Every once in a while I remember how bad the 2007 remake of Sleuth is despite being made by all the people I would want making a Sleuth remake. It kind of haunts me.

A frustration I have with fantasy and trpg dialog is the lack of historical depth and curiousity beyond marketed brands. Its like talking about the history of metal and refusing to budge from an ahistorical focus on Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Metallica as the sole important artists. Its wrong.

I do not think this is like intentional behavior in many cases. Its a social pressure driven by consumption. Its thorny, but I think needs pushed back against somehow. Probably by being loud and enthusistatic with cited sources to poke holes at nostalgia blinded talking point.

I’ll be streaming Sea of Thieves tonight from 8pm-10pm PST for Obsidian’s Extra Life Charity Stream! All proceeds go to Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC). Catch the stream at twitch.tv/obsidian! See you there :D

A lot of PbtA games have adopted (or at least internalized, if not strictly mechanized) the "party" mode of play, but I really really like the ones that fit more into a mode of "you are the main cast of a tv show, whose plotlines will diverge and intersect"

Saw Frankenstein yesterday. My first movie in the theater since... Cats.

The sound I make inside while talking about *historical* rpg theory to those who heard it by telephone. *good and bad points, unformed ideas, misunderstood and forgotten ones.

Ran Mothership recently. The main monster killed two characters. A third character failed a ship to airlock jump. A fourth character ignited the fuel tanks of a space station blowing it up. The fifth character managed to crawl into cryopods where they were rescued 180 years later.

If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula.

So, the Kickstarter I was running for Haunted didn't fund. But the first rule of Kickstarter is always have a Plan B! Haunted (and Horrible Children) are now available for direct purchase. You can find all the relevant links in my final update: www.kickstarter.com/projects/jbu... Happy Halloween!

anyway hasbro is making cosy slop for a terminally uncritical market. if you want queer content in your ttrpgs, go buy an indie game by an actual queer. Those tend to have things to say beyond 'please stop calling hasbro problematic on twitter'.

Two things that cheese me off in an RPG. 1. Puzzles that require me to solve them with my brain. I came to RP, not do puzzles. I genuinely HATE puzzles. Having them in my adventure time fun is torture. 2. Santa Claus, Krampus, or anything Xmas-themed. Hell no. I see you, cloud. I'm yelling.

Haunted is entering its last week of crowdfunding. It's admittedly struggling a bit. www.kickstarter.com/projects/jbu...

Sorcerer. Followed closely by Story Engine and My Life w/ Master.

I have really strong feelings about all this. I feel like it's worth writing about too. It's very interconnected with a lot of my feelings about "the industry" and "the hobby" as a whole (which have never been positive). Maybe I'll tackle it after I close out the Haunted Kickstarter.

Hello friends. Needed to get some ideas down and break this quarter-long dry spell at the Club. Empty whining? A manifesto? Maybe both.

The "news" is where the money is flowing.

it's always like >TTRPG creators complain that TTRPG journalists don't cover small games >TTRPG journalists say their job is to report the news not be advertisers >”the news” is always at least two headlines for every D&D book or whatever movie-budget D&D actual play podcast is coming out next

I have literally never heard of nor ever experienced this kind of game. I remember once learning about Mao, as like, an abstract thought experiment. I wonder what it says about me that I have never seen this "in the wild" so to speak.

Random: One of my biggest bugbears in ttrpgs is action ordering. So many interesting ways, yet so few are used (and often the most tedious win out). Pure "fiat/fiction first" *yawn*. Ordered turns where each unit does all their actions in a go? *double yawn*

Week 3 and 35% of the way there. At this pace it's going to be tight but not out of the question. www.kickstarter.com/projects/jbu...

We really need more gamer perzines. Zine about your life experiences as a gamer, as a gamemaster, as a player.

I’ve talking up my own Kickstarter for months but I think ambitious little indie projects like this are important. www.kickstarter.com/projects/lud...

Maybe I'm not a game designer. Maybe I'm a games *practitioner*.

hey. it's finally spoopy season. you know what else it is? the first day of my game jam on itch for anyone who wants to use the Misfits & Mayhem SRD to make a tabletop game!!! it runs for three whole months! check it out below! itch.io/jam/meet-som... #ttrpg #ttrpgcommunity #indiettrpg @itch.io

You should read a small, self-published game today, and I'll tell you why. There's two kinds of creators. There's ones whose poems, games, novels, comics, artwork recapitulate the same narratives of mass media films and publishing and billionaire-owned news outlets, because the...

One week down and about 25% there. If you know anyone who likes horror RPGs for Halloween, please share this with them: www.kickstarter.com/projects/jbu...

Every time someone complains about Mörk Borg’s art and layout just being about vibes and random experimentation, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. That shit is the setting. The art and layout informs you on how to present different aspects of the game.

The best games understand and use so much intrinsic human motivation in their designs. The rest use some combination of extrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation the designers misbelieve is intrinsic motivation, abuse, and style.

The fall is here, so it’s time to be Haunted: www.kickstarter.com/projects/jbu...

Four characters, one set. My favorite kind of play. Feeds my soul.

Final Raven Day: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/09/19/h...

Ravens Day 4: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/h...

This was a problem I had with Thousand Year Old Vampire. There were a few prompts that triggered a "this is not my guy" response. It didn't happen a lot. But it happened more than once and bumped me quite a bit.

Ravens Day 3. meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/09/17/h...

Has anyone played Zypher?

Raven Day Two: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/09/16/h...

This week I'm writing about ravens: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/09/15/h...

Hey #ttrpgcommunity and fellow #ttrpg nerds, if you wanna join a #gamejam on @itch.io to make ur own ttrpg using a pre-existing SRD, check this out: itch.io/jam/meet-som... Submissions open from Oct 1 to Dec 31! #indiettrpg #ttrpgdesign

Continuing to post about Haunted's Double Feature project I demonstrate how Horrible Children do horrible things to each other: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/09/08/h...

if you are in the LA area and want to try some great games with some great people i really can't recommend this group highly enough! i can't wait for my schedule to allow me to attend again 😭💝

Haunted’s Kickstarter is approaching and all things horror are made better with a Double Feature: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/09/01/h...

There's a GMless equivalent to this. In Haunted, there were key decisions I said were "up to the group" in the text but that wasn't correct. In practice, those decisions were always made by certain players, so I changed the text to match.

so i'm dipping my toe into professional GM-ing as a way to help make ends meet and possibly keep me afloat if my current job goes under. haha. ha. anyway check out my cool StartPlaying profile startplaying.games/gm/jaztice

My games linger out there like undetonated TNT under your house. I made Nicotine Girls twenty-three years ago and Johann and his friends just tripped it for themselves. People sleeping above undetonated stuff for years without realizing it. The Ink That... adeptplay.com/2025/08/05/t...

And this is my last post about Haunted, specifically. It's about how the game encourages (or reveals what) you think about justice: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/08/25/h...

And today's post is about struggling to find the right amount of instruction for Haunted: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/08/18/h...

In case you thought I was joking: www.patreon.com/posts/broken...

Absolutely not.

And today I posted about some of the ideas behind Haunted's core resolution mechanic: meanwhileinravenloft.wordpress.com/2025/08/11/h...