I just found out an old friend of mine passed away suddenly. Steve Dee was at first a hero of mine — one of my favourite TTRPG writers, especially for his work on WFRP2e — until I reached out to him and we became friends.

ok, y’all. I’M LOOKING FOR WRITERS: who understand 1) global politics, 2) colonialism and 3) liberation struggles across the African/Black Diaspora tag yourselves or others, or DM me

If you're Australian, could you sign please?

My End of Year video is on the "Golden Age of Indie RPGs," from roughly 2010 to 2025. I start with Apocalypse World's release, work through the Google+ Era, and follow design lineages and historical events that have impacted the hobby up through 2025.

I once did thr napkin math on what I'd have made if I was paid at low royalty or commission rates based on a handful of gigs I've done in TTRPGs and video game dev, and... I strongly discourage doing it. It's extremely depressing to see how much better off you'd be financially.

Havin' one of those moments, where every project feels pointless, every hobby feels empty, and every connection feels superficial and flaky at best. 10/10.

Repost with Alt Text. ...bc yeah, THIS.

Ah yes: Gay, Black, and queer. All things which would individually make one "unique," as opposed to the Default. I've long wished to meet the gay person.

a lot of writing advice is shit. magical results if you follow this 1-sentence promise. show! write every day! character driven! they're flat because either they're 1) focused on being glib instead of being 2) actionable, like, wtf does character-driven even mean 3) unrealistic. every day?

Sadly it doesn't fit into my Virtue of Focus this year to start up a new, massive project... But I can't stop thinking about a 40K-esque Imperial Senate LARP, and it's _killing me_.

Trickle it out through vague background references, mostly showing its symptoms rather than anything remotely close to its cause, and then 20 sessions later have an NPC just blurt out how "Everything is fucked" and how weird the random things have been.

Game Industry

AI vs Concept Art. I think there are a couple of things folks on the outside, don't understand about the concept art process and why AI is a hindrance, not a help. Example 1 : Scorpion oil Lamp, information and understanding.

(Sorry to break the meme chain, but) Yes... But also, _yikes._ There are many polyamorous people out there. I am one of them! But there are far fewer than those who claim it... Too many people use it as a cover for just being kinda shit? Actually? Which just makes it harder for everyone!

The sole reason this man hasn't fucked his calculator is because it sends back error messages when he puts in equations wrong, instead of lying to him and telling him he's excellent at mathematics.

if I wanted to "ask an NPC anything" I would simply play a TTRPG. where I can torment my beloved friends by doing exactly that. you just can't get the same kind of panicked improv creativity from a fraud machine

Every time you reference a real piece of armor you learn and don't have to blindly search for reference again. You know what to look for next time. You are better now. Over time you become an expert and carry knowledge forward into time. You are connecting to, and sharing, your history and culture.

Again I say: how fucking interesting that remote work technology is bad and not worth adopting despite all research pointing to productivity gains, but genAI which offers NOTHING is so important to adopt and force on people who have no use for it despite all the horrible things genAI does

Larian's horrible hirring process is an open secret in the industry – insane amounts of unpaid work in "writing tests", excessive numbers of interviews, months and months of back and forth, etc. Everyone in games narrative circles has heard the stories at this point, probably from multiple people.

I'm writing up some #Voidship Gear today before importing it into FoundryVTT for the ongoing playtest, so I'm once again doing what I love most about worldbuilding: exploring vague scientific ideas and pushing them to absolute nonsense degrees. Just enough "science" to be "plausible", and no further

Ngl, I was never paid enough for the amount that I ruined WFRP4e...

resharing this little award I made for everyone who is "ruining" the #TTRPG space 🤭

Doom studio id Software unionizes to secure AI protections, benefits: "We see the direction the industry is headed" aftermath.site/id-software-un...

To be honest given that The Game Awards completely axed and abandoned the whole Future Class program when the alumni organized to demand the show acknowledge Palestinian genocide, it's IMMENSELY embarassing how many people in our industry still support it, attend it, or even give it the time of day.

Remember when this muppet paraded out NFTs years ago, and then never mentioned them again? Why do people watch this grifter? He's never been funny, never been honest, and never been ethical...

Ngl, I _really_ want to run Perfect Draw for a bunch of massive fuckin nerds. Shame I don't know any...

$20,000 of royalty free commercial use video game music. Available for only $10 until Christmas:: moonanagames.itch.io/80-songs-pack Is it worth it? Don't take my word for it, just look at what the people have said instead. #gamedev 🎮 #ttrpg #vtuber

Ngl, I _really_ want to run Perfect Draw for a bunch of massive fuckin nerds. Shame I don't know any...

the tell here is "absolve themselves of moral responsibility". this person thinks it's up to the director to Justify any darkness or ambiguity. I hope this is trolling or that they're seventeen or something. otherwise, oof.

Hey #ttrpg folks and internet friends, my wife has been having an awful gastroparesis and MS flare. We're needing to put her on a liquid diet which means needing a blender and supplies. My games are on sale for 50% off for the holidays and any bit would help itch.io/s/171064/ecg...

I wish I had the confidence and audacity of half the companies who post gamedev jobs on Work With Indies... What they're asking next to the absolute _shitshow_ of the remuneration offered is _astounding_.

my most cancelable video game hot take is that i think "ludonarrative dissonance" is a useful term

I misread this image so badly that I can only really hope to illustrate what I saw. ( Also a good excuse for an #art study )

Hey, I'm Bee (they/them), a non-binary, queer, neurodiverse person. I am an award-winning Ammi Maltese-Australian game/narrative designer, writer, and worldbuilder. My Virtues for 34 are: ✊Community✊ 🌻Peace🌻 🔍Focus🔍

Today I turn 34, so that means it's time for Reflections. It's been...a weird one. Rough, in many ways, but also really good in others. Let's have a ponder.

work on the creative project that pays me money and that i am under contract for and that people like????? no thanks, im busy thinking about my creative project that im kind of bad at and somehow costs me money and that nobody asked for

So I dunno if any of you folks have seen the "2wai" shit, but it's a start-up which makes a 3 minute scan of someone, and then purports to offer an avatar of them which can talk to you and "support you" long after the actual person has died. And, like... _fuck me_ is that a wild thing.

100%! People like to talk about "overpopulation" by using racist parallels to "over-breeding." But the real cause of rising population is actually _over-surving_. And only a fucking ghoul would call that a "crisis." So maybe re-think fears of "overpopulation," yeah?

At BEST, "AI" replaces spell checkers. But explicitly _not_ editors, which is made most obvious by the sheer number of job listings calling for "writers" to "clean up prompts" for "AI" firms... I.e. it's all a fucking rort, and the media is working downtime for tech bro stakeholders.

When you're writing a tabletop roleplaying game, the mechanics should evoke the atmosphere you want in your story. A simple example: we're writing a cozy woodland mystery game. What are the combat mechanics like? Well, clearly there aren't any. Combat isn't part of our cozy woodland story. But...

Which, as a gauge for those who haven't had kidney stones before (and not that I put _terribly_ much stock in such comparative scales, as pain is extremely subjective and individual), here is a "guide" to what the pain is like:

Little life update on this: I ended up getting discharged on the Sunday due to not being able to find a slot for the surgery. After a lot of fucking around, I'm not going to be getting it until the _25th_ (so... 21 days after pain began). So I'm just gonna be _real bad_ for a while yet D:

I know some long dead Maltese monks who would fucking LOVE this meme.

Eyyy, good shit, @wildwoodsgames.bsky.social!

Stop quoting stuff CEOs say about game development. They don't know shit. Even game devs only know about their own tiny slice of gamedev, so the suits definitely have no idea. You don't have to listen to them or debunk them, sometimes you can just be like "that's idiotic" and live on.

Sure, every* game company** is using AI... but using it well? Is it actually helping with ANYthing? Or is it driven by a need to have AI deliver early on the promise of substituting for human labour because there's no other problem it solves? * not every, not by a long shot ** as opposed to studio

Translation, its important to assume every game by Nexon is using AI. And not buy them. And play something by an indie dev who gives a shit about what they make.

Got a real pancake/waffles situation happening here on bsky dot com.

I’ve seen this shared several times with the header and footer not visible, so you can’t see the artists’s name. Credit: Leo the Alien — alienyrox on redbubble and other platforms.