My sister is in Vietnam right now and I’m not entirely sure that her hotel is real. If she told me it only appears every century, I’d probably believe it.

@kevinkulp.bsky.social I didn't expect anyone to make a movie that would bridge both our cinematic obsessions, but apparently it's happening! gizmodo.com/keanu-reeves...

Free Halloween ashcan of Escape to Utopia - zombies everywhere, and nowhere to flee! Super excited to play this at Metatopia next month. planesailinggames.itch.io/escape-to-ut...

My border collie and his VERY LOUD squeaky toy do not understand the professionalism of client meetings from my home office.

My spouse: “What’s that noise in the basement?” Me: “It’s the furnace.” Narrator: “It was NOT the furnace.” I’d like to request a moment of silence for my late, lamented water heater.

We just saw BEAST OF WAR, a new Aussie shark movie. Ranks an amazing #4 out of 183 shark movies we've seen. Aboriginal lead, amazing practical effects, good dialogue, WW2 background story, believable villain you love to hate, racism, hot nurses, amazing chomps, fun jump scares. Go see or rent it.

Happy birthday, @jenkatwrites.bsky.social! Here, have a birthday oopossum.

🐻 The battle of the chonks has arrived: It’s Fat Bear Week 2025. Will 128 Grazer pull off a three-peat? You can vote for the fattest bear on @explore.org’s website until Sept. 30. https://wapo.st/3Kfr5ix

Poop, wiggle, pose, (request) peanuts. Profit! #birds (For those who follow the adventures of my resident blue jays, this is Deetoo.)

TTRPG convention questions - as a visitor, what makes a good standing banner at a stand? (Those pull up roller banners) As a stallholder, what do you think makes a great banner? Anything I should make sure that I do (or avoid doing) when ordering one?

Game Designers... what was the game that got you into designing #ttrpgs and why? For me it was Fiasco by @jmstar.bsky.social - it was/is a great game, I enjoyed playing it. The format was mind blowing but it didn't quite do what I wanted. So I wrote When The Dark Is Gone which did. #gamedesign

Happy 16th anniversary of Kitchenpocalypse, everyone, when my cabinets and my wall decided to part ways (and turn on the gas stove in the process!)

@johnrogers.bsky.social Happy birthday, John!

Continuing to work on “Escape to Utopia” and I’m now writing up Robot Uprising threats. Which would you fear most? An autonomous car (like Christine)? A robot police dog gone bad? A killer drone that wants to land an explosive on your head? The fear that one of your NPCs is really a robot…?

It came up today that I can tell if a shark movie’s sound effects were done in Bulgaria or South Africa by the sound of the growl the shark makes. It’s a very distinctive kind of growl!

The pork butts I smoked today may be the best barbecue I’ve ever made, and I have absolutely no idea why. But my dowager empress certainly thinks so!

You can always tell a Milford Man.

My podcast has evolved into a conversation between TTRPG luminaries, and it's awesome. But it needs a new name. Current possibilities: Dungeons & Discussions Tabletop Team-Up The Riggscast/The Ben Riggs Show/Something else with my name in it. OR: Something else. Thoughts?

The Pro Family Forum’s early 80s Satanic Panic pamphlet "Dungeons and Dragons: Only a Game?” has it all: - a great cover - a description of D&D guaranteed to entice 14 year olds - a list of other, “more sophisticated and cruel" fantasy TTRPGs to try

Kevin Smith is making a shark movie. No, a moose movie. A moose shark movie. Anyways, this is glorious. www.imdb.com/title/tt4269...

Rereading 1934’s Fer-de-Lance, the very first Nero Wolfe mystery by Rex Stout. I love Wolfe but the time gap here is startling. The murder victim is my age… and born April 9th, 1875.

What if, instead of staring blankly at the page for weeks at a time and then suddenly being able to write a ton all at once, I was just able to write consistently every day? Crazy I know

Tonight’s golden age SPECTACULARS! game found the Champions of the Mid-Atlantic facing down ancient Greek gladiators & a bestial Minotaur wearing armor forged by Daedalus himself. There’s a dead Greek legend who wants out of Hades, and he’s willing to pave that road with the corpses of dead heroes.

24 hours remain. 27 ENNIE award winners, and FOUR are #DeltaGreen, including Impossible Landscapes, in the Humble Bundle. Get it before it’s gone!

Last weekend I drove down to PA for a family reunion I’d organized (somewhat at the last minute). Ended up with 29 family members attending! The weather behaved perfectly, everyone had fun, I bought too much food, and I pawned the creepy 1831 family portrait off on my cousin. Victory.

Logging onto social media in the morning is a lot more palatable when you refer to it as “unfurling the Scroll of Doom”

That's a quest.

When going through my bookcase today I (re)found my grandfather‘s bible – given to him by his church in 1925, lost when he fled Warsaw Poland in the Nazi invasion September 1939, found by a stranger, hidden under a rock for six years, and then retrieved and sent back to him in 1945.

Last weekend? We made 140 lbs of solid barbecue. #bbq

August's free 1-page RPG is It Didn't Say Anywhere In The Rules That A Dog COULDN'T Play Basketball, a harrowing experience of being beaten at sports by a golden retriever that shows up 30 years later to ruin your second wedding. Patrons get it a week early here: www.patreon.com/posts/136764...

how many times am I gonna have to post this

*in my very best Masshole voice* FACK YOU, ASSHOLES

God damn I would have taken your word for it, you didn’t need to show me this

We ranked SHARK TERROR at #140 out of the 179 shark movies we’ve seen. Michael Paré could not save this movie; we were on #TeamShark and wanted EVERYONE devoured. No such luck. The SFX was okay; it was the writing, directing, acting, continuity, & set dressing that was bad. Best hobby.

Barbecue day! We’ll have pulled pork, pork belly burnt ends, beef brisket, pork ribs, chicken sausage burnt ends, and smoked turkey. It’s sunny and gorgeous out. There’s a pool. And the house smells amazing. I.. I probably should have eaten breakfast.

My toller has an inverse relationship between happiness and cleanliness. And man, is she happy!

My favorite Reddit thread topic of the day.

I have felt threatened or unsafe, in all my DC time of the nearly 50 years I have been here, exactly 3 times: * once, when a man on the metro exposed themselves at me * at Pride, when someone brandished what turned out to be a fake gun & sparked an understandable panic * when Jan. 6th went down

The search for work continues! - Podcast Editing - Sound Design - TTRPG Design - TTRPG Editing - Project Coordination Those are the things I'm best at/want to do the most. Please boost and share! Rates will follow.

One of my favorite toller breeders has a new litter of pups and oh my gosh.

Last night while gaming, we established that werewolf Napoleon's defeat occurred in 1815 at Waterloup-garou.

This week I’m a crappy-shark-movie-expert guest on my favorite shark movie podcast talking about CRUEL JAWS, the 1995 Italian sharksploitation flick marketed as Jaws 5. It is delightful and terrible all at the same time! www.spreaker.com/episode/epis...

Not-especially unhinged TTRPG/Tolkien opinions, alternating between them. Or hitting both at once, as appropriate.

In my Swords of the Serpentine Arabian game I have the heroes something called the Grudging Tent. It’s a genie-made tent that gets better the more you actively and aggressively are kind to it.

I finally, finally got a chance to play Swords of the Serpentine by @multiplexer.bsky.social and @kevinkulp.bsky.social thanks to @yarnquester.bsky.social. It was as glorious and exciting as I hoped it would be.

Ran Swords of the Serpentine tonight, my high fantasy plane-hopping campaign. The players managed to escape my inescapable death trap - jerks! - AND make friends with the blight spirit monstrosity trying to devour them. They’re good at this.

Golden age SPECTACULARS! superhero game tonight. Not that my players are “yes and” improv types, but at the start I told them “there may be an opportunity tonight for you to be kidnapped and replaced by an exact robotic duplicate of yourself! If so, do you want to have been replaced?” The result?

Dogs demanded to go on a walk at the most photogenic golden hour.

It comes with a chunky jumper, a drinking problem, and a bad relationship with your wife that drives your detective into being a workaholic!