I need help finding a word. I'm trying to say: the kind of editing or polishing that results in an end product that is *perhaps* more technically proficient, broadly palatable, or aligned with commonly practiced standards... but which strips the thing of its resonance, unique spark, or janky charm.

I'm a guest at @kamcon.bsky.social this weekend! My highlights so far: -winning Taskmaster (partially on the back of my "best worst gift" - I showed up with a lovingly plated tuna jello salad) -having someone exclaim "This is everything I hoped for & more!" during character creation in Dream Askew.

Canadians! There is a petition to sign to protest Mastercard and Visa's control over the purchase of legal adult content. This is specifically about the Steam & itchio situation, but language protects adult creators. www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en... #nsfw #censorship #canpoli @acvalens.net

Alright, my dearies. Here we go. Join us for the ride? www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

wrote a new design diary (free for everyone to access) about @lackingceremony.bsky.social 's developmental editing for Seven-Part Pact and the process of implementing it — both creatively and philosophically! www.patreon.com/posts/137648...

Fellow game designers/etc! Can you help me with a quick silly video for a Taskmaster style competition I need to do? All I need is for you to film a landscape-oriented selfie video where you say the following: "Hi! I'm [Full Name], [designer] of [game or games]. I'm here to say: Welcome to KamCon!"

Fellow game designers/etc! Can you help me with a quick silly video for a Taskmaster style competition I need to do? All I need is for you to film a landscape-oriented selfie video where you say the following: "Hi! I'm [Full Name], [designer] of [game or games]. I'm here to say: Welcome to KamCon!"

@lackingceremony.bsky.social's Monsterhearts is getting its own video game courtesy of Canadian design studio, Ludic Lemur. How are they going to adapt the angsty, social dynamics of the RPG into a digital format? Cards!

Unboxing the new Quiet Year! This is a hand-stamped box that's the perfect size to hold the how to play booklet, cards, skull tokens, and little wooden dice.

Turn one, on the play: Blackcleave Cliffs, Black Lotus, Chain of Smog targeting myself, discarding Atraxa and Oliphant, Exhume the Atraxa, draw into Mox Jet and Reanimate, bring back the Oliphant, pass with thirteen power on board and Entomb + Death ready for turn two. This felt glorious.

You hear Don't Stop Believing (Glee) playing in the distance. It's a warning.

My experience doing vintage cube elimination drafts on MTGO this season is that Boros aggro will consistently net you a 2-1 or 3-0 record, with or without power. If you have any combination of Forth, Phlage, Otharri, Bombardiers, Gut, Pyrogoyf, Ajani, or Skullclamp, you will just steamroll people.

Ran a game of The Quiet Year by @lackingceremony.bsky.social with some brilliant people and had an incredible 4 hour experience of hope, heartbreak and laughs along the way. Gotta love the feeling when people tell you “this was my favorite RPG experience ever!”

quicksand? sure, listen—when I was a kid I was told about yeerks. you know yeerks? space slugs, they slide in your ear, take over your brain. you’re locked in your own body. terrifying. and then I grew up. and there’s no yeerks. but get this: you’re still locked in your own body

Talk of the Table! Elliot and Brian sit down with @lackingceremony.bsky.social , designer of beloved games like The Quiet Year and Monsterhearts, to discuss the many full circle moments of her career, why trigger warnings are actually for the sickos, and how she continues to learn from her designs.

Tune in TOMORROW for our interview with @lackingceremony.bsky.social, designer of beloved games like The Quiet Year and Monsterhearts. We discuss the many full circle moments of her career, why trigger warnings are actually for the sickos, and how she continues to learn from her designs.

I'm playing *Going for Broke* this evening, session two! I love this game so much. Here's session one if folks wanna see. Designed by probably my favorite #TTRPG designer, Avery Alder @lackingceremony.bsky.social youtu.be/tUuiY4EmOMU

my mom taught me there's two kinds of businesses: hot dog stands and art galleries - hot dog stands protect territory and keep competition off their turf - art galleries benefit from more adjacent art galleries, cluster together to amplify reach/support youre an art gallery, not a hot dog stand

A few nights ago, I finished the second season of Mo, a comedy about family, place, and hustle by Palestinian-Houstonite comedian/writer Mo Amer. It's really clever, and heartfelt, and manages to thread the needle of being a playful show that touches on hard stories. I recommend it!

Friend of mine had an approach to being a player which was "Pull the lever, drink the potion." Find the thing that needs doing and do it.

For a group to play Monsterhearts, the players have to accept that the Turn Someone On move will as likely as not make their characters feel attraction to more than one gender. It requires Bi-in.

Been watching more stand-up over the past few years, and something I've noticed pretty consistently: cis comedians can write genuinely funny jokes that mock trans people, but only when those jokes are grounded in actual insights that have been gained through proximity, curiosity, and receptivity.

Canadians! My new sitcom roleplaying game, Going For Broke, is small enough that I can ship it to you as oversized lettermail! That means it only costs a couple bucks to send you this fast-paced, beginner-friendly game for 4-8 players. Check it out! buriedwithoutceremony.com/gfb

Not wanting to reboot my patreon, so much as I am wishing that I just had an actual patron. If you're incredibly wealthy and want to liberate my design possibilities and have everything that emerges as a result dedicated to you, please reach out.

Quick story: It's the second weekend of Edmonton's RPG-A-Thon, where I've been vending in the outdoor portion of the market. Except, today, it was absolutely pouring rain! A midsummer prairie storm. It got so bad that the humidity started to warp the pages of the books I had on display in my tent.

Yesterday I bought Going for Broke by @lackingceremony.bsky.social. I've made games using plot formats before (esp the Lester Dent scheme), but using the TV episodic format so tightly (including credit music) is genius! I'm porting these tools for use in other games for sure.

1. First #TTRPG played: D&D 3.5 2. First ever ran: D&D 3.5 3. Played most: Apocalypse World 4. Run most: The Quiet Year 5. Favorite: Blades in the Dark, Dog Eat Dog, Dialect, Apocalypse World, Star Crossed 6. Most recently played: Going For Broke 7. Most recently run: Red Carnations on a Black Grave

the Fantastic Four cast get asked about their own personal fantastic four, which leads to some canned niceties from pascal, kirby and quinn, and an insanely he knows ball answer from ebon.

My opponent casts Doomsday. I let it resolve, and wait for them to put a spell on the stack. I use Shifting Woodland to copy the Memory Jar in my graveyard, and crack it open. Good game. (Luckily, my opponent didn't see the lethal line to sac 10 of their Hullbreacher treasures to Bolas' Citadel.)

Four lessons I've learned making #ttrpgs: 1. Never spend more than two years honing/developing a game if the play experience doesn't feel fun in the ways you want it to be in the first two iterations. It's extremely unlikely you'll manage to make it fun how you want to if it's not early on.

Friends! I'm going to be one of the keynote speakers at this year's Queerness & Games Con, alongside TreaAndrea Russworm. Come visit Montreal this September and let's get weird about games! I first spoke at Queerness & Games 12 years ago, so this is a cool full circle moment! www.qgcon.org/2025

I'm boothing this weekend! YEG locals, come see me at RPG-A-Thon (outdoor market, both weekends). Everyone else, any recommendations on my trial booth setup? (picture this centered under a 10x10 canopy tent, two friendly faces, cash and tap pad kept inside crate, transactions off side of table.)

Prototyping is fun.

Another magic card design I couldn't get out of my head. (my first draft was "Coyotes, Foxes, Jackals, and Wolves are Dogs" but I feel like this is probably a lot more playable.)

The hot new party game for ten year-old Canadian kids is, apparently, "Donald Trump." How you play Donald Trump is: everyone else eats snacks and runs around and plays, and one kid sits in an armchair getting increasingly irrate, yelling about tariffs he plans to impose on the other party guests.

Speaking of which: I am always surprised and disheartened that there doesn't exist a game like Five Fires in TTRPGs afaict. If you want to help it be a thing, please consider following and backing: www.backerkit.com/call_to_acti...

Games I Want to Play That AREN’T D&D — The Quiet Year by @lackingceremony.bsky.social

I'm often asked what Democratic politicians can do to learn from pro wrestling and combat Republican neokayfabe The simplest answer to that question is just, "Practice doing Dusty Rhodes's 1985 'Hard Times' promo in front of the mirror every morning until you really MEAN it" 🗣️ #wrestlesky #polisky

Got to play Going for Broke last night and it was an utter delight! Sets a clear goal and achieves it in just one extremely entertaining hour. I also suspect that if you were to keep playing it, you might find out it's actually a horror game

Inarguably the most valuable resource in the RPG hobby. Even for someone who mostly writes for Youtube, having Rascal articles to cite and frame discussion has been a godsend

I'll be giving a keynote speech at the Generation Analog Conference this year! My talk is entitled "Thinking of a Master Plan: Hip Hop, TTRPGs, and the Power of Imaginative Defiance" The event is online and free! Sign up here: www.eventbrite.com/e/generation...

A few weeks ago, I cracked the core mechanic of the Monsterhearts supplement I've been working on since 2017 (Can't Lose, about the dizzying highs and crushing lows of high school sports). But the more I work on it, the more I daydream about just rolling it into a third edition of the game.

Occasionally, I think to myself "You know what would be cool? If there was a 4X strategy game but it was completely abstract and vibes-based. Like a hazy poem version of Civilization, or even Frostpunk." Then I remember that there already IS a game like that, because I had that idea a long time ago.

Hey new folks! 👋 I design games that make historical truths accessible & engaging—like Harlem Unbound & Haunted West. I’ve also worked on Dune, Doctor Who, Pathfinder 2E, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire 5E, and more. Expect posts on history, politics, geekery, booze, podcasting & publishing. Say hi! #TTRPG

Happy #Juneteenth! 🤎🙏🏾✊🏾

It's Pride Month! If you'd like to support a queer + trans game designer making games about queer identities, queer relationships, and queer possibility-making in a collapsing world, you're in luck! I'm running a sale all month long. Use "pride" to save 20% over at: store.buriedwithoutceremony.com

Canada: Has anyone seen any asks from CUPW about how consumers should act to remain in solidarity with the union during this time? I have seen no calls for boycott, reduction of use, etc. Has there been anything like that? We're still in "continue using Canada Post as normal" territory, right?

I've been conceptualizing this magic card in my head for weeks, and I think it's finally perfect. (Yes, it's a sorcery on purpose.)

I need a term (new or existing) that means: This character ability/option/feat doesn't enable the character to actually do anything new or do anything better; instead, it just describes an action that the player would have assumed they could do anyway, in the absence of the existence of the ability.

Weird how many Blankheart, Blankhearts, and Blank Heart roleplaying games have been released since 2012.