I genuinely wish this would be an option for more kickstarters. I just keep lending my game copies out to my students and sometimes they never come back. It makes it much easier for me to use your game in my classes if I can purchase a lot of them.

I mean... Why else would we have all these dice?

Last week I did some research in New Orleans on liminal play spaces. I got the chance to attend the Anne Rice Fan Club's annual ball; a childhood dream come true. For a ball that's not a larp, I sure did forget I wasn't an immortal coquette.

My new horror sentence starter is, "Due to budget cuts..."

I need us all to internalize that there are more larps than boffer larps or international blockbuster larps. Parlor and freeform larps provide just as much power. One of the best larps I have ever played isBut Not Tonight by @yeonsoonerorlater.bsky.social. It's accessible and packs a punch.

I often make a joke that the reason I didn't continue my acting career wasn't talent, but because I was meant to be a comedian on a 1960's variety show. I am here to tell you this was never a joke. This is just true. I was meant to be Phyllis Diller or Carol Channing but Laugh In is off the air.

🎲✂️ Howdy! @czamboni.bsky.social and I are looking to connect with TTRPG / LARP creators from outside of North America creating games that address oppression and resistance from a cultural perspective. We're putting together a list for potential guests for our podcast-in-progress! #TTRPG #LARP

The hardest part of my job is learning how to dream. Which sounds absurd, but what it actually means is that if you have lived in worked in scarcity your entire life and career it can be hard to know exactly how far you can go, or what possibilities there even *are*.

See you this weekend, Portland! I’ll be between my booth and the claw machines at Portland Retro Gaming Con 🕹️

TEETH WASHI TAPE.

This is your reminder to get a Mammogram. 💕

Folks are really surprised that I am in creative technologies because I work in the analog sphere a lot. However, I am intensely interested in how we can use creative tech...just you know, not for evil. I love all the weird little tech we can put in analog spaces. Also knitting needles are tech.

Gamers! If you're going to Gamehole Con, you can donate to help out Rob Wieland's wife and daughter by purchasing tickets to our memorial event there. If you can, please do! The link for those donations is here: www.gameholecon.com/events/event...

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! Today we celebrate the heritage, beauty, and perseverance of hundreds of cultures and nations across North America that have thrived and endured here for thousands of years, and will be around for thousands more. If you want to support this Native: bit.ly/3L67Yrs

Sometimes you reach the end of a research thread and instead of wanting to publish your findings you just look at the pile of people's trauma and escapism and say, "Maybe it's enough to know I'm correct. Maybe I don't want to spend three months coding this into a usable database for a paper."

I can't believe I get to go to the Anne Rice Vampire Ball, and it's a *RESEARCH TRIP*.

what is this, a set for ants?

I'm really trying to avoid writing an article on internalized racism and misogynoir in play spaces but I keep getting closer and closer to the edge.

Last night, I received notification of the 19th death of a detained person in ICE custody since Trump took office. ICE is detaining people, mostly in private, for-profit prisons that put profit over health. And now they have furloughed the safety inspectors. This is unacceptable.

When I get my pair of MiMu gloves I'm going to make everyone regret* they gave a larp academic money.

ssssssssss Gamess are due THISS coming Monday, the 13th. Let'ss ssee your larp ideasss cook!! www.goldencobra.org

We denigrate play and make believe as frivolous and unserious so our language uses these terms to make facism seem unserious. How about we just call them for what they are...liars.

Yesterday I presented to our senior seminar students and realized that I've written and published poetry, plays, ttrpgs, videogames, boardgames, card games, larps, academic articles, news articles, novels, novelas, blogs, and film scripts. The only thing I haven't tried is comics. And I wanna.

Do you find yourself at the intersection of performance, games, and design? Do you want to work with world class artists in research, pedagogy, and games? Then maybe apply to work with me at UCSC! We're hiring a Assistant Professor of Interactive Art, Performance & Games recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF01998

They used AI projections at the Winchester Mystery House Haunt. If I was a ghost there, I'd ask to be exorcised.

Random fact, I myself have done APs and can tell you that the same reaction people have to me on screen is literally the same reaction people have to me if I do a large international larp. My body and presence makes people confront internalized misogynoir. Ugh, I'm gonna have to write this myself.

Has anyone written a paper on investigating fandom's internalized racism, homophobia and sexism using Actual Play* fans reactions? If not, it's going on my list. 🤌🏽 *I wish my new line of research on performance and bleed didn't mean I have to occasionally read reddit, but here we are.

Fun facts, you can get the scenario I wrote with @juhanaonparas.bsky.social in this bundle. Other fun facts I learned: The most requested game for Storytellers in Santa Cruz is Vampire. So, I'll be gearing myself up to run Vampire locally!

Listen, just so we are all in agreement, everyone sounds like a dork describing their character at a table. Everyone. Just embrace that cringe.

The history of RPG design has a familiar right-hand path — what-if wargaming — and a more obscure left-hand path. Improv theater games, Surrealist and Situationist games, New Games, parlor games, storytelling games... back into the Renaissance and presumably further.

Listen, the world is a mess. I have class to prep, several meetings, but please look at this Banana Slug. I am obsessed. I love them. They are everywhere.

One Battle After Another was poorly written, and the fact that it's getting rave reviews is tiring. Even without a critical media lens parts of the plot don't make sense. Also, in these times do you really want to make the case that Black femmes fighting facism are equally absurd as white hoods?

One of my favorite things about walking around campus is that my clothes deeply identify me as "weird art division professor" but my in person classes haven't started yet. So, I'm like a cool cryptid. You don't know who I am, but you saw me in the forest walk and keep staring.

Oh great internet, I come before you looking for zines about rest. These can be ttrpg zines, regular zines etc. As long as they pertain to the idea of rest, avoiding burnout etc. 🫶🏽

Just thinking about the guy who said DC would *never* let me write Superman and Batman.

Hoist your teacups and tankards! We’re live with the *8-Year* Anniversary Stream on Twitch, and we’re raising money for vital LA community org @idepsca.bsky.social !

Since I've actually had three discussions about RPF* this month with people who think this is okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say please keep that to your personal diary like it's 1995. *RPF- Real person fic. I've actually had this "gifted" to me more than once and like...no. 🫠

One of my favorite game moments was testing this with @megueyb.bsky.social . We had to cleanse a haunted gay bathhouse, and make our clothes and the wizard van... just honestly a fucking great time.

I would like to argue this is basically a parlor larp, and not so much a session zero. Which for me, is extremely interesting. youtu.be/Z9dB9aPJuEs?...

Back in the Forge days, and I still see it occasionally, there was a story that in our games we were disempowering the GM because we'd had bad experiences with viking hat GMs in our pasts. It's not at all true! Our bad experiences were AS GMs.

I'm rolling up a 15th level cleric for a local game and I haven't played D&D for so long I forgot a bunch of shit. But then a character voice popped in my head, and now I'm thinking of a Tiefling Cleric of Tymora who is just like, "I MEAN WHY NOT PRESS YOUR LUCK?! LIFE IS SHORT. LIVE ON THE EDGE."

@senfoonglim.bsky.social helped me distill the whole thesis of my documentary into a 35 second sound bite. So, thanks, Sen! And thank you, @ludologypod.bsky.social for this wonderful chat!

If you've enjoyed some of my games and are interested in trying it yourself, why not join the ONE HUNDRED ONE PAGE GAME JAM next month? There's PRIZES. itch.io/jam/one-hund...

Listen, trying to be a professor during this time period is genuinely mindbogglingly difficult, but nothing makes me happier than having my bookshelf across from me and seeing the names of so many people I love and admire staring back.

It's wild when people get mad at players who "just play themselves". Everyone is playing themselves in some way. Even your weird little throwaway character is an aspect or part of you. Roleplaying gives you an excuse to play around with different selves, even if you don't know you're doing it.

I can't believe I'm going to get to moderate academic panels in Monster Studies and that's like...a part of my job. Speaking of which you can still register for our Monster Studies Conference being held October 15th-18! www.monsterstudies.ucsc.edu

Really proud that my university acknowledges that women and femme bodied professors who are perceived as "nice", or young need to use hierarchical structures and dress more formally in order to not have their boundaries crossed by students. Which you know, is true.

I cannot explain it, but only New Jersey can make Batman. Batman is a Jersey ass hero with Jersey ass villains. I will not accept any other place Gotham can be.

The Bay Area is going to do two things to me, and I cannot fight it. 1. Make me a clown. Everyone is a clown. It's all CLOWNS. 2. Make me start a YouTube channel where I just explain game design terms. No frills. No production value. Okay maybe I will use one puppet.

My game of Nightmare High* was interrupted by hopeful taser knife fight participants this weekend, and frankly I'm proud my design can withstand that. *The game I specifically made for teens in OST spaces and have not published but use as a tool to introduce ttrpgs.