families. Partners. Side projects. Fatigue.

Weekly games sound great in theory, but in practice, they collapse under the weight of real life. Right now, the folks I’d love to game with prefer a Bi-weekly schedule. Which prolly is more realistic… but momentum suffers. Someone forgets what happened. Someone misses a session. Energy drifts.

— weekly? Bi-weekly? A hybrid of both?

I’m thinking a 6–8 session run of Monster of the Week with something Codex of Worlds–adjacent. Lots of cool team styles to explore. And I might get lucky and get an adult version of the DanDaDan game, because who wouldn’t play that!

I feel Monster of the Week (by Michael Sands, Powered by the Apocalypse) is built for episodic play, which might get us to a nice hybrid spot for schedules. You show up, deal with this week’s problem, and the story moves forward even if someone’s missing.

That structure matters when:

The characters still grow. The world still changes. There is an overarching narrative — but it’s resilient. It bends instead of breaking. For adult-challenged schedules, that’s 🔥 I’ll tell you how it works out!

I’m also deep into William Gibson’s Jackpot trilogy, starting with The Peripheral, and it’s hitting exactly right. This isn’t time travel in the classic sense. It’s not multiverse hopping either. It’s asynchronous futures?!

Gibson’s concept of The Jackpot — a slow, cascading collapse of civilization through climate disaster, pandemics, economic fracture, and political failure — feels uncomfortably plausible. Not a cosmic bang, but grind.

The future is strange yet mundane; the technology feels powerful and banal. Agency is limited, negotiated, leveraged and folks survive inside systems that are already broken.

I dig how Gibson isn’t obsessed with explaining tech. He’s articulate about how people live with it. The interfaces. The compromises. The workarounds. The emotional cost. That’s the kind of scifi that feeds my brain.

I watched one episode of the Netflix adaptation and stopped. I knew I would be missing BIG stuff, and the novel would be the better path.

So far, I’m glad I did. What’s your current ‘can’t put down’ read?

As always, thanks for reading, sharing, and building strange worlds with me.