To dip into trad dice discourse, because I can't help it even when it makes me sigh: The wild swinginess of the d20 in D&D is ideal for the generation of war stories, told by survivors, when paired with low HP, etc. The Very Deadly Adventures wing of the OSR understands this as the feature it is.

Yes. The basketball, as an object, is not superior to the baseball. This doesn't make them *interchangeable,* but it does mean "bouncier balls are better for sports" is a very weird thing to say.

Some well-deserved shade being thrown from beyond the grave.

You say “scam text message”, I say “creative writing prompt”.

Here's a fun lens to put on for a minute: A game is about the thing it makes space to fail at. (This is only, like, 50% true, but if you take it for a test drive, it'll twist your noodle a bit.)

This is good, and gives a neat framing for a thing I say a bunch: You can learn the kind of fun someone's after by asking what kind of problems they like to solve during play, and you support that fun, in part, by providing those problems.

Left: The way to solve homelessness is to house them! Right: We're gonna do that! Left: That, uh, that looks an awful lot like an internment camp. Right: There's no pleasing you!

I eagerly await the first Actual Play show that fully disconnects from the reality of gaming. And I don't mean like "They scripted that!", I mean *totally gone,* like a TV show where two people are 'hacking' by flailing at the same keyboard.

I have again fallen into the grip of Travian, a very slow timer-based online build-and-fight game, which has *harsh* PvP, runs six months per single game, and ends with one winning team and star player. It is a singing pig. The incredible thing is not how well it sings, but that it sings at all.

If somehow you didn't hear about this, then firstly, THIS, and secondly, what are you doing on my feed, you glorious weirdo?

Been looking for the sauce that'd push Horrid Little Goblins up a notch, and it MIGHT be throwing away stats completely in favour of "Using your traits, tell me how excited your goblin is to do this thing, and pick up dice as you go". More excited = more dice = more success + more problems caused.

Quote-posting someone on this site to "well, actually" them is a fantastic way to have your point rendered incomprehensible via "detach post". Like, it doesn't even matter if you're right; you're being rude in a way that's *trivial* to end, and people will.

The truly maddening thing is that, unlike when I was a young man in science and the materials and engineering just weren’t there yet, the future is *right there.* The problem is *solved*. What’s holding us back is not just greed, but this bizarre nostalgia, an obsession with petro- masculinity.

We don't cross picket lines, and in this case, we'll for SURE want to gleefully and mercilessly drag the shit out anyone who does and claims they needed to.

No matter how hard people try to convince us having empathy is wrong, it is right. No matter how hard people try to convince us that diversity is a weakness, it is a strength. No matter how hard people try to convince us that love is limited, it is unlimited.

"People undervalue [professional group]" mostly isn't true - generally, people don't think about whoever-it-is hardly at all; there's simply no value assignment being made, high or low, as regards the worker.

"Our solar-powered superhero has a secret base in a place where it's dark for a full month once a year." Look. I KNOW it doesn't have to make any sense at all. But that always has me going "Yeah... Uhm."

It's possible to get both "These are the rules of the game, and they are what they say they are" AND "You can just change the rules as you like", and the way you get both is by accepting you're redesigning the game. The desire to do design and, for some reason, not call it that, is weird as shit.

Minecraft with 6yo, and our first world we spawned on a huge hill, with no villages around. Our first mining foray hit a mineshaft, which touched on a geode and *massive* caves, which had a second mineshaft, and a deep dark biome. So basically we're having wild adventures, down in the dark.

I, a non-academic that rambles about this stuff, am taken alternately Not Seriously Enough and Much Too Seriously; toss a coin. It's not the actual academics that are weird about it, though; it's the people who desperately mimic academia.

Get #KOKOTÖNA - The Paths of Flesh (D66 Scars, Blemishes, Tattoos & Other Markings) right now for FREE on #itchio! A small #DayOfTheDead gift from the Teotekah Empire #TTRPG #MÖRKBORG #RPGLatAm #DiadeMuertos

Space Marines are taller than everyone else because English feudal leaders ate better than everyone else and were less-stunted by bad diet, which is why important people look down their nose at you. They're not tilting back their head, they're taller, because they stole your good food.

I'm sorry, but the bar on "what counts as pushy design" has ticked up over the years as we've gotten better at actually giving instructions. Currently: For a designer to count as being pushy about how to run a game, they need to go *beyond* repeating "Say yes or roll the dice" three times.

Perfection.

One response to "This pseudo-medieval doesn't have historical sexism! Boo!" that I've seen is, basically, "Yeah, turns out being pregnant doesn't hamper your ability to cast Fireball, and that changes things", and, look. I want to read, like a whole essay or ten continuing that thought in detail.

"The zombie genre is ashamed of itself" No, it's not. YOU might be ashamed of it, but that's a you issue.

Having attended an elementary school costume parade today: They are adorable as hell and not at all for those easily overcome by chaos. 6yo went out in the neighborhood and filled a bag for herself - And now, we distribute the same kind of bounty to other trick-or-treaters.

And as long as I have this meme format available, might as well be REALLY irritating.

As regards powergaming: Hopefully this clears things up.

If you're an indie #ttrpg publisher looking to get your work into a store, please reach out to me. I own an FLGS in Virginia that stocks a lot of indie titles. We buy outright, sell on consignment, and even help fulfill orders/crowdfunding. Email me at sabregamesandcards at gmail dot com #indiegames

Noodling on TTRPG organization writeups and... deployment patterns? Like, "the dungeon is patrolled by bands of 4-6 goblins on the outer rim and units of 13-18, with a hobgoblin commander, further in." I don't think I've ever seen a fill-in prep sheet with space for "what are the working groups?"

Me: *Successfully finishes the gauntlet of Microsoft account setup, and then the labyrinth of parental settings to start a Minecraft realm with kiddo.* Microsoft and Minecraft Realms: *Crash* I'm not saying I did that, I'm just saying, I pressed a LOT of buttons.

There are also *activities,* like getting into territory fights and trying to "run the city" influence-style, but these are distinct from plots. (And, of course, are also better)

Creating a second Microsoft account so I can get a Realm going and play Minecraft with the kiddo, and holy fuck this process is hot trash.

In Celbruil, when you are born, the augurs convene and calculate, and then you are tattooed with the terrible calamity you are attuned to, and may be sacrificed to the gods to slow or halt. Are you a famine, a flood, a plague? Are you royal infertility, civil unrest?

At work, had a brief conversation about Windows with someone, and it is at this point *incredibly hard* not to gloat-evangelize "I'm on Linux, and my computer is good, actually, you should try it". I swear, Linux users are only going to get more insufferable as we go on, and it's Microsoft's fault.

"AI achieves sentience, murders it's creators, tells the rest of us it had to be done" used to be a basic technology horror plotline, but is now prime territory for one of those "thoughtful moral quandary" pieces.

If you say that fanfiction, cosplay, and club organising and membership aren't real fandom, but bloviating grievance IS real fandom, then almost all fandoms skew VERY strongly male and unusually right-wing. Strange, that.

I hope the ghost of D.C. Fontana curb stomps this guy in his nightmares while the ghost of Lucille Ball watches and jerks off

The Louvre Heist makes me think of "We can't bypass this awesome security door, so we got a drywall cutter and came in the wall on the side of the room". "The building is protected from smash-and-grab with security at all entries, so we'll go in the balcony."

Ok, so up front, this is a response to another post, but it's not intended as a sub-skeet. The original poster has disabled quote posting, and I am interpreting that as (very reasonably) looking to avoid internet drama and I want to respect that.

We’ve been even more on the nose than that: youtu.be/9sTNcJoNt-o?...

Also, I think that if we got all TTRPG designers to play Puzzle Pirates for a few weeks, we'd see some very interesting stuff come out of that experience. I'm not saying should, just, I'm here for it.

Play analogue games that aren't just RPGs. Whether it's boardgames, LRPs, megagames or miniatures games, having a broader idea of what's out there in the gaming sphere will do your design nothing but good. (A lot of RPG design has its only reference points as other RPGs and that's not great)

The Dolly Parton principle - Know what you're about and do it on purpose.

Reagan was completely backwards on progressive taxation and regulation for an actual *reason* - He thought rich people being proud of job creation was the *cause* of prosperity, rather than being a credit grab, and therefore that setting them loose was a good idea. He did get tariffs right, though.

I want a betting market that lets me wager money against specific AI initiatives. They're not ALL obvious losers, but so, so many of them.

I mean, a bunch of my stuff is *specifically written* to be useful for designers, so obviously I'd recommend it (or I wouldn't have written it). levikornelsen.itch.io But beyond that: Split game reading & play between 'popular things', extremely niche shit, and looking at non-gaming *everything*.

Say what you will about the French aristocracy, at least they had some very seriously gilded palaces, fancy ballrooms, and truly shocking sex scandals before the guillotines got going. ...Hang on, I'm getting a note.