psst, hey kid, want a quick mental framework that improves your play in co-creative games with broad narrative authority??? #gmless #groundtable arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/49...

Honestly, that may be the most thoughtful description of Follow I've heard in a long time. Matt gets it. #FollowRPG

Yesterday was a really productive day for the Less Than Three Games team! We both ran playtests for our works-in-progress and got some very valuable insights 🥳 Plus we made some sexy vampires (in my game) and some bog monsters (in Marc's game)!

More people should play gmless games imo it's good for the soul.

Every now and then I see someone asking for recommendations of a GMless game to play. Well a bunch of us made a list, complete with explanations of why we thought each game was great, so you can decide for yourself. Don't see your favorite? Add it! www.reddit.com/r/gmless/com...

This is very good advice. If different ideas are thrown out you want to be very overt about the final decision. The make-stuff-up groups I play with now have a solid culture of doing this. We agreed to X. We're doing X. All the other stuff we mused about is not in effect. #gmless

It was another fun year in gaming! Downfall, Kingdom, Epitaph, a bunch of playtests, In This World, Rules of Law, Follow, Grasping Nettles, Going for Broke, BFF!, Inheritance, and a bunch of others I am not organized enough to have written down! I'm looking forward to more adventures in 2026! ❤️

Continuing our examination of all the tropes and assumptions of D&D via In This World. This week's topic: CLERICS. Because clerics and gods and religion in D&D are fucking weeeeeeeeeird #InThisWorld

Does our law ban knives because we're a peaceful society, opposed to weapons? No, it's because *everyone* carries knives -- they love their knives! -- and we're making a futile effort to keep a lid on it. #RuleofLaw #summerlab arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/49...

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.

Gather round children, for a tale of holiday magic! In which we not only fail to save xmas, but kind of shoot the moon and destroy it forever instead. And Santa gets divorced. #FollowRPG #gmless arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/49...

I wrote a listicle for the top 12 TTRPGs I enjoyed reading this year: dicesoniceisaiddicetwice.wordpress.com/2025/12/26/t... #ttrpg #rpg

I skip ONE SESSION and look what happens!!!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a game example is worth, I dunno, at least a couple hundred? So I expanded Rules of Law to a luxurious THREE pages to make room for examples. And also made a version formatted for mobile. #summerlab arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/49...

I am a notorious em-dasher. I searched my blog posts for the last 20 years just to verify, and yep, endless –. But now em-dashes are the mark of the beast. How do I prove my humanity in a world invaded by AI slop??? And don't say "just don't dash". If we give up our dashes, the enemy has won!!!

Tune in to find out what inappropriate things Ben says while on cold medicine!

DAY 8, GAME 11: Microscope is only one of the great collaborative story-games from @lamemage.com, but it's the first one of them I love to play with a group, to build and explore not just a world together, but its entire history. Brain-bursting fun for a lot of newcomers. lamemage.com/microscope/

Meta’s AI crawler bots (the ones swiping material to train their AI) have been hitting my website about 50,000 times a day. 10x more a few days ago. Enough to act as a denial of service attack. And the files they're trying to read… don’t exist. The paths are bizarre combinations of real paths.

Getting everything on to two pages was lovely, but I've decided Rules of Law would be better with some in-depth demonstrations. Sooooo I'm adding a whole third page with detailed examples, because I think that will make life better for the players.

"Unity is achieved under a ruthless leader" This is why we can't have nice things, Microscope!!!

Yay Rules of Law! I've played it a few times now, and it's simple, fun, and thought-provoking! All the good things!

HE KEEPS DOING IT, PEOPLE

You know what tells you a lot about a society? Our LAWS. What do we punish? Do we enforce them fairly? Do we think our laws are just? So of course I made world-building game about that… arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/48...

"We bombed ourselves back to the stone age" I know that feel, Microscope

Ahhhhhh I just played Rules of Law and my brain is on fire!!!! We had conflicting laws that required you to divulge information of public interest but also restricting how you divulge it. Amazingly complex society, putting citizens in challenging situations, but all with good intent. #summerlab

Continuing our series of "what if D&D but not?" games of In This World. I am continually astounded how we can make a setting I want to play a whole campaign in every 25 minutes less. And then another. And then another. #InThisWorld

Check out the new game that @diceexploder.com and I have designed: randylubin.itch.io/three-genera... In "Three Generations: The Rise and Fall of the Eternal Empire" you tell the story of an empire as you build a city network and tell stories of the characters who travel across its lands.

This is tomorrow! Whether you're a fan of GMless indie #TTRPGs, mysteries and thrillers, or group chat drama, make sure to tune in on the @nerdswdice.bsky.social Twitch (www.twitch.tv/nerdswithdice)

Another nice thing about playing RPGs online instead of in-person is that you never have to worry about getting everyone else sick

Well to be fair we used a lot of other words (some of them curses) but none that stuck

This is also your periodic reminder that the original Predator movie (1987) is a perfectly crafted work of art. A finely-tuned Swiss watch of a movie.

I came down with some kind of cold, so of course I have been treating it with heavy doses of game design? #summerlab

Second playtest of "Rules of Law" (a game about laws, duh), rocked just as much as the first. Why do we forbid people from going into the fields at night? Is it because they'll speak to the dead? Or do witchcraft? No. It's all the sex. They're having so much sex in the fields. #summerlab

And what do we say to the God of Playtest Fails? Not today, Fail… #summerlab

So true, and I think something people recommending games don't recognize enough

Our #ttrpg group has used Microscope to build our last two campaign game worlds. Great for that or any night you want a fun storytelling one off.

"This terrifying statement was the starting gun for our Microscope: Chronicle game." Making notes for the next update: always start with a terrifying statement!

Is this my regular brand of coffee? Is it a full moon? Where are all these game design ideas coming from today??? #summerlab

You know what really helps the brain get things done? A mantra. A rallying cry. Ours is summerlab arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/48...

The power of a good name to make a good game arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/48...

decided to roll randomly for our topic and we could not have gotten a more fun result In This World: HERALDRY! #gmless

I'm making a big chunk of a game that you don't play. Is that weird? It feels like it might be weird. #summerlab

Is it gauche to carry the same protest signs twice? Is it like wearing the same outfit to another party??? Somebody tell me before October 18 #nokings www.mobilize.us/nokings/?tag...

real Microscope player confirmed

Weren't we just talking about GMless + diceless games? Case in point…

"Which would you rather play, a GMless or a diceless RPG" To which I say, "why not both" To which you say, "examples please" Leaving out (checks notes) every single one of my games, let me throw out a few. If I miss your favs, chime in!

Been thinking about these posts about the "star pattern" of conversation in games because this diagram is identical to one we use when talking about pedagogy. the question is the same: how do you get the people in a room talking to each other instead of seeking approval from a central authority?

Not gonna lie, you are not wrong Now I want a game based on the idea of getting constant wishes and slowly changing the entire world to suit your desires. It's not world-building, it's world-rebuilding

Not entirely on-topic, but sometimes I just think if I go to every DM and say “you are enough just as you are, and you don’t have to make anyone love you” the entire DM/GM Industrial Complex would collapse.

Modern star-problems require modern star-solutions arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/48...