Had a chance to play Daggerheart's quickstart yesterday, and it was super interesting. The way the combat round had been discarded and replaced by a freeform method where the order of action was determined on the fly was fun and intuitive.

i keep cracking up at this post on AI writing

Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"

Ic3peak were amazing in Helsinki today, the hostile beauty of the music really came through. They're one of the Russian bands which went into exile after the start of the war. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBG3...

Des Moines has you all beat

When I worked as a journalist, interviewing researchers was sometimes a pain because they were so cautious about saying anything. But there's a reason for that. They were keenly aware of the limits of their knowledge.

Today we are proud to announce our next crowdfunding campaign. Award-winning historian @shannonappelcline.bsky.social examines the roots, artwork, and lore behind each and every product released by TSR for OD&D, AD&D 1e, and Basic D&D with his latest effort, Designers & Dragons: Origins. 1/3

A few more inspirations your way... Succession TV series (2018 - 2023) Sunset Boulevard (1950) X-Factor Investigations series (2005 onw.) 🩸 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Out October 21st.

This makes it sound super interesting! How many mainstream videogames are inspired by the feminist movement of 1960's Japan?

The Trench Crusade website has been given a polish, & is now fit for duty! This updated version has some fun new content, & will be easier to navigate for new recruits. We'll be adding to it all the time, so be sure to keep an eye on what's coming up… www.trenchcrusade.com #trenchcrusade #wargame

Big Tech's embrace of President Trump has left many of us wondering: What the hell happened to Silicon Valley? In our new politics issue, we're getting into it. Also, we're taking this cover across the US in billboards, posters and a mural. Clues to find us in the 🧵: www.wired.com/politics-iss...

After Russia was booted from the Eurovision for invading Ukraine, they decided to revive the Soviet era equivalent, Intervision. The first new Intervision was held last weekend in Moscow, and it turns out you can check it out on Youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQEo...

Tbf, nothing will ever beat the GW website front page at that time. "The Queen is dead: PREPARE FOR SKIRMISH COMBAT!"

confirmed: Anna and Elsa get married and have a kid 💕

We're launching our campaign for Official Trench Crusade Backdrop Books on the 23rd of September! Did out more: www.kickstarter.com/projects/jon... #trenchcrusade

A reminder that some people /really/ like spicy food and our reaction isn't "we need to make food less spicy or always have milk on hand", it's been "let's try to let people know how spicy this food is so they know what they're getting into"

There's an interesting example about risk, awareness and consent in an old Polish larp called Geist. The rule was that no violence would be simulated, so that to hit someone, you hit them for real. Crazy, right? Except... There was no violence. The refusal to simulate reduced violence to zero.

Maria Petterssonin elämäkerta Anna Kontulasta on vetävä ja monipuolinen, hauska ja älykäs, koskettava ja raivostuttava. Paljon voi yksi ihminen ehtiä. "Shokeeraavan" kirjan luettuaan on kyllä lopulta shokeeraantunut vain maailman tilasta. Vahva suositus!

🎮 🕹️ Happy National Videogames Day! To celebrate, we've gathered a collection of #OpenAccess MIT Press books on gaming, game design, and streaming that you can read freely and immediately: mitpress.mit.edu/open-access-...

I'm running a panel on larp with some absolute superstars of the field at next month's Immersive Experience Network summit! @mikepohjola.bsky.social of Turku Manifesto fame! Laura Kröger of the epic sci-fi blockbuster Odysseus! @rebelrehbinder.bsky.social of UK larp makes Omen Star!

Getting ready for the book release party for Maria Pettersson's highly anticipated biography of the Finnish left politician Anna Kontula. I'm proud as hell in my supporting role as the author's husband! It's a great book, a biography quite unlike anything you've seen before.

Gretchen Felker-Martin is an excellent writer and I was looking forward to reading her Red Hood.

I described the roles of myself as developer and Matthew Day Jackson as designer on the Maa project like this, and it occurred to me that this is the setup that a lot of "idea guys" would love. You freestyle some concepts, someone else makes a game based on them. But...

I developed the sculptor Matthew Day Jackson's roleplaying game Maa in 2019 and he'd played AD&D years ago and nothing since. While working on the game, he proved to be a living fountain of original, interesting game design ideas. But he's the only case I've ever seen where it worked like that.

I loved the difficulty settings in Control! I fiddled with them a lot, trying to find an optimal balance, and it worked.

I played the zombie killing game Zombicide: Undead or Alive and wrote about it here. It was pretty fun! www.juhanapettersson.com/100-boardgam...

Ex Tenebris has launched! Beyond the dark emptiness of space, beyond dreaming, lies the Tenebrium. Only you can unearth its mysteries, defeat the twisted horrors that lurk there, and keep humanity from becoming prey. Please share the link and back (if you want) #ttrpg #kickstarter #spacegothic

Always love a new manifesto! This in particular spoke to me: "every character possesses a rich and complex inner world"

Palestiinalaisten karkottaminen Suomesta juuri nyt on mielestäni väärin. Allekirjoitin vetoomuksen. Suosittelen muillekin. www.sumud.fi/kiireellnen-...

Alright, my dearies. Here we go. Join us for the ride? www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

Magic of Inventorying... A roleplaying game to declutter your loot and banish encumbrance forever! mailchi.mp/grumpybearst... #TTRPG #MarieKondo

Just saw the documentary PMMP keikalla: Ei enää ikinä. PMMP was one of the most influential bands in Finland when I was in my twenties, with a knack for making songs about very broadly shared experiences such as death, domestic violence or having fun with your friends. areena.yle.fi/1-74457200

John Ford's 1934 film The Lost Patrol is a tightly framed, intense film about a group of doomed British soldiers lost on a patrol in the Sahara desert. It's a very short movie, a little over an hour, and keeps drilling into you with each shot from an invisible sniper.

After W5 came out, we felt that the line would need a Garou setting book, an enemies book and a spirits book. The Moonlit Path is a Werewolf sourcebook about spirits and the Umbra, developed for Renegade by the excellent Jukka Särkijärvi with some help and writing from me.

The second major Werewolf release I developed at Renegade is Wyrmtide. The need for this one is obvious: Werewolf is a violent game where you fight the creatures of the Wyrm, and here's a whole book of them. The enemies book, in other words.

Official Trench Crusade merch is now available! We're partnering with Hel Goods to get you kitted out for the trenches. We've got both short and long-sleeved t-shirts, hoodies, hats, & more, so check it out using the link below. Shipping to the USA will be available soon. #helgoods #trenchcrusade

What's great about the titles of these four WoD releases? They don't have the words "blood" (Vampire) or "moon" (Werewolf) in them! Eventually, we always end up titling something with one of those words, so to avoid repetition we try to first come up with something else.

Shattered Nation is the first major release for Werewolf I developed. It was borne out of the fact that the W5 corebook is light on the setting (you can fit only so much into a single book!), so the goal here was to describe the world a Garou character lives in.

At Renegade, our goal was to make releases for Vampire, Werewolf and Hunter that would be useful when people play these games. Nowhere is that as directly applicable as with the series of stories (i.e. scenarios) we've put out. These were developed by me, but there are many more.

Miles O'Brien fan club assemble.

Sign up! Get notified of the Trench Crusade Backdrops Book kickstarter launch! Don't miss out - it'll be a short campaign! #trenchcrusade #jhbackdrops

One of my favorite Vampire books to have worked on at Renegade is In Memoriam, developed by Freja Gyldenstrøm. It's about vampires old enough to have lost connection o their old human lives, ancilla in other words. It expands the types of playable characters to those permanently alienated by time.

Much like "crab", industrial music is constantly re-evolving from first principles basically anywhere where there's a bunch of metal and plastic laying about

I'm trying to move from the hobby of buying boardgames to actually playing them, and to motivate this change, started a series of posts. The first is about Brass: Birmingham, where first playthrough took us seven hours but wasn't boring. www.juhanapettersson.com/100-boardgam...

The third big release for Vampire I developed at Renegade is Gehenna War. A lot of different streams flowed into this book: The Gehenna War itself as a V5 era setting concept. Action-oriented play. Noddist mysteries in the setting. How to survive when the Blood Gods rise and walk the earth?

I bought a couple of issues of Senet as an impulse buy from a game store in London and found that it's a really good magazine! It talks about boardgames deftly but in depth, in a manner both serious and playful.

The second big Vampire release I developed at Renegade was the starter chronicle book The Crimson Gutter. I saw someone post online about how hard it was to start a Vampire game because you needed to create so many NPCs and locations and I thought... Let's make a book that'll help out!

Blood-Stained Love was the first big release I put together for Vampire at Renegade. It was born out of a very simple observation: Vampires and romance go well together, and this has historically been somewhat neglected in the World of Darkness. Plus I personally like to play fucked up love stories

I laughed (From the Book of Hungry Names)

I've been reading (playing?) The Book of Hungry Names, and it's so good. Captures the specific vibe and priorities of 5th edition Werewolf perfectly. I'm still pretty early in the story so I have to balance job hunting with fighting the Wyrm.