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Ben // foresight studio

@foresightstudio.bsky.social

Ben (he/him) // Award-winning TTRPG designer, layout artist, science guy // strange stories for strange people www.foresight-studio.com

300 Posts406 Follower301 Folgt
snow@snow117.bsky.social · 2d ago

Magnolia finds the Songbirds under the geas of Love's court, attending to each of the family's needs. Trimming the living garden, making the children laugh, and freeing uncle's ex lover from the Agony Parade. It's the first big expansion/adventure for Songbirds and it's in early access right now!

The cover of Magnolia features a knight, arms folded, hands on her blades, with sharp eyes pointed through your heart.Magnolia’s body curls around the world. Her blood and viscera await, hand dancing with shadows in atmosphere. His Lady Algernon warred for 1000 years to win her heart as part of his Vision of Peace. Seven years ago he succeeded. Now the world’s gone ‘sleep. This is a world of plays. Where pretend overrides reality, pens in jelly ink. A darkened void of space where spotlights shine on those who stand before a crowd. A thought bubble floats by, holding inner secrets. And the fairies who crafted it all are long dead, taking the truth with them. Whispers and scuttles echo out of the Sleeping City, as mock royals flood the palace. Pocket world, Mirror world, your noir. And little birds find themselves adrift in their slumber, or perhaps called here by she. But be warned: beneath the surface of this dream there are chewing teeth. Ugly, wormy things. The people of Twilight are doomed. Cosmically, sure, but really it’s all part of The Drama. You are what you wear on this stage. You can play any role if you can back it up. Talk the talk to walk the walk. There’s little in the way of consistency, besides your doom. It follows you. Accumulates and pains. Songbirds gain a point of doom: At character creation. If they have five points in one stat. When they mark three stress. When they face a horror. When they create an alter ego. Songbirds add +Doom to damage they take.Harpy. The fae that live here used to rule over Labyrinthia before it died. Their hungry spirits still pretend, spinning souls into rings and other pretty things. One of Ort’s many, many hands sleeps around your neck. Puppet him with concentration. He moves fast at any range, uses your stats, and returns to sleep when released. The ring around his sixth finger holds Ort’s dead world. Mark a stress to release his full power: large, 20hp, 10 in all stats, does whatever a giant hand could do. Returns to its dead world at 0hp, and returns when healed fully.
Ben // foresight studio@foresightstudio.bsky.social · 2w ago

What if: a ttrpg that ships in a 3-ring binder. You unseal numbered envelopes and add pages to the rulebook as you play. Certain rules ask you to destroy envelopes without ever looking inside. There is a GM in charge of the book, but players earn a metacurrency that they can spend to remove pages

Ben // foresight studio@foresightstudio.bsky.social · 2w ago

Been trying to figure out a concise way to say this but: I think we like GMs because 1) our brains crave the feeling of discovery, and 2) you can't discover stuff you already know, so 3) GMs "own" truth in the fiction so players can discover it. But I love it when games play with who owns truth

TheGiocorn@rotten-shotgun-games.itch.io · 2w ago

The formatting and visual design on display here is absolutely incredible! That’s to say nothing of the incredible concept (I love tarot based games) Check this one out!

Ben // foresight studio@foresightstudio.bsky.social · 2w ago

Humans have ravaged the earth, and now they want to do the same to heaven. Your job: stop them. free demo of The Firmament now available! Check out this upcoming GM-less tarot ttrpg about divine secrets, terrible humans, and a world-shattering betrayal. www.kickstarter.com/projects/for...

Large black text in serif italic font sits on a white background above a mockup of two open books, overlapping one another. The books show different pages from a TTRPG called "The Firmament." The one in the back shows a left-hand page that's mostly white titled "Cycle," with steps A through E visible, though the rest of the text is too small to read. On the right-hand page is a diagram of play. The front book shows a left-hand page that's a pixelated image of falling blank white cards glowing slightly, with the word "Spreads" at the bottom in white. The right-hand page shows text on a white background, titled "Spreads," with text that's too small to read below that. Overlaid on the image is a spiky worm thing that swoops from beneath the front book, interweaves with the "Get the demo" text at the top, and returns behind the back book. On its left side is an orbital-style ring with a sun on it.
MeatCastle GameWare@meatcastlegameware.com · 2w ago

The Firmament was one of the submissions to my group in The Meat Grinder 2.0, and it was a really cool/wild one! Check it out!

Ben // foresight studio@foresightstudio.bsky.social · 2w ago

Humans have ravaged the earth, and now they want to do the same to heaven. Your job: stop them. free demo of The Firmament now available! Check out this upcoming GM-less tarot ttrpg about divine secrets, terrible humans, and a world-shattering betrayal. www.kickstarter.com/projects/for...

Large black text in serif italic font sits on a white background above a mockup of two open books, overlapping one another. The books show different pages from a TTRPG called "The Firmament." The one in the back shows a left-hand page that's mostly white titled "Cycle," with steps A through E visible, though the rest of the text is too small to read. On the right-hand page is a diagram of play. The front book shows a left-hand page that's a pixelated image of falling blank white cards glowing slightly, with the word "Spreads" at the bottom in white. The right-hand page shows text on a white background, titled "Spreads," with text that's too small to read below that. Overlaid on the image is a spiky worm thing that swoops from beneath the front book, interweaves with the "Get the demo" text at the top, and returns behind the back book. On its left side is an orbital-style ring with a sun on it.
Matt | Krasiph 🔜 GenCon@krasiph.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ben just added a free demo to the preview page! As a fellow tarot-game sicko, you gotta check this out. A really sick GMless game that sits in that beautiful space between board games and TTRPGs. Angels stopping humans from defiling heaven is as dope a premise as you can get. #ttrpg

Ben // foresight studio@foresightstudio.bsky.social · 4w ago

Humans have long hungered to reach the Chambers of Heaven. They seized control of the moon with the aid of their grotesque machinery. Now they pour into the firmament, the labyrinth we built to keep them out. Stop them. The Firmament: A tarot ttrpg of divinity and desperation, coming Fall 2026.

Ben // foresight studio@foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3w ago

Also, as someone with a PhD who spent over a decade doing research, it's always shocking how quickly people claim expertise & how quickly others believe them (in every field) Academia trains people to be extra cautious asserting expertise, because you have to prove it through scholarship

Dr. Emily Friedman@friede.bsky.social · 3w ago

Meanwhile, people with actual expertise & research are LESS LIKELY to position themselves as a “TTRPG professor”: - game studies grad programs are still fairly young so their grads are too (plus hiring dumpster fire) - senior folk come from many OTHER fields, often at teaching-heavy institutions

Clayton@explorersdesign.bsky.social · 3w ago

Public Domain Art is the lifeblood of small tabletop rpgs, but it can be a nightmare trying to find the right art and license. This week, I’ve re-uploaded my old list from 2020 (with updates) of public domain websites. That's 500,000+ public domain paintings, photos, maps, and film. Link below 🔗👇