Mad excitement this morning, as @arkat.bsky.social has completed and delivered the cover for my upcoming #BRP #TTRPG Fantasy game, #WrydSword

Thank you everyone who has posted entertaining nonsense that has made it to my feed. It's banished the headline grabbing silliness that is coming out of the Labour party conference! 🤣

360 of the fields behind my house. OMG its full of clouds 😃

Another oddity from today's visit to Oldham Sixth Form College was this fragment from the Oldham Infirmary which previously stood on the site of a lion faced Goddess Brigantia.

So we had the first of our Sixth Form Open Days at Oldham Sixth Form College, and i must say it was alot more FUN than I expected. One not fun thing was the creatures in jars in Biology- including this pictured one that our H decided to thrust in my face for some reason! 😆

Back to #WyrdSword this morning, where my players spent more time gathering information from npcs they came across. Not that it will save them when they head into the wilderness proper, and face a gaggle of Warp (chaos) monsters 👹 Big thanks to Tony and @thefon.bsky.social for a lovely game.

A great game of #OpenQuestRpg last night with the home group. They reached the end of The Isle of the Dead adventure, where in an Afterlife, corrupted and turned into a grey and cold thing by a cabal of Priest-Kings, they fought a Colossus made of Dead Ashes and released a Goddess. 1/

If you wonder how Keir Starmer got to be leader of the Labour Party, and win the PM, watch this investigative journalism report youtu.be/bAOk1fZFHN8?...

#SkypiratesOfTheFloatingRealms is the only #TTRPG where a character can be "Abducted by bandits, who sold them as a slave to a Duck Sky Pond. The Ducks were indifferent masters, but they taught them +20% Deception." #lifepath #openquestRPG #ducks

We've an infestation of House Elves. Not only did they hide and then put back in an unexpected spot some lovely new fingerless gloves @racheln76.bsky.social had just made, but more worryingly, they hid her good driving glasses for five days! They've only just put them back. No trousers for you!

I remember the last time the weather was this clear and calm, despite the world on TV being so tense and "on fire". That time was the Pandemic in 2020, when I ran my D100 lite #ttrpg Skypirates of the Floating Realm, a light hearted fantasy game which lifted mine and my players spirits. 1/

Live later today - Official Trench Crusade Backdrops by @handiworkgames.bsky.social Here is one of our minis that I feverishly kitbashed and painted at the weekend on one of the new backdrops. www.kickstarter.com/projects/jon...

Afternoon dog walk with the family, down the previously unexplored #RoytonLinearPark

after a late start, decided to leave the bunker and see what the outside is like after a week of constant rain. Im happy to report, its lovely if somewhat overgrown and quite damp 😃

Cute Black Cat ends morning writing session, with passive aggressive demands for snuggles. 🤣

Often, it's the small details in my adventure writing that fill me with pride. This morning, completely in context, I gave a section the title "Here’s John with the Weather" 🤣 #ttrpg

Boosting this again because clinically vulnerable people do not stop being vulnerable when the Government wants to save money. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

This morning, I discovered I have an adventure synopsis in my in-development folder for D20 adventures titled "The Great Hunt of Ballsover Castle", which I suspect is not very serious in tone. The first line, "Lord Swindin wants to climb the greasy pole of nobility", seems to back that up. 🤣

Well, I did the last ten minutes of work on my very Simple BRP hack. Main headlines are Characteristics as skills, with specialisms representing the myriad of things that a normal big skill list BRP would do. Scalable magic/powers as skills. Literally five pages long. Putting it to one side now 😉

I didn't think I'd be returning to my Gloranthan TTRPG blog so quickly, but the recent state of RuneQuest editions from Chaosium got the decades-old RQ fan in me analysing the situation. arkatsplayground.com/2025/09/12/s...

@dreadships.bsky.social You miss the bit of the story where it stomped across Manchester city centre, from its original dry dock, taking out several London-based financial institutions before settling in its current home, where its victories are celebrated by millions of visitors every year! 🤣

I'm having a complete blast writing 101 Swords and Sorcery Adventure Seeds for the upcoming Swords Against the Shadows Companion. Each one is a very quick, punchy synopsis of a Swords and Sorcery tale. I wrote the titles in the table first, so it's a bunch of fun seeing the actual seeds emerge. ⚔️ 😍

My favourite Bad Mood Music through the decades Fear 80s > Black Flag 80s>Slayer mid80s-early 90s> Ministry 90s> Amen 00s> Neurosis 10s Now? CNTs Thoughts and Prayers on Ipecac, here's the rather loud and noisy title track 😍 youtu.be/YO4KexXhOKE?...

For the morning crowd. Beyond Dread Portals, now a Silver Medal winner, is @drivethrurpg.com Deal of the Day for until 4 pm BST/10am CPT time today.😍

Beyond Dread Portals by @thetweedmeister.bsky.social is the Deal of the Day over at @drivethrurpg.com today. If you want to check out this world-hopping game of baroque D20 fantasy, now's your chance for £4/$5. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

The Incredible Hull joins my Shelf of Monsters to battle Godzilla and the Alien Queen simultaneously! 🤣

Fancy a bit of gripping historical roleplaying? The first edition was deservedly a big hit on the UK Indie scene back in the 2000s. Follow the patreon (and egg on Neil) for the new edition.

Question: What's the best Killing Joke album that isn't a Killing Joke Album? Answer: Murder INC (from 1992 when the rest pf the band was on a break from Jaz). youtu.be/hT4TZoOVrfg?...

Reform UK are yelling “drill, baby, drill” 🙄 But fracking is reckless & won’t even cut bills. Time to end this nonsense. Tell Ed Miliband: BAN FRACKING permanently. Add your name: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ke...

It must be said that today's episode of Alien Earth (S1 E5) confused the heck out of me, because I thought I had gone back to episode 1, and must have clicked through the first ten minutes the first time round. Still perfect TV and the best Alien stuff in years (IMO).

Sometimes my diseased mind throws me a curveball. There I was after a good night's sleep, prepared to do a fast-track intensive day of housework-dad-duties, and then it serves up a convincing model of how to handle psychics in a modern mystery rpg. So here I am after quickly typing it up 🤣

Part of editing is making your manuscript less honest.

This morning, before I crack on with a mountain of household chores, I've been plotting and planning the sequel/continuation of the Ziggurat of Gloom (my introductory #oldhammerrpg adventure) for #Grogmeet2026 in Jan. Did you know there's a dungeon under the Ziggurat?

Amidst the tiredness, and pottering half-heartly around cleaning up the house, I've managed to move my #oldhammerrpg out of prototype one doc and into separate chapters write up, which I shall now fill in the gaps and refine. An admin task, but an important one that leads to publication. 1/

I've had only eight hours of sleep over two nights due no hot water. Oh how the Newtlets get concerned and angsty if they don't bathe regularly! Last night was spent fixing it by getting wireless thermostats and boiler to work together. It has exposed my fragility as a modern man! 🤣

Great Yarmouth is set to host the biggest neo-nazi music festival in over a decade. The Home Office has the power to block entry of overseas bands, which will scupper the promoters plans. But they won’t act unless we demand it. Email the Home Office now: hopenothate.org.uk/2025/08/28/g...

Who's this good looking young science student? (posted because I was in Leeds at the same time @paulfricker.bsky.social was, and actually met him at a martial arts weekend course sans the afro, ah meemmorries 🤣)

My diseased mind sees this as made up of broken public toilets, which gives the piece a completely different, but similarly sounding, name. Oh and then copies in @clownf1st.bsky.social because its pertinent to his interests (#stoolreport). I should buy one as way of apology to @fenrisgames.com. 😂

After far too long of things getting in the way, it was OpenQuest Thursday! Our strange adventures beyond the safety of the borders of the Empire, continued as the characters continued down The Path of the Dead. Epic stuff that deserves a blog post at some point :) Thanks to my players :D

A spare place has opened up in my online game of The Queen is Dead, using Swords Against the Shadows (a swords & sorcery game based on The Black Hack), 10am - 1pm on Sunday. Sign up is here on Warhorn, with joining instructions in the game's Discussion. warhorn.net/events/elect...

Getting down to business and setting up @playrole.bsky.social for my Sunday morning game of #SwordsAgainstTheShadows at @elevatedpachyderm.bsky.social online shindig. Being rules-lite D20 (Black Hack-based), it's a joy to work with, and a holiday from the crunchy BRP stuff I've been doing recently.

So there's enough space in my life now to be a Gloranthafan, so I've reactivated my blog, Arkat's Playground, and made a rather self-indulgent post about why I stepped back from my Fantacism, and what's been going on while I've been focused on other things. #glorantha #runequest #questworlds

Oh @cybergoths.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy I disagree - if you are a #TravellerRPG fan. You big tease 😀

RuneQuest Glorantha has been calling my attention wandering GMs' brains recently. While I was innocently stirring the bolonganise for tea, it goes "hey Newt, I know how we can do Sorcery, and it will work fine this time. What if Arkati Sorcery was just Rune Magic with extra flexibility?" 1/

Quick game of #Wyrdsword this morning. More feeling around the set up of the new adventure they started last session. A magic moment that only BRP with its critical chance to roll skills can give, happened right at the end of the session, concluding things strongly. Reminded me why I love BRP. 😍

If theres ever trouble at mill, i bet the workers will fight like lions 🤣 #oldham #oldmill

Well, last night I well and truly hit a road bump, but instead of letting the wheels fall off, I tucked them in, put out the wings and used the whole thing to launch my super-dupa-d101games jet car. A bit wobbly at first, it's got a fierce forward thrusting afterburner, but it will get me there 😍

That's what you say, and it's a good albi 😉 Give me 23,000 SEK and i'll keep quiet about where the bodies are buried.🤣

mmmmemories 😍

Tidying up the office, not watching the monsters fight (honest) 🤣