Blades in the Dark to show how tight structure can spark imagination. Pathfinder 2e to help them realise if they actually want tactical combat to be a central focus. The Quiet Year as a really smooth on-ramp to GMless and/or less character focused games. Dread because Jenga Tower.

6 days, £139 to go. That's 7 physical copies or 12 pdfs.

I know that the vast vast majority of complaints around Aabria Iyengar's style in APs is just racism and misogyny, but if there is anything beyond that, it's that she plays 5e like she was playing a better game and it highlights the dissonances borne of D&D's shitass design.

I've been laid up the last two days with intense pain so there hasn't been much that I can get done. If you've enjoyed any of my shitposting during that time, or even just want to help out, I'd welcome the aid. Medical needs and emergencies are draining out the dregs of last year's budget, etc.

“I just have concerns about fairness in sport” - no, you don’t. There’s nothing fair about elite sports. You’re just looking for post hoc justification because we give you the ick

An annoying thing about D&D being presented as the omni-game for every experience is that a lot of people who rightly dislike it end up hating on mechanics that are absolutely fine in the right context. For example, take HP. A lot of people dislike the fictional implications of HP and how only the

So Wicked For Good wasn't very good, huh? I get that it inherited at lot of its flaws from the show, but the choices it made as a movie did it no favours, and I say this as someone who was pleasantly surprised by the first Wicked movie last year

I think the Traveller 5e news feels particularly galling because 5.5e had such a lukewarm reception that it genuinely felt like D&D's presence was waning a bit, and this is a rude awakening.

If you tell me your favorite game is 5e, then my only conclusion is that you don’t play many games.

If you tell me your favorite game is AD&D or 2e, that tells me you’re really into old school games and styles of play. If you tell me your favorite game is 3e, then I know you’re a freak for math and you love mess. If you tell me your favorite game is 4e, I know you’re a fan of epic storytelling.

I was watching a clip from the Adventuring Academy episode between Luis Carazo and Brennan Lee Mulligan and they were discussing session zeros and the importance of putting in the work and getting things right because you have a lot less fine control over the game once you start playing it properly

Reading complaints about TTRPG systems on Reddit is fun because a solid third of the times someone's complaining about a game it's clear that they've actually just ended up with a comically bad and hostile GM who would go out of their way to make any game miserable.

I have way too many things to promote. I'm going to end up diluting my message! 😓 Let's start with the Kickstarter for GRAVITY, shall we, which is doing much better since the self-pity boost last weekend. Still need £640 to fund though -- that's 32 more hard copy sales!

Been painting up the 30k Saturnine box. Here's the Praetor, Centurion and a tactical squad..

The thing about systems matter discourse is that it's all upside. You have a better game for those who like mechanical integrity and for those who ignore that stuff, they'll do their own thing anyway with your game, so no great loss.

Mine is that the primary purpose of accruing power in our society is to facilitate sexual violence rather than sexual violence being a by-product of our power structures.

Thinking about this because I really wanted to love The Magnus Archives RPG and was really disappointed in it and the main problem is that the core premise of the game is a really bad adaptation of the source material.

What's interesting to me with Avatar Legends is that the system as designed can handle someone playing the Avatar just as well as anyone else. If anything, the game feels like it was initially designed around the Avatar and then spun out to other archetypes given the whole balance system.

One of my favourite things about GMing Blades in the Dark is that I never have to pull my punches. Getting to go "Here's how you die horribly" and the player going "Actually, here's how I don't" and it be mechanically supported is so much fun

My theory about Joyce Carol Oates is that all her bad posts are her charging up like Godzilla's spines until she lets loose with a radioactive blast that leaves the world's richest Nazi a pile of ash

I say this as a fan of Trench Crusade so feel free to dismiss this as fan defensiveness but I genuinely find it kinda odd how the vast majority of negative criticisms I see about Trench Crusade that aren't from Christofascists or people with genuine issues about the Kickstarter reward rollouts have

This feels like kind of a non sequitur because the problem here isn't the mechanics, it's the terms of discussion. If course there's nothing special about mechanics when talking about them in a white room devoid of context, but mechanics when implemented don't exist that way.

When people talk about the excesses of MeToo, they have to lie, because the reality is that there was no massive social reckoning forcing people to believe survivors or hold perpetrators accountable. In fact, there has been a significant backsliding and new punishments in rejection of MeToo

Let's hop on this. Judge me based on 4 favourite films, GO!

I think there's lots of reasons. One is scheduling. TTRPGs generally require the same group of people to be consistently available. If you do 5 a side soccer in a club of like 20 people, people not being able to make it consistently doesn't matter because so long as you have your minimum, you're

Saw a Reddit post about rules light vs rules heavy and while I think it's basically a false dichotomy I think maybe a better way to frame that conversation is "how much do you need to know to start playing?" Someone can hand you a character sheet in DND and introduce each part of the game piecemeal

I'm reading through Brindlewood Bay at the moment and something I love about good pbtas like it is how much of the book is devoted to explaining how to use the rules rather than just laying out a bunch of mechanics and expecting you to figure it out.

Ultimately not that bothered about the move to plastic kits for Trench Crusade once they get their logistics and shipping under control. Like, I like having the 3d printer and being able to digitally kitbash and mess around with my models, but it's not like the old STLs or the 3rd party stuff is

The nice thing about playing games that actually suit your playstyle instead of D&D is more often than not you won't need to rule of cool shit because the game already facilitates what you want.

It's fun how Klein has decided that people disagreeing with him is good, but also that disagreement is enough and he never needs to learn or change.

Legit think the litmus test for whether someone is good at Pathfinder 2e (or if they have a bad GM tbf) is if they think the Investigator is a good class or not.

Feel like that's kinda the point...

Maybe I'm biased, but it also seems particularly connected to D&D as opposed to other games. Maybe because the dice are so swingy there combined with the culture of downplaying the game design in favour of what is basically superstition (lucky d20s, dice jail, etc.). Like I found that all dice

Maybe this is the scientist in me speaking, but your creative and personal writing will always be better when you actively engage with surrounding literature in your work.

This is the thing. The whole games should cost more line of argument is one that relies on vulgar oversimplification rather than engaging with the aaa segment of the industry as it is right now.

Coming back to running Pathfinder 2e after years of mainly world of Darkness and indie stuff has really shown me how even in low combat games, that non combat play is largely just preludes to combat

Something that's kinda interesting is while people talk about the impact of APs on this particular aesthetic, it's almost entirely pulling from just one, TaZ Balance. Like, Critical Role is Shrek but ultraviolent, this is all TaZ inspired.

Not a new observation but that D&D art that's the subject of all the discourse recently has made me realise that what a huge portion of the D&D fanbase wants is to replicate the JRPG experience. D&D is obviously a terrible fit and they should just use Ryutama or Fabula Ultima.

Marketing is psychological warfare and at the bare minimum, regulations should be way way stronger.

Significant numbers of Nazis were recruited by the United States and moved to the United States or worked overseas on the CIA's payroll. Americans love the "Argentina was a Nazi haven" meme because it means they don't have to look at who their own government was in bed with.

Sandy Peterson is a massive dipshit but you can't really accuse him of not playing RPGs. Dude was one of the original creators of the Call of Cthulu ttrpg, like. If anything, his dipshit takes about games are all the more embarassing because he should know better given his history and experience.

I've started painting up the guys from the new Horus Heresy box, so here's some Salamanders with a nice alternate colour scheme. A Saturnine Command Squad, Seekers, and a Vigilator

Dude literally just released a book that could have been lifted directly out of Mussolini's Italy and he's doing the shocked Pikachu face about rising fascism.

Another significant environmental crime Investigation after more than 30 acres of native trees - some centuries old - felled in Co Cork jrnl.ie/6805578

Today IUCN has officially declared the Slender-billed Curlew extinct, marking the first known global extinction of a formerly widespread migratory bird species whose range included mainland Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. Read more here ⬇️ www.unep-aewa.org/fr/node/6632

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk1Y... I need everyone to know about the wonders of our upcoming presidential election. Ireland has so many problems but the fact that one of the candidates had to drop out over fucking over his tenants 16 years ago is great. Better yet, he missed the cutoff point to be

Saw some scuttlebutt about cozy fiction on the other site and I think one of the most striking things about the label is the massive difference between self-described cozy fiction and the works that are most commonly cited as inspirations. Like you can't make Kiki's Delivery Service if your goal

Great video. Though I fear that if I let this be my gateway to the Audra Winter rabbit hole, it will kill me