The Lighthouse is the official Lightspress Principia newsletter. Previously published exclusively on lightspress.com on Tuesdays, it will now go out weekly on Sundays, with availability expanded beyond the site to Patreon and Substack.

An analysis of Dungeons & Dragons as a system that continues to expand in popularity while its core design stabilizes, limiting innovation. Explores how repetition, discourse cycles, and structural constraints shape the future of roleplaying.

Considered Worlds is for creators who want their efforts to matter and their settings to be functional. Not minimalist and utilitarian; you can still have detail. They want details that matter. This series focuses on what can actually be used, not on how to brainstorm a mountain of largely inconsequential, trivial fiddly bits.

The first installment of Considered Worlds is now available to read, for free, on The Narrative Core Substack.

A woman appears across records that won’t agree. Investigate a reality shaped by attention, unstable systems, and conflicting accounts in this system-adaptable narrative roleplaying scenario.

Using Narrative Play with Legacy Roleplaying Systems. Learn how to use Principia Canonica with any roleplaying system to keep situations moving through pressure, decisions, and consequences without rewriting your rules.

Read this article now, for free, on Substack or Patreon.

An isolated agricultural outpost begins to unravel as the land turns unpredictable. Crops fail, authority tightens control, and leaving becomes harder. A pressure-driven roleplaying scenario about survival, uncertainty, and decisions that don’t stay small.

A team of newspaper journalists uncovers a story of corporate corruption that leads straight to the parent company of their news agency.

A narrative roleplaying scenario where a hidden world beneath a parish begins to break through. Explore unstable boundaries, altered returnees, and decisions that reshape both worlds.

This is a repost from the Story at the Table Substack.

A fantasy RPG scenario where a powerful merchant guild takes over a town market, crushing local businesses through contracts, supply control, and price pressure.

A system-adaptable roleplaying scenario where a soldier’s past shifts across records, witnesses, and institutions. Players navigate competing truths, unstable evidence, and decisions that define what the war becomes.

Here’s what I’m working on for this Substack:

The next series of articles for Story at the Table will focus on the idea the Dungeons and Dragons is complete, and that the only way forward for game design is to move away from the paradigm it established.

A narrative-first RPG scenario set on a contested island where stories shape power. Navigate media, archives, and politics as competing factions fight to define what’s true and what the world believes.

The creator economy is tanking, thanks to the same regime that brought you a cratering US economy and destablized global economy. So we’re trying some thing new: our own TTRPG Patreon.

A narrative RPG scenario exploring AI accusations, identity, and public judgment. A $1 science fiction concept with Blade Runner themes, built for Principia Canonica.

I found the title was limiting and a bit too utilitarian. The new title shifts the focus to what I actually want to write about, narrative roleplaying games and their potential as a medium for creative expression.

This is what we’ve always wanted to do, before we got sidetracked chasing what a particular platform rewards. One core book, the Canonica. Pick-up-and-play adventures that have pregenerated characters, essential locations, story fuel, and more for around the price of a cup of coffee. Story-driven, character-focused, and not another violence-driven, wargame-derived cookie-cutter experience.

Principia Canonica uses simple mechanics but explains narrative structure. Learn why instability, pressure, and consequence matter in story-driven tabletop RPG design.

Work in progress: Longbourn