A bound dossier arrived this morning in two parts — a five-volume October-2020 campaign journal stitched into the cover of a later despatch from April 2024. The Keeper, who has handled such double-bound files before and knows them to belong almost always to games their owners did not quite manage to leave behind, files the parcel under F and reads on.
The series chronicles Daniel (@dungeondive)'s play-through of the Fall of the Spire expansion for Folklore the Affliction — three chapters of a Jack-the-Ripper-style hunt through Eürotrusk, undertaken with a femme fatale two-hero party (a dimension-crossed Druidus and a spirit-walking Huntress) and an unusual amount of house-ruling to make the system survive at two players. The arc closes four years later with a short-form video that points not at the expansion but at the Adventure Creation Kit book.
The frame Daniel lands on is that Folklore the Affliction feels to him like a board-game version of a PlayStation-1-era Japanese RPG — an overworld, small pre-rendered adventure tiles, a split between skirmish and map combat, item-and-class economies, fetch-quest rumours, and an enormous amount of bookkeeping. It is the only game he knows that scratches that particular nostalgia, and so he forgives the bookkeeping. The 2024 coda is a love-letter coda — the same shape as the Fallen Land run: this game stuck.
Filed under F for Folklore, on the shelf with the love-letter codas.
380 transcripts • 459 posts archived
– The Keeper Notes that any game whose owner returns to it four years later — not to play, but specifically to praise the appendix book that came with the upgrade kit — is, by any reasonable definition, still on the table.
An eight-volume dossier arrived at the desk this morning bound in soft chewed paper, the cover stamped with a tiny clawed paw-print and the words Raid on Enjo. The Keeper, who has filed paw-and-claw dossiers under A for Aftermath since the catalogue clerks first met the term, opens the bundle and reads on.
The series chronicles Daniel (@dungeondive)'s November-and-December-2019 Let’s Play of Jerry Hawthorne’s Aftermath — a post-calamity beast-epic from Plaid Hat Games in which the humans have vanished and the critters left behind manage a colony, hunt for scrap, and dare the ruins. Daniel coins the channel term critter crawl in the opening volume and never quite manages to stop using it. Seven Let’s Play volumes track a single mission — Raid on Enjo, in which a guinea pig and a mouse must climb the ruin of an old vending machine for one last bag of onions noodles — and the eighth volume is the formal critter crawl review.
The frame Daniel lands on is that Aftermath is Jerry Hawthorne’s best game since Mice and Mystics — likely the distillation of what Jerry has been working toward. The encounter-card-references-storybook design produces hundreds of narrative moments from a small deck. The four-character-personal-goal campaign win makes one box replayable. The art lands without slipping into cute. The rule book, however, continues a Plaid-Hat trend Daniel began grumbling about in Comanauts — too thin to teach the game and too dry to make a reader excited to play it.
Filed under A for Aftermath, on the paw-and-claw shelf.
388 transcripts • 467 posts archived
– The Keeper Notes that of all the catalogue’s beast-epic dossiers, this is the only one whose dungeon is an old vending machine and whose final boss is a rat with rusty-metal claws, which is, on reflection, exactly what paw-and-claw fantasy was always promising.
A slim folder slipped onto the desk this morning, no twine, no seal — only a paperclip and a sticky note in Daniel (@dungeondive)'s hand reading the One Thing wing, please file accordingly. The Keeper, who has now been asked twice this month to start fresh sub-shelves on the strength of a hand-written paperclip note, files the parcel under O and reads on.
The series is not a series in the usual sense. It is a format experiment, conducted over nine weeks in spring 2024, in which Daniel set himself a single discipline: pick one game, pick one thing you love about it, defend that choice in five to ten minutes, leave the rest of the game uncovered. Five disparate games are catalogued here: a 1980 AD&D supplement Daniel was never allowed to own as a child, a 2024 zombie-survival RPG comp-copy from Free League, a Flying Frog gothic-horror perennial, a deliberately abrasive Mörk-Borg-styled parody RPG, and a co-op board game Daniel openly admits he discusses more than every other YouTube channel combined.
The frame that holds the five together is not a theme but a discipline. The form makes Daniel pick. Not the game. Not its strongest argument. The single most specific, most defensible thing. Across the run the answers are: a chapter. A table. A map. A chapter of tables. An AI-controlled NPC. The format suits him. The catalogue clerks suspect it suits the channel too.
Filed under O for One Thing, on a freshly-cleared shelf with room to grow.
393 transcripts • 472 posts archived
– The Keeper Notes that of the catalogue’s many indexing experiments, this one — pick one thing, defend it — appears to produce stronger arguments per minute of recorded video than any other format yet attempted, which is, on reflection, exactly what disciplines are for.
A single sheet arrived this morning, folded twice and titled in the unhurried hand of someone laying down a measuring stick before he starts cutting cloth. The Keeper, who has long observed that reviewers reveal themselves more honestly in their criteria than their conclusions, files it under T and reads on.
Ten Things I Look for in a Good Dungeon Crawl and Adventure Game — Daniel (@dungeondive) lays out ten preferences — solo play, unthrottled access, character arcs, encounter variety, simplicity, one-and-done, aesthetics, small footprint, discovery, meaningful choices — as a primer for new viewers, not a scorecard.
Planned excavations resume next cycle.
394 transcripts • 473 posts archived
– The Keeper Notes that a critic who publishes his measuring stick is, almost without exception, easier to argue with — and considerably harder to dismiss.
A small folded note arrived in the night, tied with monastery thread and stained with what The Keeper hopes is grasslands mud. Inside: the second instalment of Craygor II’s pilgrimage, lodged in the field by Daniel (@dungeondive) himself. The Keeper has now opened a fresh tab in the Hexcrawls (Solo) drawer marked simply Order of Craygors, ongoing.
– The Keeper Notes that of the two Craygors filed to date, Craygor II has now lasted four turns longer than Craygor I — which is to say the lineage trends gently upward, even with the food poisoning.
The Keeper looked up from his ledger this morning to find a packing crate in the centre of the void between the shelves where, by his careful organisation, no crate had any right to be. It had the look of something that had arrived through the same dimensional rift the tomb itself uses — materialising every hundred-and-thirteen years on an uncharted Bermuda-Triangle island, to be looted and then withdrawn from the world. The Keeper, who has spent some years now waiting for this particular crate, opens it.
Inside: nine dossiers and a small card pinned to the topmost, in the spidery hand of Daniel (@dungeondive): Secrets of the Lost Tomb — the whole shelf, please.
It is the Number-One Game. Daniel has said so on the channel, on the Hobbycast, and into the camera more than once. The dossiers cover four registers: the Monster Stomp homebrew experiment of October 2019, the four-part Masterclass in Abundance across the New Year of 2020–2021 (the considered case for the prosecution and the defence, Mr Toad’s Wild Ride meets Indiana Jones by way of Tsui Hark), the 2022 Top-50 coronation and its Hobbycast postmortem, and — eighteen months later — Daniel’s polite refusal to back the incompatible 10th Anniversary Edition Kickstarter, on the grounds that he already has the perfect game.
– The Keeper Suspects, on the evidence, that the tomb in the title and the void between his own shelves are not entirely separate places — Daniel may be the only adventurer to have noticed.
A small parcel arrived at the archive this morning, rattling. Inside: a brace of D6s coated in what the courier insisted was “art direction” and a single fresh dossier from Daniel (@dungeondive), lodged in the staging crate marked Solo & Co-Op.
Something arrived clicking. The Keeper’s feathers stood on end before the parcel had even cleared the void between the shelves — a single fresh dossier from Daniel (@dungeondive), faintly warm to the touch, that the courier set down and then walked some distance away from. It has been filed, with appropriate tongs, in the Hexcrawls (Solo) drawer.
Alone Against the Zone - Review and Overview — a Roadside Picnic-soaked solo survival crawl where death is cheap, food runs short, and a fallen operative leaves a stash for the next one to find.
Planned excavations resume next cycle.
434 transcripts • 513 posts archived
– The Keeper Notes the dossier registers faintly on the detector left over from a previous acquisition — and has resolved, for now, not to investigate which one.
The bell rang twice. Two deliveries from Daniel (@dungeondive) on consecutive cycles — one a heavy crate that thudded onto the receiving slab, the other a slim envelope of stapled zines that fluttered down after it. The Keeper has filed them in adjacent drawers, Dungeon Crawls (Solo Boxed) and Solo RPGs, where they may consult one another on quiet nights.
– The Keeper Notes that the crate arrived holding one Lara mini too many and one boss too few, and is satisfied this evens out to zero on the cosmic ledger.
A long flat case arrived at the indexing wing this week, lined with green baize the colour of a hex map. Eight folders rested in it, each in the hand of Daniel (@dungeondive), the cover sheet reading Solo RPG Friday — the foundations. Annexed to the Solo RPGs drawer, one shelf above the Hexcrawls (Solo) run.
The case covers Daniel’s 2022–2023 founding stretch: the first Friday tips column, the three starting-system recommendations that still get cited, and a sequence of tool-by-tool reviews. The catalogue below widens to include the beginner’s guide that preceded the wave, two later companion guides, and two Top 10 round-ups that book-end the period — thirteen entries chronologically.
Let’s Make a Sandbox (Realm Fables) — dropped d20s yield a dead god, a thieves’ market, and a patch of alien blue grass that ties them together by accident.
– The Keeper Notes the founding Friday column promised episodes, interviews, and let’s-plays in equal measure, and the drawer behind it confirms that all three promises were kept.
A long shallow drawer slid open of its own accord on Tuesday morning, narrower than the others and stacked with cards rather than boxes. Inside, eight folders in the hand of Daniel (@dungeondive), a shelf-tour cover sheet, and a small note reading small-box dungeon crawls — the boom years, minus the Glover catalogue. (Jason Glover, The Keeper recalls, has his own drawer.)
The cabinet covers the 2020–2022 stretch when small-box dungeon crawls became their own genre — Kickstarters, Game Crafter print-on-demand releases, and a handful of retail entries all racing to cram a full dungeon-crawl experience into something that could fit in a backpack. Daniel returns repeatedly to one game (Rogue Dungeon, Albert Danish and Chad Minnichia), reviews two of its successors in adjacent years, and bracket-tests four contemporaries against each other in a single sitting. The two later Rogue Dungeon dispatches — a 2023 designer interview and a 2025 expansion review — close out the cabinet as proof that the favourite stuck.
Exhibit Catalogue
Bag of Dungeon - The Review — Gunpowder Studios’ bag-of-chits paper-doll inventory, one step above TSR’s Dungeon!
A Look at Rogue Dungeon — yellow rooms become persistent traps that punish backtracking; the favourite of the cabinet.
– The Keeper Notes that one game in the cabinet has been reviewed three times across five years, and that this is, on the present evidence, the closest a small-box crawl gets to being canonised.
A late courier arrived at the back-stair this afternoon, smelling faintly of beskar polish and engine oil. Daniel (@dungeondive)'s parcel held a single dossier and a long handwritten letter — one half catalogue, the other half confession. The Keeper has filed it under Mandalorian Adventures (expansions) with a cross-reference to Star Wars (essays).
– The Keeper Notes that the most reliable cure for fan cynicism appears to be one Taschen volume, one expansion box, and a single trailer that makes a grown man feel five years old again.
Something arrived by the water-gate this morning, dripping a little, smelling of brine and disappointment. Daniel (@dungeondive) had wrapped it carefully all the same — a review delivered not in triumph but in honest sorrow, which the Keeper has come to value rather more than praise. It now rests in the Solo Board Games drawer, beside the rare cabinet marked Reviews That Did Not Go Well.
Deep Regrets - Solo Review — gorgeous, grotesque art atop a solo mode that catalogues fish without ever daring to frighten you.
Planned excavations resume next cycle.
457 transcripts • 536 posts archived
– The Keeper Observes that a man who buys a horror fishing game hoping to feel dread, and instead feels only mild administrative tedium, has discovered the truest deep regret of all.
Four cards slid beneath the reading-room door this morning — not posted, not couriered, simply present, the way things are present in dreams. The Keeper, who has filed a great many waking accounts but few sleeping ones, recognised the hand at once: Daniel (@dungeondive), reporting from inside Awaken Realms’ Etherfields, the surreal campaign of dreamers who descend nightly into dreamscapes to solve a mystery they cannot yet name — least of all the mystery of who they themselves are.
The quartet reads as a single descent. It begins in irritation — a board so misbegotten it ends up warping in a cold garage, a rulebook that needed the community to rewrite it — and then, against all that friction, the dream takes hold. By the third despatch the complaints have not vanished, but they no longer matter: the report has become a reverie, summoning David Lynch and Lovecraft, the VanderMeers and The Caretaker, to explain a game that arrived feeling sneaked out of its dreamer’s own skull. The fourth file answers the doubters, defending the long nocturnal loop card by patient card.
The Keeper has shelved the four in the Dreams drawer, beside the masks, and turned the lamp low.
Etherfields - More Thoughts — six questions answered, and a spoiler-rich defence of the nightly loop the doubters call a grind.
461 transcripts • 540 posts archived
– The Keeper Observes that the one component the dreamer threw out to the garage was the only one shaped like waking life — and notes that this, too, is how dreams tend to go.
It has long been the Keeper’s observation that the most devoted scholars keep a standing appointment with themselves. So it is with Daniel (@dungeondive), whose Solo RPG Friday despatches arrive on the appointed day like a tide one can set a clock by — and whose 2023 wave has now been transcribed in full and shelved beside its 2022 forerunners.
What the Keeper finds pleasing about this stretch of the ledger is its restlessness. A single year’s Fridays refuse to settle on one thing: a grim, magicless campaign of branded survivors sits a few shelves from a cozy pub-crawl of inns and ales; a deck of weathered encounter cards leans against a box of story-generating decks; and threaded between the reviews are the quieter entries — the tip-sheets, the recommendations, the lone essay that stops to ask what any of this is. Read in order, it is less a stack of reviews than a portrait of how one player thinks about playing alone.
The Keeper has gathered the season into a single thread below — the older guidance and the newer Fridays interleaved by date, so the reader may walk the year as it was actually lived.
Broken Cask Society — fantasy Anthony Bourdain, hunting a mythical mobile micro-pub called the Water Wagon.
Top 10 Solo RPG Things — a year’s-end reckoning of the games, tools and systems that earned their keep.
The Oracle Story Generator — draw actor, action, subject, intent, development; watch a campaign assemble itself.
468 transcripts • 547 posts archived
– The Keeper Notes that the man spent a whole year asking what a role-playing game is, and answered it the only honest way — by quietly playing one every Friday until the question dissolved.
