i mean think about it, the game wasn't being made by a company called Fighters Of The Coast, was it? of course the class balance ended up like that

one thing I think is worth pointing out is that this issue isn't unique to D&D. You saw a similar pattern with, say, Tremere in Vampire the Masquerade, Sidhe in Changeling the Dreaming, and so on.

fascinating thread, worth a read

1804. Oceans are now Battlefields. In the South China Sea a British convoy worth almost £1bn today is spotted by the French. It should be a massacre. Instead, Commodore Nathanial Dance is about to defeat a French battle squadron using some paint and the most overplayed hand in #navalHistory. /1 🧵

I love you fucked up indie TTRPGs

Casting Calls OPEN on No Safe Rolls Two upcoming actual play projects are now casting. 🎭 Escape the Equine Dungeon Apply: forms.gle/U82feq6uZ1zG... 🚀 The Legion’s Foil Apply: forms.gle/DtJD4MdhCu7k... Take the risk. Tell the story. #TTRPG #ActualPlay #CastingCall #NoSafeRolls

Quoting my buddy Chimaera: > I'd say "I wish I could get paid half a million for copypasting the PHB" but none of these people got paid.

like we all understand that HP are pretty unrealistic, right? if you were going for realism, a hit would result on rolling for a *specific* complications that result from it. Think the way the old GW Inquisitor game handled it, with disabilities, bleeding, etc.

oh, this is cool af

i always find it funny when people throw out the old "Quantum Bears" bad fair criticism of PbtA games. And then you ask what games they like to play, and their responses all feature the good ol' random encounter table.

well, duh. remember that one photography book germaine greer put out that was just concentrated nonce shit?

"All my political enemies are nazi pedophiles" sounds like hyperbole but no that's just how the world works now.

pedocon theory remains undefeated

Let's do this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9...

Weird-fantasy paleolithic stuff I'm working on:

the thing about the gwar pink pony club cover is that, like, they aren't taking the piss *at all*. It's a pretty sincere cover, albeit by a band dressed as terrifying space-monsters. i think it's clear that they *get it*. If any band is gonna understand camp, it's gonna be those guys, right?

you know i think one of the reasons why you see so many short inflamatory no-nuance takes on this site is because it structurally impedes your ability to make long, nuanced posts.

Changeling the Dreaming kiths as tf2 characters: Trolls: Heavy Nockers: Medic Boggans: Engineer Pooka: Pyro Redcaps: Demoman Slaugh: Sniper Eshu: Scout Satyrs: Spy Sidhe: Soldier

new rule: if somebody can't explain to me what the purpose of game mechanics is, they have nothing to say worth listening to.

them: vampire the masquerade is a serious game of personal horror meanwhile, me:

i am extremely tempted to write up a Pasión de las Pasiones playset for a pro wrestling promotion

It's time.

Let’s make 2026 the year we erase the song Imagine from the collective consciousness

happy public domain day everybody!

solarpunk is what you get when you order afrofuturism from wish, prove me wrong

yeah no shit i dont want to date somebody who i consider a fundamentally evil person im not sure how this is in any way a surprise

gonna be honest tho i actually am here for the RPG Discourse when there's a Discourse happening it means i have to look at less fucking US politics on my feed, and i do not particularly want to hear about US politics

every day i strive to replace a discourse post with a porn post. that is my battle

nailed it

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure 'storygames' is an exonym. like the stuff that gets lumped together as 'storygames' is wildly divergent from each other in terms of structure, specific mechanics, themes, and intended goals.

like i dunno, fundamentally i do not think that: "Get XP when somebody spends a String to influence you and you do what they ask" and "Get XP when you find a big pile of treasure and take it home" are super different conceptually.

ok so let me lay out some basics of why I think OSR/NSR stuff is good, actually, even if the scene seems to regularly terrible oppinion-havers like some geothermal geyser. in short, its because the osr framework of what you do in the game *works*.

hard agree with this. I think the best examples of a carrot are just mechanically hard-coded that when you do X, you get Y. Like "When you [do action/achieve result], get [metacurrency]" just *works*. Nice and neutral, easily understood and fluid in play.

>be tabletop gamer in 2025 >buy Black Death Rising pdf >page 1: “Do not fear your death. For when that moment arrives, I will draw my breath and your soul will come to Me like a needle to a magnet.” -Mechthild of Magdeburg >rest of book is about killing fascists and/or zombies

people please dont make me defend OSR as a design philosophy, i'm so very tired

I see the latest iteration of That Discourse is going around

older cenobites not happy that keeping up with ever more complex and bizarre human sexuality for their torture dimension means there are now at least 6 cenobites that are anthropomorphic fighter jets with enormous breasts

Songbirds is a survival horror dungeon crawler where the dead come back to life and you just constantly get brutalized. It's more disco elysium than D&D. It's got unique classes, body mods, otherworldly beings, and all you need to run the game packed into one PDF. snowttrpg.itch.io/songbirds-3e

I am in no way trying to be a buzzkill, but one thing I would love to see more of in 2026 are conversations about time, labor, & the fact that artists in many mediums are held to truly unsustainable expectations of pace and output. I'm thinking specifically about ttrpgs, but it applies broadly.

“And three wise men from the East came, bringing with them gifts of gold, frankincense and zip ties”

a fresh rework of a bit of fan art i made for the late, great Yasushi Nirasawa's signature character Nina Dolono >:3 (cw for gore and nudity)

enjoy some lesbian smut this winter ogre festival

Meanwhile in Australia: Call that a pothole?

happy festivus! shamelessly stealing the idea from @barilleon.com it is time for the annual airing of grievances. So, per tradition, for each like, I'll reply with one of my many, many grievances.

drukhari, who are living their best lives and i uncritically support

i still believe in ttrpg horseshoe theory, and think that nsr design and pbta design inevitably loop around and resemble one another

If you accuse a trans woman of being a predator/pedophile/abuse/etc because she's being rude to you, you should get you knees and your head [redacted]. You are trying to make a member of a vulnerable social group a target of social and sometimes physical violence, you should face consequences

[throwing more molotovs into the bonfire] if any chaos god deserves to be associated with the queer community, it's Tzeench.

authentic osr is from the Keep On The Borderlands region of france, otherwise it's just sparkling retro.