I've got stuff at the @ipr.bsky.social booth at PAXU this year! - Grackle Teeth - Roguelike: A Duo Adventure Game - The Empire Never Ended - The Pact - Toffet Station: A Tale of Desperation - Twenty Four Game Poems 2024 I'll mostly be running Toffet and Starfolk at Games on Demand, come say hi!

Man, badge pickup lines get worse and worse every year. Brutal.

Time for an airplane movie!

Leaving for PAXU in about six hours, still need to finish packing and get a tiny bit of sleep before the flight. So of course, right now is the perfect time to make a discord bot that shows you the current date in the Tapani Sector.

Roll for Mutation: Post-Apocalyptic TTRPG History: Ep. 3 Paranoia We bow in abject obeisance Friend Computer and the incomparably perfect TTRPG Paranoia from West End Games and then Mongoose. We talk about what it is, gaming history, our experiences playing & general thoughts about the game. #ttrpg

This week in the Ultraviolet Grasslands the caravan met a soul-seeking machine man in the Dark Light Passage, found but passed by the Rebuilder's, foraged for three weeks in the Forest of Meat, recovered and raced a sick autogolem, and finally reached the Black City. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsM6...

The Majcher Arcana Weekly Update: Final(?) editing pass on MZ1 finished and proof ordered from Mixam, started layout on the other five zines (I should really write them first, lol), got StarFolk all sorted and ready to go for PAX, and did a bunch of spreadsheets for Hardweave! youtu.be/wNZjLp3ClV4

Me, realizing that the not-Cataphracts space wizard game I'm making is going to need at least twenty players to run properly: Yes, spending the entire day building out the maps and playsheets and systems for a stripped-down three player version that I also will not play is a good use of my time.

Are you there, god? It’s me, Margaret. You know that new sound you’ve been looking for? Well listen to this *plays the Star Wars cantina band 10x slowed down*

“Short bursts indicate an ICE sighting. Long whistles indicate agents making arrests. If you hear the whistle and you’re undocumented, said [Whitney Hu, a community activist and organizer with South Brooklyn Mutual Aid], ‘you hide. And if you’re somebody who’s not, you go to the street.’”

Just bit the bullet and sent out a "hey sorry for bothering you omg please unsubscribe" message to my new mailing list. It's been so so long, but I guess we gotta do it sometime... buttondown.com/majcher/arch...

Hello to the one million new followers from Over/Under! I kinda feel bad because I got overwhelmed and mostly dipped about halfway through, but it's been delightful watching as much of the shenanigans as I could manage over the past few weeks, and I look forward to reading about it forever. :D

This week in the Ultraviolet Grasslands, the caravan crossed the Ivory Plain, dodged a raccoon-pig stampede, escaped proto-hunters with poetry, and dined with cannibals. Skelly practiced necromancy, Modon got a makeup tutorial, and we entered the Dark Light Passage. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo7N...

I don't think I posted this last week, but I'm going to try doing some accountability/progress videos, in the interest of surfacing some of the stuff I'm working on. (Not only for y'all, but for future Marc who will assume I've been a lazy butt lump forever.) youtu.be/hdflMy-frAo

Happy There Is A Circulatory System Walking Through The Kitchen Day to all who celebrate.

we host Action Hours for scientists and their allies so we don't become complicit with authoritarianism by sliding into individual survival--instead we reach for one another and strategic, collective action join us at our next on Tuesday, Nov 11 8PM ET: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

You say “scam text message”, I say “creative writing prompt”.

SNOW

@nicbennett.bsky.social 's folks made a treat advent calendar for the bunnies and it is the best thing ever.

Something that feels illegal that isn't: driving around after dark scooping leaves off the curb into bins to take back to your own yard and garden. WASTEFUL.

Polking around data merge in the new Affinity (getting a new set of StarFolk action cards together) and came across something exciting... (Yes, I tried grabbing Document and whatnot, but the table data is sandboxed, it looks like. SOON, though.)

This week in Mythic Bastionland, the Company destroyed a walking etone Eye, agreed to carry Favell's taxes to Demelza Keep, captured a killer hedgehog and delusional guard, and unearthed the true Cudgel, which gave Sergei the exact location of the thief who stole his pony. youtu.be/Y5z-ZglNolU

so for me, the juice and sauce of RPGs is when we totally embrace these diegetic world-rules as the rules of the game itself. where "How do we slay this dragon?" is exactly as difficult as it would be to ~actually~ slay the dragon, not just reduce it to 0HP. it's like de-metaphorizing play, sorta

Finally played Tim Hutching's Old Morris Cave/Thousand Year Old Campfire yesterday, which I've been meaning to for a long time, and it slaps pretty hard. This is 100% my speed right now—pretty simple, pretty rich, and lots of design things to think about... thousandyearoldvampire.com/products/tyoc

No, *you* stayed up all night making a galactic atlas in google sheets for a large-scale mech campaign you're probably never going to run. #MACAttack

The victory of progressive candidates is a byproduct of our work caring for one another and building a better world, not the goal of our work.

I gotta say, the excitement of exploding d20s in SDM is better than a critical hit ever could be. You rolled a 42 on your carousing check? Awesome, you've got a new friend who's a spacesuit full of sentient beans, enjoy.

If you want to know why people are still making new games, and want to encourage them to keep going, visit the RPG Designer Meet and Greet, Saturday Morning at #PAXUnplugged. 10 AM, and 11 AM. All attendees welcome #ttrpg unplugged.paxsite.com/en-us/schedu... unplugged.paxsite.com/en-us/schedu...

This week in the Ultraviolet Grasslands, Adoron consulted with the Satraps at the Spectrum Palace, Phaedred got fired from Oenerics Unlimited, Skelly learned to raise the dead, and Modon accidentally created Spatula, a sentient bean-filled satrap suit. Also: lots of profit! youtu.be/M-Q6iB0wzqY

This week’s kombucha experiments: maple, lingonberry, and dandelion syrup. Let’s see if they work!

Now that the first Veins of Corruption zine is out there (I don't think I'll have print copies in time for PAXU, but we'll see), it's time to get back on StarFolk, just smashing together an ashcan for testing while I hammer out the last few action sets. majcher.itch.io/starfolk

Reposting for the morning crew!

Destroy daylight savings time. Destroy standard time. Destroy all time zones. One world, one time, OK!

IT IS DONE. MZ1 The Sibayan Cenobium, first of a six-part megazungeon. 56 full-color pages of maps, monsters, and magic to whet your appetite for adventure! majcher.itch.io/veins-of-cor... #zungeon #shadowdark

"," > "", COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/nerd-f... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

HAPPY HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Ugh I actually let myself want a job that I applied for, so the inevitable rejection actually sucks this time. Boooo wanting things.

In The Running Man, Arnold is told to gun down people peacefully protesting for food. He refuses, is taken captive, and is sent to prison and framed for the deaths of the protesters via deepfake video. I still don't know why we need a new one.

This week in Mythic Bastionland, Spinjack the spider is dead—trampled, stabbed, and burned. Meliel's scar hardens, Valamante gets stabby, and Favell’s festival hides unrest. Craddock the Magpie Knight names Nimue envoy as pilgrims of the Eye march to tear down the realm’s walls. youtu.be/0ecoQ4DqOZM

I needed some art to fill in space in the book I'm laying out, but I couldn't find anything I liked, so I wrote a sad little shanty for a music box in the module instead, and put the sheet music for it in there instead. 😂 flat.io/score/690255...

Zohran Mamdani caught lying that he understood Plato’s allegory of the cave, yet when asked to explain it, he seemed to instead explain Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra and Simulation where reality has been replaced by symbols and signs, which seems similar to Plato’s theory but is not the same

LET'S GOOOOOOO JELLY (fr tho)

Today I am watching all of the James Bond pre-credits intro scenes. For research.

Just like one page of writing, a final edit sweep, and a bit of layout fiddling, and MZ1 is just about *done*, after sitting untouched for a few months...

First batch of Black Walnut ink bottled, labeled, and ready to go!

There's a story that Penn Jillette tells about how he and Penn and some other friends had an ongoing "game" of trying to sneak a piece of parsley on each others' plates while they were eating out. Being magicians, this was tricky, and the gambits became more and more elaborate over the years.

Uh oh I may have accidentally made This Discord Has Pokémon In It.

Party-pooping spooky season PSA: That whole "eye of newt is secret code for mustard seed" and whatever thing that goes around every year is a bunch of hooey made up by a white guy in the 1980s. www.reddit.com/r/etymology/...

Roll for Mutation: Post-Apocalyptic TTRPG History: Ep. 2 Twilight 2000 Hosts Lowell Francis & Marc Majcher cover the history of Twilight 2000 and how it desperately raced to keep itself contemporary. We talk about what it is, gaming history, bookstore "Men's Adventure" sections, and more. #ttrpg

youtu.be/acjPw2WgFyc This week in the Ultraviolet Grasslands, the caravan freed a wizard from the Refracting Trees, looted a sunken bunker, and gleaned powers a grove of screaming wizards. Modon taught beans to think, and consultations with the Spectrum Satraps at their palace commenced.