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The Bloggies' 2026 Nominees

Explorers Design February 9, 2026

The Bloggies Nominees

The day has finally arrived. The nominees for this year's Bloggies are here, and in one week they'll compete head-to-head in a single-elimination tournament. If you want to find out who this year's nominees are, visit the official webpage or keep reading.

Otherwise, let's talk about the surprise category for this year. In addition to the four categories we know and love, this year (and probably only this year) we're experimenting with a little category called "meta."

The Bloggies 2026A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.Explorers DesignClayton Notestine

The all-new Meta category.

Why is there a category called meta? The answer is pretty simple. We had a lot of great manifesto, taxonomy, and industry talk this year, but it was quickly crowding out the other categories—so rather than omit good posts, we siloed them to their own spotlight in the Bloggies. (I know I keep writing "we" but it really is mostly me floating ideas to friends and family before jumping in head first.)

The goal of the Bloggies has always been to get more people reading and writing blogs, and this category allows us to showcase great writing about the industry without replacing valuable advice, critique, gameable, and theory writing.

How were these nominees selected?

The nominees are selected through a mixture of submissions and curation. Anything that got a particularly outstanding representation in the body of submissions was included in this year's competition, but since this is a small competition—and blogging is so niche—a lot of posts (even popular ones online) only got one or two submissions at most. So, with advice from family and last year's winners, I handpicked the remaining nominees.

There were also creators who had a lot of support, so much support that if I strictly followed the numbers, they would have filled entire brackets on their own. Since I have the burden and privilege of hosting, I decided to limit creators to one post per bracket so that other amazing creators could join them.

Lastly, you might be wondering, "Clayton, where are the seeds?" There aren't any. Unlike Football, Fútbol, and Bloodbowl—we don't have quantifiable data to create an objective bracket, so rather than create arbitrary seeds, I tried to pair posts with thematic twins, and if that wasn't possible, then (and only then) I tried to recreate the idea behind seeds—which is to pit frontrunners with challengers.

I think you'll like some of these thematic matchups. Some of them aren't obvious until you read them.

How will you read all of these articles?

I recommend picking and choosing the categories you like. When voting starts next week, there will be a separate form for each category, so if you don't care for theory, gameable, etc, you won't feel obligated to weigh-in.

There's also a rumor—some say a quest—that others are recording these blog posts after being inspired by Nick Whelan's Blogs on Tape podcast. (If you haven't listened to that podcast, you really should.) When the Bloggies podcast goes live, I'll share it on the official webpage and include a link with the voting announcement.

What's the schedule for The Bloggies?

Add these dates to your calendar. This week, believe it or not, is the calm before the storm. Once voting begins, The Bloggies website will be updated almost daily (with the exception of weekends).

Bracket voting begins: Monday, February 16th, 2026
Bonus Category voting begins:Monday, February 23rd, 2026
Final Winners declared: Last week of February

The Brackets for this year's Bloggies.

The Bloggies 2026 Nominees

Advice

This category includes advice for play, prep, publishing, and more.

Writing Rooms in Pairs Leonard Cohen's Advice for Novice OSR Referees

Got no game: Should your module be system agnostic? Ten Intangible Tips for Development Editing Your RPG Manuscript

A Lock With No Key: Designing Obstacles for OSR Play Don’t Write Lore, Write Tables

Pocket-Sized Powder Kegs make better mind pictures

How to Replicate Over/Under In Praise of Prep

Look Before You Leap Just Tell Them What They Need!

How I Do Play by Post Action-Oriented Interaction

Less Combat… More Obstacles Treat Illusions As You Would Any Other Lie: No Rolls

Critique

This category includes critical analysis of books, games, and more.

Barkeep on the Borderlands: A Review Mausritter, Wargame

Playing the Chaplain's Game The Isle: The Review (Mostly)

Doing a Cool Move Review of Initiative Methods

B1 and Toyetic Dungeon Rooms The D &D 4th edition renaissance: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

Monster, Maiden, Madonna, Medusa Expressionism in Practice: A Case Study of Triangle Agency

How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design, Part 1: Pre-Jaquays Dungeons Who Up Tunneling Them Trolls?

The Combat Conundrum: how violence actually works in mothership. Arthurian Mysticism and Violence: a Mythic Bastionland Analysis

Review: The White Horse of Lowvale I Read Spine

Gameable

This category includes ready-to-use rules, monsters, and more.

A mental inventory for occult horror campaigns: an HPless system RANDOM ENCOUNTER TABLES AS ADVENTURE RAM: Adding “Memory” To Encounter Checks

Scooby Doo as Post Apocalyptic RPG Setting Stacking The Deck – Mining Fallout: New Vegas for TTRPG Setting Ideas Promises - a Mythic Bastionland House Rule Leverage & Rapport: A Simple Social Mechanic

Let’s Make a Forest Generating Jaquaysed Dungeons (1.5)

1d20 Diegetic Rules, 1d20 Hypo-Diegetic Rules What do people know about the Mythos?

Just Use Bears… Or Wolves, Dragons or Spiders Wilderness Stocking - Expanded

Castle Claus: The Keep on the North Pole Anti-colonial Dungeon

[HMTW] Using Divination to Generate a Character The Elemental Plane of Plastic

Theory

This category is all about systems, settings, and more.

Baseline Worldbuilding WHY MEGADUNGEONS? A Campaign Structure for Modern Lives

Everything is Pointcrawl! Making Hacking an OSR Style Problem

Why Orcs? Or, Why Do I Love Orcs? Why I Like Binary Resolution Systems

The Star-Pattern: a Pitfall of GMing Books [Verb] Play

Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole: The Case for Pitcher Plant Dungeon Entrances The 10 Types of Special Rooms

The Languages of D &D Imply a Specific Setting There is a point to Tom Bombadil (or how I approach lore)

Conflict as Motivation and Resolution Combat As My Balls

Does Super Mario Bros. (1985) Have Rules? [An OSR Pattern] One, Two, or Three Exits

Update 2/9/26: How Do You Handle the "Inside" of a Hex? was removed by author's request and replaced with Books [Verb] Play.

Bonus Category Nominees

Best Debut Blog

Valeria Loves
The Garden Below
To Be Resolved
This Vorpal Coil
Afraid of Encounters
Dungeon Scrawler
in lowercase
fluorite guillotine
The Play Reports
Birdmilk’s Cafe

Best Blog Series

Dungeon Room Index
Middle-earth Hexcrawl Project
The AD &D Series
Designing Dungeons Course
Shiny TTRPG Links
Cataphracts Design Diaries
Seven-Part Pact
Goin' Through the Fiend Folio
Books in TTRPGs
Critique Navidad!

The Best Overall Blog post will be decided alongside the bonus categories the week after the tournament. Until then, we don't have our final list.

What's next for The Bloggies 2026?

Voting. Make sure to bookmark this year's page and mark your calendars. I want to build on the awesome work done by last year's host, Sacha Goat, and try to double this year's voter turnout.

Until then, read blogs other than this one. You're already behind!