Band-Aids & Bullet Holes, my John Wick-inspired bloody revenge opera deckbuilder RPG named after a Taylor Swift lyric, is coming to Kickstarter in May. Look good, feel bad, do violence, cry about it, repeat. Just like your day job.

I want to be clear that when it comes to AI, I don't use it. Like at all. I've turned AI off on Google and Windows, haven't updated my iPhone to the latest model that has it, and don't even fuck around with it for fun. No chatbots. No solo D&D. Nothing. And my life is all the better for it.

Lil' comic about hope and longing 💗

if you're so inclined please feel free to check out the harm reduction team i work with which will ship free HRT supplies (and safe sex kits, Plan B, other safer living supplies) to people in Florida for free, no questions asked www.instagram.com/kaoncitymedix/

inb4 white trans fems pull out Hot Allostatic Load/"this is a transmisogynistic attack" -- I'm Mercedes, one of the people quoted in this article. I'm a trans fem of color and many of the people Jay fucked over w yazebas are trans poc. If defense of ur "sisters" ends at other yt trans fems ur racist

Brazil, the model country when one thinks "rampant social inequality", has the top 10% accounting for 33% of consumer spending btw

It exposes directional alignment; you still seek to limit, not expand, who is allowed to be human. Yes, you have set your limitation more inclusively than our fascist gang of white supremacists; it doesn't mean you're not also setting limitations & they'll use your limit as long as it serves them.

Telling protesters who are having grenades launched at their faces that they're "taking the bait" is fundamentally not very different than telling someone like me that I shouldn't "provoke" violent randos if I don't want to be gay-bashed or raped, and I think liberals should think on that.

Hey so rivetgeek aka Wil has had me blocked for a bit, but he just added my friend, a trans woman, to a blocklist that he keeps specifically for "MAGA, transphobes, racists and fascists" because it responded to him with the same dismissive energy he gave them This is bullshit, report it and him

some say that to love and to be loved is to build a better world, and she took that literally

Rest in power to Keith Porter who was murdered by an ICE agent in Los Angeles. It’s terrible that his name is just now being circulated, but now that it is, continue to say his name.

As an Inuk the dream is to one day be free of the four colonizers that have split the Inuit Homeland. The dream is not to recombine by those colonizers fighting over our lands

Do this. It works.

I really need everyone saying "it can't get worse for Venezuelans than Maduro" to look up what we did to the Philippines under Taft and Chilé under Pinochet.

It is so easy to not do things for the US military right now. It starts with not joining the US military. But say you let yourself be swayed by “college money” and “escaping your dull suburb” and “getting to use cool weapons to make holes in stuff” but when the time comes you realize that “stuff”

First TTRPG crowdfunding retrospective of the year is here! And by "the year" I of course mean the retrospective for December 2025. Hopefully sometime later this month, I'll get a full 2025 retrospective all ready to go ttrpg-spider.blogspot.com/2026/01/dece...

I cleared out of Twitter a while back, and since then I've heard some understandable reasons people stay and reasons that are just bad. to me, the most baffling one is "Bsky is a sanctimonious neoliberal website." and it's like, okay, but dude. buddy. you're posting in a Nazi bar.

New blog post: How to be a better ttrpg player. The answer seems simple but is a common problem with teaching new improvisors, too. You also learn how to absolutely wreck one of the workshops I run at Gen Con. publish.obsidian.md/improvgm

New year, same old The Awards nonsense! Design Diary #4 is here and explaining an important decision: The Awards 2026 is picking up right where we left off in June 2024. ttrpg-spider.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-...

If there was one piece of media that made me feel seen as an only child who struggled with friendships and who had a vivid imagination (even though I couldn't state it that way 35 years ago), it is Calvin & Hobbes. Calvin taught me to dream and explore, and to be okay being uniquely myself.

There has not ever, in my knowledge, been a collection of new and established black TTRPG designers like the Griot Anthology. The industry has largely not given a shit. I expect the same for Five Fires. This was going to be a rare whining post, but actually? Fuck that. Instead: Thank you

You and all other players can only speak *about* or *as* a random wikipedia article each player secretly navigates to when the game starts. The last to blow their cover wins. Get your random character sheet by following this link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special...

And actually--Comet Pizza was a page out of a playbook that started with daycare decades before. In 1983, a California mom accused her son's childcare provider of subjecting children to Satanic rituals--like flushing them down toilets into secret basements where they were then filmed for porn. 1/🧵

when you think that you’re gay when you’re in the third grade, macklemore

here’s my trad game: remember that tv show or book you liked as a teen? wasnt that cool? you could totally make it better and get hired to remake it buy 10,000 different dice and 38 dice trays buy Buy BUY

I remember thinking “why would they open Jurassic Park again? All those people died!” Or “why would they have another summer camp at Crystal Lake after Jason killed all those people for seven consecutive movies?” but it’s gotten to the point with things where it’s like yeah they’d do that for money

modesty laws prevented showing even one lousy frame of John Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS (1972) in the trailer, so the only footage in it is of people reacting to a screening they just came out of. every single type of extant queer person is contained in the specific sequences I have selected here

We're ramping up. Going to just crush this AI slopfest, and I'm going to tell that site to enact an anti-AI policy. Let's get a big enough lead that they can't even hope to fuck with us. Vote for #iHunt. Let's rock this shit.

"Academics literally cannot make genAI go away" we also can't make underage drinking go away and we're not advocating for installing bar carts in every classroom.

blackout is an (almost entirely) asynchronous journalling game for two players about redacting, interpreting, & straining against the confines of language. it's played by creating & communicating through blackout poetry. playtest version with community copies out now satah.itch.io/blackout

I'd believe this anecdote because I've met guys like this at conventions. People do ask (politely) about their work and they can't pitch it because what makes it special is that they are the specialest boy. They go to panels and hear queer and BIPOC writers talk about their work and think "ah ha". +

"You MUST write every day" and here's why that's trash advice: danieljosolder.substack.com/p/writing-be...

*sigh* ....nice

No war but Netflix’s Culinary Class War

The Awards 2026 Design Diary #3 is up! This one is a little less concrete, a little more philosophical, and focused on the kinds of games I'd like to see submitted to The Awards ttrpg-spider.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-...

The thing about humanoid robots is that the human body is one of the most impressive machines in the world. I am not exaggerating when I say that some of the most difficult real-time calculations for a computer to perform are things you do subconsciously.

everyone banned from saying their game is ghibli-inspired forever

this obojima shit is a really great example of why a lot of people burn out on ttrpgs. there’s so many harmful dynamics on display AND these paragons of white mediocrity get to make money from it? this kinda bullshit is poison to the spirit tbh.

Guess I'll post this again

This isn’t even all of the AIDS quilt. It was so long they didn’t have room to display it all. Reagan flat out fucking murdered queer people

Who, in their right mind, would ever think we're "running out of good ideas"? Only conmen would invent a problem to then sell you a solution you don't actually need. "Restart the world's idea machine"? What the fuck are you talking about? Seek help.

Game Review: The River Spirit by @gigantic-spider.bsky.social 💧💦💧💦💧💦💧 There are journaling games that lean into the game, with familiar mechanics borrowed from role-playing games, and there are ones that lean into journaling, providing a light scaffold for introspection. 1/▶️

I don’t like it when people I find annoying make something that’s cool or good. People who I find personally annoying should make bad things exclusively.

i think we should all commit ourselves to, at minimum, a national 3 day party When It Happens. one bottle of champagne in the back of your closet is no longer adequate. be prepared

With the Netflix acquisition of WB, here are 5 of my favorite movies on Kanopy, the free streaming service that most public libraries provide: 1. Charade 2. Ghost Dog 3. Perfect Days 4. Bicycle Thieves 5. A Woman Under the Influence

Every year around this time I get a lot of folks saying "how did such and such game not even get into The Game Awards" or "so and so deserves an award" (and similarly in the other end of the year around Ennies season for tabletop) and I am here to say: If that bugs you, GIVE IT AN AWARD.

I'm just going to say it: If you're enticed by playing this game because it's free now, you've got bigger questions to raise (to yourself) about why you still quietly enjoy Harry Potter whilst its creator does everything in her power to remove rights from trans people with her profits.

Ryan Coogler explains why he declined the invitation to join the Academy www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/m...