writing

Adding Some Spice to Your Dungeons and Dragons World

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Adding Spice to your Campaign

Playing Dungeons and Dragons inspires a lot of creativity for me, particularly from a player perspective. You can play a hands-on brawler, a devious thief, a sardonic bard or even an oblivious but well-meaning necromancer; truly, whatever takes your fancy. You can build a deep, emotional backstory for your character and play them as if it really were you reflected in that miniature you bought when you got excited to start the campaign. It’s easy to pass off a DM’s world building as easier than making a character you want to stick with for months, but there are so many… [Continue Reading]

In Which Medic Writes Stories

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Retvik (known as Medic on this blog) needs no introduction, as she’s far and away the most prolific writer and editor the site has ever seen. She’s written 2,924 articles, more than double everybody else combined, and she also edits, illustrates, and graphically designs most of the rest of what’s on the Daily SPUF. Truly, she’s more dedicated to the craft of writing than anyone I know. But gaming journalism is only one of her ongoing creative projects, she also writes a massive sprawling universe of countless characters, worlds, and narratives called the Phoviverse, and I’ve been reading it since roughly 2015.… [Continue Reading]

Writing About Fictional Deities

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Arceus the Pokemon God

I’ve always found it hard writing about deities. That sounds kinda weird, especially when you consider what I normally write about over on the Phoviverse. Ever since I started writing the 4th version of the Phoviverse, gods have played bigger and bigger roles in the stories. But really, have I even created gods, or are they just insanely powerful mortal beings? Actually, I have lots of ideas and rambling thoughts about gods in fictional works. The way I see it, writing fictional deities seems to come in several forms. Gods of everything, gods of big things and gods of lots… [Continue Reading]

On Making Up Words and Languages

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The Orowyrm, one of the few new enemies in Duviri

When it comes to writing the sort of weird fantasy fiction I write, I need to come up with a lot of fake words. One of the major things about the Phoviverse is that humans practically don’t exist in the main universe. In fact, humans haven’t properly existed since the MK3 Phoviverse, where they did exist and they did live near some of the larger races (mostly the Temthan and Kronospast empires) but in MK4, humans were reduced to a handful of references as a single race that lived on a single planet deep within Kronospast territories, where the Kronospasts… [Continue Reading]

On Having Written Over 2 Million Words

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Volt and the Grimoire

Turns out, I’ve written over 2 million words here on the Daily SPUF. That’s a lot of words. Like, I can barely comprehend a million words, let alone two million. Really, a million of anything is a huge number. One million seconds is equal to about 11 and a half days, a week and a half nearly. And that’s just seconds, a very small unit of measurement. On top of that, the Daily SPUF itself recently passed the 3 million word mark, meaning I’ve written a third of this blog’s content, and that discrepancy is only going to get bigger… [Continue Reading]

On Writing Sexy Things

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For obvious reasons, this image will be as bad as it gets. But seriously, if you're put off by a badly textured Argonian butt, I'm amazed you got this far.

This article is technically not safe for work. But honestly I’m struggling to write actual articles as of late, so you’re getting the random rambles from the depths of my mind. If you’re uncomfortable with mentions of sex and nudity, then you can safely ignore this article. However, I won’t be getting into anything too graphic, nor will there be any sex scenes, this article is just about writing about vaguely sexy things and stepping out of one’s comfort zone. N0w, normally, I’m not that interested in sexy things. In fact, it took me years to even be sexually attracted… [Continue Reading]

On Finishing Another Year of Writing

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Medic about to work on their computer before being distracted.

It’s kinda silly that my first piece of writing for 2024 is about finishing my writing for 2023. But I feel like I have things to discuss. The 4000th article was a bit of a downer, mostly because, well, I’ve been down lately. But over the Christmas break, I got a much needed rest, and with it, I found the energy to get back into writing. Most of that writing though hasn’t been Daily SPUF stuff. Some of it definitely has, but thankfully, aabicus managed to write a bunch of articles, which gave me a small break in the new… [Continue Reading]

2013-2023: 10 Years of Daily SPUF

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Phovos’ Nightwave critique yesterday clocked out 10 years of articles on The Daily SPUF! That’s right, on August 18 2013 we published our first article, a rant about Team Fortress 2’s Half-Zatoichi. Over the past decade since, we have published a new article every day without fail (except once), covering a huge swathe of games and topics from all across the Steamosphere and beyond, and we couldn’t have done it without each and every one of you who read, commented on, or submitted articles over the past 3,652 days. In order to commemorate the occasion, I wanted to write another… [Continue Reading]

The Flow of Writing

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A Volt enjoying the sunshine with his inflatable rubber ring

Writing, at least, good writing, has a flow to it. A journey of words that twist around and trickle down, starting as a stream and slowly becoming a mighty river. Actually writing, creating your own words, stories and articles, is just like another river, one that also ebbs and flows. This river decides whether you continue downstream or if you get caught on some piece of junk that won’t ever biodegrade. I’ll be honest with you all. What I just wrote was a load of utter bollocks. There was no real flow, it made little sense and frankly my similies… [Continue Reading]

When Writers’ Block Attacks

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My cat, Ringo

Today, I am going to write about Writers’ Block. Because, somewhat ironically, I have a massive problem with Writers’ Block currently. Turns out, writing 500 words a day every day can only go on for so long. I was bound to get burnt out eventually. However, I’m still trying and I haven’t given up yet. So how am I coping? Eh, I’ve felt better. Got no energy. Normally, in a day, I have time to write something. Generally my writing is done in the evening, after work. But so far, 2022 has been keeping me quite busy, to the point… [Continue Reading]