Ah damn. For Golden Cobra I have: * A game that is innovative, fun, and I want to play myself * A fun name that I want to use * And no way to match them together well

Oh, I wanna do this this year!

The Golden Cobra Challenge@goldencobra.bsky.social · last mo.

ssssssssss The Golden Cobra Challenge 2026 is OPEN for sssubmissions. Ssubmit by October 15th! www.goldencobra.org

In case you wonder what it's like to be an Internationally Acclaimed Artsyfartsy Game Designer, I can tell you that my anthologies of minigames, "B-Sides", have been bought by two people. Of which only one actually downloaded them. Ah, the life of the artist!

Making historical RPGs set in Norway feels like misery tourism.

Sometimes I try to make commercial RPGs, and they just end up being "ooo I can fit a Borges reference in here" or "now I'm REALLY gonna research the hell out of our national minorities"

Added 51 historically sourced seasonal practices to the game this week. Slaughtering patterns, fishing calendars, when the cows come in from the summer farms. Half of them turned into adventure hooks without any effort. What's the most useful non-RPG source you've used for a game?

Norway has zero data on its own RPG players. No demographics, no spending patterns, no language preferences. Designing a nationwide survey from scratch. 29 questions. First of its kind. Does your country have any real data on who plays tabletop RPGs?

Working on rules for playing supernatural folk as neighbours under the hill with their own problems. The hard part is making them feel foreign without making them feel like a fantasy RPG species. Have you played a non-human character that actually felt different to play?

Ever got stuck coming up with a plot for your campaign? Let's get you started with a click of a button. We added a feature to our relationship map tool: One click gives you a tangled web of NPCs! Feuds, secrets, alliances, a crisis with a deadline. No login. maps.hyperfictive.com

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

Writing campaign playbooks organized by season. What the community does in spring is different from what they do in autumn. It changes what's available, who's around, what's dangerous. Time of year as game mechanic. Does time of year ever matter in your games, or is it always vaguely "now"?

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 · 5mo ago

Nice 🤙

Gelatinous cute!

LaurenWalshArt@laurenwalshart.bsky.social · 5mo 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 · 5mo 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?...