A common refrain I see in TTRPG spaces is, “Why aren’t my players taking the setting and characters and plot hooks I made for them seriously? They prefer to make jokes!” And I’m like… you have to give players a reason to care, not just things to care about.

this just so perfectly encapsulates the decades-long messaging failures by the dems

The horse combat in Elden Ring is very good. I like how it’s clumsier than combat on foot but the mobility is so good that you still feel like you can tear through infantry.

Perplexing Ruins is such a great Patreon to subscribe to and I hope to make content cool enough to feature their artwork.

This is like if someone made Seabiscuit but all the races used the coconuts from Monty Python instead of horses.

Related: there’s nothing in PBTA design that requires every move to have a partial success option. In fact, I think binary roll results are underutilized in PBTA games. Like for this move in Scroll & Steel, I thought the move was way punchier without a partial success option.

Update: I beat him. I think how I play this game is to lean on heavy armor, big weapons, and careful use of stamina. Not going to get fancy with parrying and try to focus on keeping a cool head.

So far, my biggest issue with Elden Ring is that I’m having a hard time calibrating if I should be focusing on taking down Margit or if I’m not ready for him yet. You know what would help me determine that? A runback.

Elden Ring update: I have successfully parried Margit. He still kicks my ass, but this feels like an accomplishment. I hope to soon parry him a second time.

An administration driven by greed, cruelty, and frankly a sort of empty-hearted boredom. The death of innocents so they can beat their chests and line their already fat wallets. Whatever comes next has to at least look like justice. We cannot just turn the page for the sake of one party’s comfort.

God Long Story Short is so good. Each episode feels like a Pulitzer Prize winning one act play that changes your life in a tiny black box theater.

I apologize ahead of time because I finally got Elden Ring over the Christmas holiday and I know my musings on it are going to be so behind the times.

I didn’t really have an opinion on Clair Obscur sweeping the TGAs before I finished it, but now that I have, it leaves a gross taste in my mouth. A video game about how video games are bad is the best video game of the year? We have got to get more sophisticated with our art.

Hollow Knight Silksong:

God I still can’t get over how badly Clair Obscur drops the ball in the back half. I feel insulted for wanting things like character arcs or interesting world-building. But boy oh boy did they make sure to include men lecturing women about their feelings. They made sure to have time for that.

BTW this is a super good retrospective of a JRPG that does a fantastic job of exploring grief and pain.

Spoilers for Clair Obscur but only if you're a type of brain poisoned like me.

Finally got a chance to listen to this and it was a wonderful history lesson and also great inspiration leading into 2026.

Choose a number 2-5. When you SHIT (comedic, lighthearted actions), roll 1d6 and try to get OVER your number. When you POST (serious, grown-up actions), roll 1d6 and try to get under your number. When you get your number, you SHITPOST. This has no effect but you can make up something if you want.

This issue has completely downgraded the game. What's the use of having all these different systems if the only one that matters is, "Can you read the animator's mind and press the parry button?" All the cool character options I have pale in comparison to my ability to press the B button.

I was trying to remember the post I had that touched on this idea of where the authority sits in play and what guides those choices. bankuei.wordpress.com/2022/05/13/m...

Man, Clair Obscur’s combat really doesn’t hold up well in the endgame, does it? The parry system makes a great first impression, but the game’s reliance on it causes a lot of problems when it tries to up the difficulty. Battles are either incredibly simple or frustratingly hard.

This thread didn’t get much traction but I basically said everything I need to say about the OSR in it, so I’m just going to reshare it instead of commenting on the latest discourse.

Playing Final Fantasy X as a child: “The guy with a big sword is cool.” Playing Final Fantasy X as an adult: “Yes, religion *does* perpetuate cycles of violence and prejudice *and also* the guy with a big sword is still cool.”

Bought Air, Land, and Sea as a Christmas present for my nephew. I was worried that it was a bit too complex for him, but he loved it. Now I know that, if I’m ever worried about him being too popular at school or having too much money, I can just introduce him to Magic the Gathering.

The best thing about AI is that, whenever I realize it’s enabled on my account, it gives me an excuse to review all my settings and disable any information gathering or use. That’s how I found out I still had Google’s personalized ads settings on.

$5 is a steal for this game.

I need to remember that, when I go to MS, I can’t bring BlueSky with me. Hope I didn’t miss anything important.

This was during a play. One of my friends was in old age makeup and at the water fountain. He was taking a long time, so someone else came up behind him and cleared her throat loudly. He looked at her and said, “Age before bea… well, age before.”

Mark Cuban is proof that, if A Christmas Carol were real, Scrooge would’ve just spent the entire time arguing with the ghosts and claiming they were ungrateful and unrealistic.

Might be the best Azul board I’ve ever had.

Figuring out if he’s a deeply cynical old bastard or deeply reverent samurai is one of the true joys of Final Fantasy X. When people talk about all time great video game mentors, he should absolutely be in the conversation. Fucking love Auron

Of course, I should’ve known that I still had more to cook with these moves. I realized that my earlier draft didn’t smoothly account for a situation where someone else is providing for you. And given that relationships are really the bedrock of Scroll & Steel’s design, I needed to fix that.

Here's why Apocalypse World: Burned Over kicks ass: the rules for driving a car sound like you're trying to tame a wild animal.

go play the best game of the year

I've known that Scroll & Steel's rest moves were clunky for a while now, but I'm feeling really good about this rewrite.

"Huh, that's interesting. I wonder why I haven't heard of that before... oh, right."

PBTA games have this reputation for being rules-light and generally loose games, but I’m looking over the preview materials for Apocalypse World: Burned Over, and I’m reminded that this is an incredibly mechanically rich genre. It just asks different questions than traditionally crunchy games.

Clair Obscur is a bit of a weird game to be at the center of the AI art debate because its art style... isn't that good. It's very run-of-the-mill. If it wasn't for the AI controversy, I probably wouldn't have commented on it at all (except to say that the character designs are too symmetrical).

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

What I love about the Benoit Blanc mysteries is that different characters will mention things they’ve heard Blanc has done, but, crucially, they never mention the other mysteries we’ve seen. It’s always some other, strange mysteries we get no other details about. That’s how you do world-building.

Really loving these stickers @bejeweled-laura.swifties.social got me for my birthday. (Believe the artist is @sugarboops.bsky.social)

Ran Scroll & Steel today for the first time since Metatopia, and it went super well. I do have a weird problem, though. Combat is fun, but I haven't gotten to playtest it much; players keep finding ways to avoid it. Despite this, the solution isn't, "Fill it with characters meant to be killed."

Dragon is 100% right and let's take a look about how Miyazaki presents the death of a "stormtrooper" with his own hand shall we? In the scene I'm about to break down an imperial plane has landed in the Valley of the Wind searching for survivors of a crashed transport.

if democrats think trans people's lives are worth sacrificing then i don't think they get to whine about losing their votes too

What always gets me is the assumption that killing is essential. It's a much easier (and less ideologically fucked) solution to have it so taking an enemy to 0hp merely means they're knocked out or defeated rather than killed. Comic books figured this out a century ago.

Honestly this video is horrifying *before* you think about how these creators have the gall to spout this nonsense and then claim to have a Ghibli aesthetic. But after you realize that, it’s downright repulsive.

I don’t understand why everyone has a problem with this. I think it’s a fantastic idea to destroy all the attack drones and reclaim their metal for more useful purposes… … wait that’s not how they’re making these?

Quick preview of a new playbook I’ve been working on, The Brute.

To make games you need a seed of entitlement to think you can do something better, but you must never let it make you so stupid as to think you've done something that's never been done before.