About Unpossible Journeys

Welcome! I’m Erik Schmidt, and for better or worse I’m responsible for this site. I’ve played a wide variety of tabletop roleplaying games since getting my start with Dungeons & Dragons in 7th grade, all the way back in 1980. In 2013 I launched Learn Tabletop RPGs, because I wanted to help make tabletop RPGs accessible to as broad an audience as possible. In the fall of 2016 I overhauled the site considerably, and changed its name to Unpossible Journeys. In 2022 I overhauled it again with the aim of simplifying maintenance.

UJ is animated by a simple philosophy: Tabletop roleplaying should be a pastime that brings people together. It should embrace any who are interested, and welcome a plethora of gaming styles and types of games. One gamer’s enjoyment of a particular flavor of roleplaying shouldn’t diminish the enjoyment of those who hold different preferences.

In support of that philosophy, UJ provides advice and offers game summaries as starting points for exploration. Just as there is no One True Way to make a movie, write a book, or have a conversation with friends, the same is true of playing tabletop RPGs.

Over the last few years podcasts and video have supplanted blogs, and tabletop roleplaying is well-supported by those media. The hobby has also broadened and become more difficult to cover. So rather than attempt to keep UJ up to date, it remains mostly as an archive, with the occasional blog post. But most of my gaming interest is now funneled into Setting First, a blog that discusses verisimilitude in tabletop roleplaying and related topics, and Train to Baikonur, which is laser focused on Degenesis.

My only financial connection to any of the products or companies mentioned in the site is my use of DriveThruRPG affiliate accounts. If you follow a link from this site to DriveThruRPG and make a purchase there, a percentage of the purchase price will be credited to my affiliate account.

The UJ Discord

If you’re looking for thoughtful discussion of anything UJ-related or want to talk more broadly about tabletop roleplaying, check out the small but mighty UJ Discord.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Steve Bean for your thoughtful review of an initial version of Learn Tabletop RPGs. Thanks also to Thomas Kristjansen for his thoughtful comments as I prepared the first major revision of the site and to Nate Keen for his thorough and helpful suggestions as I prepared v4 of Learn Tabletop RPGs. Wouter, VI, Tavendale, Kai, Scotty, Hish, Antirrhesis, and the rest of the UJ Discord crew – chatting and getting ideas from yinz gave me the motivation to put the effort into the latest overhaul.

Thanks always to fabulously talented Friday Night Crew in all its incarnations — Emerson Murray, Matt Widener, Sean Cleveland, Spencer Lindsay, Forest Monsen, Manny Zamora, and John Turner — for your friendship and all those nights rolling dice. Also thank you to the folks at RPG Reddit for constructive feedback and suggestions, and to all the gamers who have shared their thoughts and ideas with me as I’ve built out this site.

Unless otherwise noted, I created all copy and images on this site. Images of game materials are under copyright of their respective owners, and are used for purposes of commentary and education.

Technology

This version of UJ is published using the static site generator Jekyll, paired with the Minimal Mistakes theme. Both are very well documented, and working in Jekyll is a breath of fresh air.

I have used many a text editor over the years, but iA Writer has become my favorite for working with Markdown. For batch work I rely on old faithful – BBEdit. Pixelmator Pro cranks through image tasks with ease. Namecheap domain and hosting services have been powering UJ for years with no problems.