We did session zero for Changeling: The Lost and had to settle on what level of weird our characters would be. The GM is a public librarian, so we asked him, “Alex, our characters walk into your library. How worried are you?” #ttrpg

I want to brag on my employers, Flagbearer Games. They sent me my author copy of The American Crisis: War in the North. They also sent my wife an author copy.

We played Ten Candles for Halloween! Due to a remarkable streak of rolls and alignment of character traits, we only ever extinguished two candles. The remaining eight had to be left to burn out on their own. #ttrpg

A little surprise at the barber college.

Taking a walk yesterday I saw an extremely round albino squirrel eating someone's carved pumpkin.

Go vote!

At Game Hole Con, I had the great pleasure to play a swords-and-sorcery game with @darkerhue.bsky.social and Chris Spivey is every bit the delightful human being you’d expect him to be. :)

This year’s best trick-or-treater was a child dressed as Saul Goodman. I blurred his face because, y’know, child.

Utterly charmed by this annotation someone added to a 1658 copy of Edward Topsell's The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents In case you cannot read it, someone has added "help help or I shall be eaten to pieces by this devouring creature"

At Game Hole Con, I got to play Pirate Borg! Look how pretty! #ttrpg

At Game Hole Con, I got a chance to play the Waking of Willowby Hall — with Shadowdark rules! Super fun, and the GM brought an RIP stamp for dead characters. #ttrpg #shadowdark

Bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/asteroid #smbc

At Game Hole Con, I finally got a chance to play Heart: The City Beneath. It did a wonderful job empowering us to fail and be delighted to do so. #ttrpg

At Game Hole Con, I played Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes by @nerdypupgames.bsky.social. First impression: ooh, when I level up I get to put stickers on my character sheet!

@newmadras.bsky.social Thanks for the link, dude! :)

I appeared on the @wetinkgames.bsky.social youtube channel again to talk about historical stuff in RPGs, and my commitment to working with Matt to make the most obnoxious thumbnails is unwavering.

Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. - Thomas Paine, the OG #NoKings

In colonial Lima, Peru, the Spanish Inquisition ran a charity school for promising foundlings. Because it was the Inquisition, the school had some quirks. File the serial numbers off and add it to your ongoing RPG campaign! #ttrpg #history moltensulfur.com/post/the-inq...

I made a long weekend to sneak away and go camping.

Go read @explorersdesign.bsky.social's 3rd entry in his ENNIES debrief. The awards have always felt arcane to me in a way that I never really understood why certain games sank and swam or were nominated for categories that didn't make sense. Well worth your time! www.explorersdesign.com/ennies-3/

I got suckered in by another “memoir” that’s actually a work of fiction. Considering that my namesake Tristan Jones made a career of such deceptions, I may have little room to complain.

Alright, the first in-depth article of my awards debrief is live. "How do the Ennies work?" A top-down look at my judging experience from A to Z. Please share, leave comments, and ask questions. And don't forget to read part 1 if you haven't already. www.explorersdesign.com/ennies-2/

This week we played a Vampire: the Requiem one-shot. We hit that World of Darkness sweet spot where everything is gothic and spooky but also absurd and stupid. We were searching a graveyard, but because we needed speed, we did it on electric scooters. I wore a bike helmet. #ttrpg

Distraction from Today's News. Let me infodump about my favourite Pictish stone carving, called "Old Scatness 3" after where it was found. He is one of my favourite drawings, and he has a very important lesson to teach us. I tear up just thinking him because he's so wonderful. (1)

I'm fortunate to live in a place that has ranked-choice voting. I'm really impressed by this description of how ranked-choice voting works: no technicalities, no blow-by-blow, just a very simple description of outcomes.

I was curious about the etymology of “drake”: how we came to use the same word for a male duck and for a dragon. Turns out the two concepts sharing a word goes as far back as the Old English “draca” before it splits.

Another banger from Nathan.

The fairy tale “Death’s Godson” makes a really cool springboard for an adventure with major consequences in your ongoing fantasy RPG campaign! moltensulfur.com/post/deaths-...

The upside of catching a bug is that I finally got to play Blue Prince, the incredible roguelike puzzle/manor exploration video game. Finding Room 46 took me twenty hours and seven pages of careful handwritten notes. The game rewards attention and documentation in a way that’s truly gripping!

Type of monster you find in Darksun. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

Back from a wedding at a science museum. The green room was a classroom, and they’d left in it one of those laser temperature detectors. So I obviously I took the temperature of everything in the room.

This week, we did Cozy Game Night! Our host made scones and little sandwiches, and we drank pots and pots of tea. #ttrpg

Oh, I have good news.

I’m going back through my notes on the podcasts I approached to talk about Shanty Hunters four years ago. The ones that agreed to invite me on are a lot more likely to still exist than those that didn’t.

Exciting new developments in user hell: I clicked an “unsubscribe” link and it brought me to a page saying that their unsubscribe page has been loading more slowly than usual, and you’ll need to show some patience to wait for the full page to load so you can use it. Meanwhile, they show you ads.

The transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar got weird in Augsburg, Germany when half the population refused to make the switch. Confusion, riots, and espionage followed. It’s remarkably gameable! #history #ttrpg moltensulfur.com/post/two-cal...

Here's an update on my small-voxel renderer, inspired by the look of games like Doom and Quake. The work I shared last year focused on handling simpler environment geometry. Since then, I've greatly expanded the scope of what I can depict in this art style. More info in thread.

If you roll for random encounters on a table, and if the way the table is ordered is meaningful, should encounters that are more likely to lead to combat be given high numbers on that table or low numbers?

Our Alien campaign concluded this week with my character asphyxiating to death in an airless space suit, even as the airlock around me repressurized. #ttrpg

The best Ethiopian restaurant in the Twin Cities also happens to be the cheapest vegetarian food in our neighborhood. That then raises the question of what to do with the leftover injera: that wonderful sourdough pancake-like bread.

Recently reminded of this Kevin Crawford AMA, and it remains everything.

This week in Alien, the Soviet mole PC declined to defect back to the Soviets, despite my undercover Soviet spy PC sacrificing his life so she could do so. Betrayal! #ttrpg

A bunch of new information about Ballad Hunters, my new RPG coming from @pelgranepress.bsky.social! Sing and fight magical folk ballads in 1813 England and Scotland! #ttrpg pelgranepress.com/2025/07/20/i...

Another Gen Con in the books. Though this was my fifteenth, it was my first where I treated the whole con as a work trip. I'm wiped, but it was worth it. Also, I masked religiously and so far have no con crud. Wish I'd been masking from the start, long before the pandemic. It's just better!

Anyone going to GenCon should check out the IGDN booth full to the brim with neat human-made games from indie creators.

I’m gonna be at Gen Con! I’ll be spending most of the daylight hours running games of Nations & Cannons in the Marriott’s Florida room (first floor, all the way in the back) and working the @flagbearergames.bsky.social booth (#2944). Come say hi!

@tinstargames.bsky.social Was that your question about D&D, lairs, and liars I just heard on the Lateral podcast? If so, super fun! :)

In our Alien campaign My character to the android character:

At this point in our Alien campaign, when it would make sense (or be tempting) for a player to Push their roll, the whole table, unprompted, starts singing “do do do do do push it real good.” #ttrpg