"Players seeking to have fun is bad for many games" is the opening statement of my latest post, where I argue that players should stop playing games trying to have fun, and instead let the game systems take them where they will, and trust that the fun will come. tangentjoy.blot.im/against-intent

Made a mass-multiplayer letterwriting game about playing exocolonists adrift in escape-pods! Gonna be running a big game of this soon. millicent-malice.itch.io/alone-in-space

The rules of the game (almost the whole blog post) written into layout (my scanner)

A very silly conversation this morning put a brain worm in my head, so I'm making it your problem. tbr.bearblog.dev/ballroom-bli...

I got paid (not much) to write a MUD, which involved a whole bunch of research and tact, and then diving in headfirst to start designing a masquerade ball for a bunch of my friends to enjoy. It'll likely never run, but, I designed a cool duelling system for it! tangentjoy.blot.im/masqueraded-...

For anyone curious what the rules are: 1. An Aspect is anything written down about the game world that we all agree is true. 2. The GM has a reserve of tokens that can be traded around the table to resolve disagreements. If you need any more guidance than that, I'm always happy to help!

New blog post!!! I'm going back to Aspect, for real this time, and I'm really excited to bring you all with me. If anyone out there runs my game, let me know how it goes. An index card worth of rules text, and a couple notepads and pens, is all you need to play. tangentjoy.blot.im/two-rule-asp...

Well, it took the better part of a month, but I managed to write up another full blog post about Solar. This time, it's about the absolute massive scale of space, even just within a solar system, and how I've gone about capturing that in game. open.substack.com/pub/tangentj...

Well, I'm really grateful to the Bluesky community, so I'm holding a giveaway! By following, liking, and sharing, you're already entered <3 The giveaway will be held on Friday the 23rd. If there are a lot of entries, I'll add more winners. Good luck! #giveaway #discoelysium

The perennial challenge of the satirist is to outrun the truth.

You know you're becoming a real sicko at long last when you finally crack and start transcribing your setting notes, characters, and regions into a spreadsheet rather than a text doc

I struggled for a really long time to decide what the first Solar Cataphracts game blog post was gonna be. I needed something in depth enough that it couldn't just be a discord message. How about a four thousand word breakdown of #Over/Under 's economics? open.substack.com/pub/tangentj...

Six months into a Lancer game, I'm slowly convincing my players that it isn't, and has never, been about the mechs. Lancer is a game about hexagons, and as long as that's all you're thinking about, it's great fun! Unfortunately, Juniper also likes feeling things about mechs, I wish her luck. 🩷

Hey everyone! I've been working on a game currently titled Solar, occasionally Solarphracts. It's a hard sci fi play by post wargame, "pbp Eve Online", with a ton of inspiration from @samsorensen.bsky.social's #Over/Under and Cataphracts games.

This week, we’re talking about… getting to the point 📝! So, so many RPGs go on and on as if they’re being paid by the word. Which, fair, you might think. Except, isn’t there someone you’re forgetting to ask? THE READER. AND THE POOR PEOPLE THEY HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS TO. Let’s try to fix this.

So this post has an error, visible in the thumbnail once you know what to look for! Thanks to @kazianova.bsky.social, here's a follow up post with some much nicer graphics to enjoy. tangentjoy.substack.com/p/update-to-...

Hear me out…

New post! This time about a way to navigate hexflowers that I've been exploring this evening, and applications for a friends' dreadful OSR game that she's working on. open.substack.com/pub/tangentj...

As a hacker collective, we couldn't just let my whole "not being at Dragonmeet" thing get in the way. With the power of things like "digital" and "cyber," we made this perfect picture happen.

After I finish up with Silksong, I'm considering playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, a game that now that I'm learning more about the alternating death/respawn mechanic, feels more like Sekiro: Shadows Die in iambs.

Explaining #over/under to out of game players in #vanitera450 is making me realize what a farce the wargame turned into by the end

large vizier models are typically trained using backtreasoning, where the model steps backwards through a plot or scheme to arrive at the cradle of twisted desires that birthed it

making some nice progress on my lil post #over/under zine. Its quite fun trying to immitate some of the style of A Pound of Flesh when all you have is google docs (I intend to run this all through some hand collage later to give it the real juice!)

Spent the entirety of the last two weeks pretending I was Anthony Bourdain Here is a link to the full compilation and a retrospective at the end: docs.google.com/document/d/e... #OVER/UNDER

Okay so I don't have a blog, I'm just gonna post some #over/under thoughts here and try to keep myself concise. I don't really play games for fun. I tend to go into them with the goal of mastering some system, and in LARPs and in this, that tends to be social. In some ways, I got my win?

i kept seeing the tempest (merc/soldier) faction in #over/under use the words "mercy" and "consequence" and i was like... that seems... familiar. It turns out that Tan (@tjslotus.bsky.social) and Otso's friendship was so profound that it literally changed Tempest's narrative internal code.

Okay everyone Yuri stocks are somehow booming!!! Maybe the one thing the datacache cannot understand is the POWER OF LOVE *if* I can save this game via the power of yuri, you can damn well bet I'm gonna give everything I can to try!!!!! More on this tomorrow

Hours later and I still cannot express how funny it is that The Grash Uppem Gardening Club is where that conversation happened. I am in *tears* laughing at this tiny garden being chosen for an absolutely character defining scene. Prospero's Dream is an unfathomably beautiful place.

More like the war STARTED because someone was in love with you.

So I went quiet on #over/under posting for a bit, but now people are saying that a war ended because someone was in love with me; to which I say YEAH? MAYBE? YOU CAN'T PROVE A THING. THIS STATION RUNS ON YURI AND SPITE, AND LEMME TELL YA, I'M RUNNIN DAMN LOW ON YURI. @juniper-c.bsky.social

In new #Over/Under news, text formatting is huge. Today has seen so much use of -# for small text to whisper, mutter, and to hold parallel conversations with visual distinction as well as just using replies. Also!! code `formatting` text to represent digital messages instead of speech!

Mondo Terminal was always a delightful piece of levity whenever I saw him in the Blocks, but earlier tonight I heard an eight second audio that changed my life. Its out there. It exists. The audio apology.

Yuri is about the girls you *don't* kiss #Over/Under

It's been so extremely fun to be playing #OVER/UNDER all day with some of my favourite folks in the TTRPG space. Laugh out loud dialogue and truly iconic, hard-as-fuck moments happen every hour or so. It's a big part of the appeal tbh. I'm dying for the scrapbooks to come out after the game ends.

#OVER/UNDER Why would sam do this to us... what an evil man...

The bratva ball may just be one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life, and knowing that that whole channel has been archived is going to tear me apart in the most beautiful *tears in the rain* way You've done it again #Over/Under, you absolute bastard game

Sam Sorensen's #over/under is perhaps one of the best games I've played in years. I feel cripplingly powerless, I regularly spend tens of minutes staring at my screen in shock, and I could be kicked out of the game at any moment by forces beyond my control. Also I draw pictures for monopoly money!

server's live gamers, come join the madhouse discord.gg/FDJ7T4C2Sm

got another one done

Oh, I have THOUGHTS on this one. So, this trope, the trope of the Adaptable Human, emerges directly from the racist beliefs and subconscious feelings of the folks who made the first fantasy rpgs. In some of these early games, humans could choose from any number of classes, but... (1/10)

Having a normal one, sat on the floor of a friend's kitchen writing poetry in fridge magnets and eating ice cream

Taking estrogen feels like I've just cranked a bunch of difficulty options up; I get tired faster, bits of me hurt that didn't used to, they've added a whole new seasonal emotions mechanic that I'm still getting used to, and I'm pretty sure some of the AI Factions are getting stealth buffs