Running a survey on Norwegian RPG players. Found something obvious: when games exist in Norwegian, people play in Norwegian. When they don't, people switch to English. The language of the hobby follows the language of the books. Is your group playing in your first language or in English?

Need a relationship map for your campaign? I made a free one. Draw characters, connect them, add tags and notes. GM and Player views so you can hide secrets. Works in your browser, no account needed. maps.hyperfictive.com

Over half of surveyed tabletop game designers use AI. A quarter of those call themselves "strongly opposed" in public. I dug into what the RPG industry is actually doing while saying it isn't. https://open.substack.com/pub/hyperfictive/p/the-ai-hypocrisy

Renamed all the 'moves' in my game. The word carries too much PbtA baggage. Players kept expecting it to work like Apocalypse World when it doesn't. Sometimes you have to break the vocabulary to break the assumptions. Have you changed a term in a game and watched it change how people played?

Finland and Norway: same population. Finnish D&D (1988) sold 35,000 in bookstores. Norwegian D&D (1989) sold 5,000 in hobby shops. Same game, 7x difference. The channel decided it. In Norwegian, translates fine: norsk-rollespillnytt.vercel.app/rollespillhi...

Winter 1982/83: Norwegian storeowner Geir Aaslid cold-called TSR. The switchboard lady put him through, he was calling long-distance. A decade on: TSR's biggest European distributor outside the UK. My interview (Norwegian, translates fine): https://norsk-rollespillnytt.vercel.app/rollespillhistorie

First round of digital copies of Duginthroat Divided have been sent out to backers. I feel thankful, humbled and exhausted. And we still have to prepare the print run.

Playtested an adventure last week. 3.5 hours. Zero combat, zero magic, zero dungeon procedures. Session ran on talking to NPCs and poking around the environment. Now I'm looking at the rules wondering which ones earn their page count. What rules have you never used at the table?

New free game: Three Encounters. Go outside with two friends. Guide each other through encounters with spirits in nature. Touch a tree. Feel a presence. You might not have a revelation. But you might breathe differently. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

New free game: Five Characters in Search of an Identity. You know you're characters in a game, just don't know which ones. The GM reveals identities one at a time. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

Borgarjournalistikk: Når ein person på ein kveld og ei natt kan fylle rolla åt heile redaksjonar. Kven av dei norske media – der verksemder og tilsette enno har greitt betalt – har fått belyst rekkjehusbrannen i Krogstadelva som @matthijs1000.bsky.social? ukas-interesse.vercel.app/krokstadelva...

Slik kunne ett hus bli til hundre

Over hundre boliger brant ned på fem timer i Krokstadelva. Svakheten som kan la en brann løpe fra hjem til hjem, har stått beskrevet i offentlige dokumenter siden 1997.

ukas-interesse.vercel.app

New free game: Fame! One player performs meaningless acts. The audience responds with nonsensical applause. All language must be gibberish. Fifteen minutes, standing ovation. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

I'm working on names for the playbooks in Draug! It's a game set in post-apocayptic Norway, 1856, after the trolls woke up and the devastations started. Want to help me pick? Thumbs up, down, or shrug for each option. Takes 2 min. survey-nine-kappa.vercel.app

My most artsy, weird, personal and experimental stuff has mostly been published randomly, as blog posts and competition PDFs on a myriad of web pages and fora. When I started gathering them, they became a personal history. Only for the specially interested! My least commercial works :D

I built a free browser tool for making RPG relationship maps. It started as prep for my own game. Drag cards around, draw connections, toggle between GM and player views. Give it a try! maps.hyperfictive.com

Three B-Sides games are now free on DriveThruRPG. Here's what they are.

It is quite possible for a creative human to use AI tools to further their unique perspectives. Come on now.

Rachael Stott@rachaelstott.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Nice 🤙

Gelatinous cute!

Lauren Walsh Art@laurenwalshart.bsky.social · 3mo ago

POV you are an adventurer in a dungeon and you meet this little guy #art

This guy really does his research!

NessunDove@nessundovelab.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Everyone @matthijs1000.bsky.social included has been deep in the Play Bologna vortex, but a nice review of the Soledad preview just came out by the Brazilian YouTuber @solerverso.bsky.social ! Check it out if you want a quick overview of the game. youtu.be/XcqU36hlE0Y?...

I swear, I get high from playing Soledad with new people. Suck a kick. Both just for that "it actually works! AGAIN!" feeling, and because it gets so intense just discovering the world and dynamics with strangers. New people ❤️

One player lies on the floor as a thousand-year-old skeleton. Others walk around, speculating about who they were. The skeleton can't correct them. Ten minutes.

A troll isn't a stat block. It's something your great-grandmother warned you about, and she was right.

If your game uses folklore, make it mechanical. Iron protects against the supernatural. That's not flavor text. That's an economy, a scarcity system, a set of hard choices.

Write down something you want to do before you die. Roll a die. 2-6: age that many decades, explain why you never did it. Roll again. On a 1, you die. That's the whole game.

The best sessions I've run had no permanent GM. Someone frames the scene, someone else plays the threat, someone asks the hard question. Then you rotate.

Rotating the narrator every scene sounds chaotic. In practice it means nobody gets tired, nobody gets bored. Everyone's invested because everyone directs.

Innovative GM-free no-prep magic realism card-based TTRPG «Roots of Soledad» only €278 away from funding! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...

Check out The Roots of Soledad - A Magical Realism RPG on @BackerKit! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n... #rpg #indie #gmless #pbta #ttrpg #art #rpgart #italy #norway #latin #solorpg #cardgame #boardgame

My new game, the Roots of Soledad, launched two days ago and is almost fully funded! So I'm super excited 😄 Soledad is a magical realism RPG, with lots of drama, supernatural weird things, and deeply human relationships. www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...

Still a couple of hours left to back Soledad and get a free art sticker exclusive to Early Birds! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...

NessunDove@nessundovelab.bsky.social · 3mo ago

To celebrate launch, we've prepared a freebie for those who back in the first 48 hours: a Kapok Flower sticker, inspired by the great tree that watches over Soledad and by the vibrant colors of the amazing cover, designed by Laura "Soma" Ortiz. Will you be there to watch it bloom again?