Hello there! I'm Isaac, one of the judges and winner of the Audience Pick from last year's Appx. N Jam.

I wrote a manifesto to celebrate the upcoming Appx. N Jam 2026! Hopefully this will make people more excited to work on their adventures for this jam. Good luck!

https://afraidofencounters.bearblog.dev/appendix-n-manifesto/

Great article. I think for me, the biggest challenge is getting my players to think in weirder ways. I've often tried to challenge the medieval europe status quo, only to have my players fight to draw the story back into those famialar spaces. Even in decidedly weird homebrew worlds—even those which my players take the time to read my notes about—the PCs themselves are copy-paste from a single non-medieval genre at best and your usual wizard at worst.