Nerdify a book, game or film: Five Geeks In A Balloon AD&DHD Richard the Nerd

Aesop: I TOLD YOU

The "Everway" RPG (1995) and its freeform character generation was designed thinking of a player who'd wanted to play a princess and found that traditional RPGs didn't support it (according to @jonathantweet.bsky.social's designer's notes article in Interactive Fantasy #4)

It’s International Tabletop Day! We’re going to be playing games in store all day today to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

I liked the #FateRPG ever since I read "Spirit of the Century" and the aspects mechanic clicked with me. So this was an interesting interview with Fred Hicks on the history and possible end of the game line: www.rascal.news/with-the-rel...

With the release of Umdaar, we might be at the end of Fate

Fred Hicks talks about the birth, life, and maybe death of the gaming line that launched his company.

rascal.news

Is it the first of the month already? There's a daily deal up already and it's a good one. Children of Strife by @aptshadow.bsky.social is £1.99 for today only. Spiders! Mantis Shrimp! Elon Musk surrogate! Ant based computers! www.amazon.co.uk/Children-Str...

On the way back from my first #UKGamesExpo in Birmingham - had an excellent time, played some fun games (City of Mist, Daggerheart, and Flabbergasted), enjoyed the live shows, and apparently boosted my step count wandering the halls and hurrying between the Hilton and the NEC! #UKGE

Depluralize a movie. I'll start: Tree Gump

"Why is trading such a rare mechanic in modern Board Games?" (2017) - interesting post and discussion at boardgamegeek.com/thread/17418... (I hadn't thought trading a rare game mechanic, but ready to accept the author's analysis of Board Game Geek data over the sample of games I've played recently!)

Why is trading such a rare mechanic in modern Board Games? | BGG

Trading is one of the basic kinds of human interaction. It has probably been practiced for as long as we have existed, and can be implicitly understood by almost anyone. With that in mind, it's not s...

boardgamegeek.com

Ok, this is @friede.bsky.social's fault. She raised the question of *how* people analyze RPG texts, and that is a BIG, HAIRY QUESTION, and it got me thinking. I'm not ready to take a tilt at it yet, but that's because it turns out there are a lot of things I do *before* I read an RPG. A lot.

Ever wanted to design a solo rpg? I can probably offer some advice. This is just how I like to design. A key design point is tension. The player should be trying to do something, but the game should work against their goals and giving them meaningful choices.

I’m an 18th centuryist & thanks to the work of @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social (& others) I’m very aware that D&D is just a visible part of the history of TTRPGs that’s much much older. (The emphasis on wargaming & D&D has often erased other parts of the history of roleplaying)

Indeed. The purchaseable *product* we call the TTRPG begins in the 1970s with Western Gunfight, Chainmail, and D&D. Yet role-playing "parlor games," simulations, and similar are centuries old and draw from a well that resembles all the positive stuff about D&D. Parlor games were feminized...

Probably my last post for 2025. A little look at one of my earliest attempts at homebrewing RPG content. knightattheopera.blogspot.com/2025/12/arch...

Everyone is excited for Toon Second Edition! We've enjoyed seeing all your wonderful comments and feedback, and we can't wait to tell you even more about the amazing project as soon as it launches on December 17. Visit BackerKit today to sign up and be the first to pledge! bit.ly/toon2ebk

Fun this weekend with @samarmstronggames.bsky.social's "Hello Wizard, I Have a Problem": a comedy game of troubleshooting wizards. Zero-prep, light rules (but with random tables for inspiration/structure), with GM hat rotating for each quick-three-scene problem. sam-armstrong.itch.io/wizardproblem

Hello Wizard I Have A Problem by Sam Armstrong Games

An improv heavy TTRPG about wizards making things worse

sam-armstrong.itch.io

A thread about ExCel feeling "too big" or "empty" as part of Dragonmeet 2025, or at least my understanding through attending the convention for 10 years and founding its #PodcastZone, with a sprinkle of my professional experience with London real estate and exhibition centres planning. 1/x

On Saturday, another fine #Dragonmeet, now expanded at Excel. Lots of traders and some interesting finds; a fun cross-universe caper in my first time with the Cypher system; and post-con meetup for the Ludonarrative Dissidents podcast.

It's been over a decade since the original quantum ogre posts. We use the term, but do we all mean the same thing? In this post I unpack the history of the quantum ogre and propose a modern definition. www.fluoriteguillotine.com/blog/2025/11...

quantum ogre reborn

It’s time we re-examine what we mean when we use the term “quantum ogre”. The seed of this post started when Valeria posted her review of Fabula Ultima and quoted Emanuele Galletto (the game’s author)...

fluoriteguillotine.com

This piece by my friend @malcolmcraig.bsky.social is very much worth your time. Really excited to see where this research goes next. It's free to read. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Game booked at London #Dragonmeet. Many great options - will miss revisiting my early days in the hobby at 1st-edition AD&D with "references to a certain folio of a fiendish persuasion" plus "Nobody's favourite Advanced Fighting Fantasy monster, the wheelies": fightingfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Wheelie

Wheelie

Wheelies were strange disc-shaped species found scattered across the wild land of Allansia.[1] These weird creatures were disc-shaped, with large faces in the centre of one side. From around the edge ...

fightingfantasy.fandom.com

The argument for the value of rules is not (and should mot be) an argument for the value of ALL rules. Some rules are mistakes. Some rules are well crafted, but do not match the situation.

The reason I prefer RAW is that you’re often changing the rules because you want to make less interesting decisions I see every new improvisers making no decisions in their scenes and good rules help push you into story choices you wouldn’t make. We change systems if what we want is different

Victor, a Rascal certified game designer@thisisvictor.bsky.social · 12mo ago

5e has trained a generation of gamers into believing all TTRPGs need house rules to function.

#34 Lots of GMing advice on Bluesky at the moment - what goes around comes around. A Guide to Dungeon Mastering, by Lew Pulsipher, illustration by Alan Hunter.

Today, I wrote Got Not Game! It's a discussion of system agnosticism in modules, how different modules approach it, and what process to take when deciding whether it's right for your module. Check it out here! idlecartulary.com/2025/07/22/g... #osr

Got no game: Should your module be system agnostic?

A lot of people ask questions like “should I write a module as system-agnostic, or for a popular system?” or “if I write a module for an unpopular system like X, will nobody read my module?”. I’m a…

idlecartulary.com

I'd enjoyed the #Amber diceless #RPG, now found an unofficial Amber playset for #Fiasco: actionyann.itch.io/fiasco-amber.... On a read it hits plenty of the right tropes, & I expect Fiasco's focus on rivalries and relationships suits. (And if it ends up more comedic than the original, so be it :-) )

Fiasco Castle Amber Diceless Playset by actionyann

Fiasco playset and Hack to play in the Castle Amber.

actionyann.itch.io

Just posted: The first in a series of blog posts about in-jokes and pop-culture references in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition. graemedavis.wordpress.com

Before I actually crack open Daggerheart, I want to talk about a very important related topic: THE BOX. Because I had not been paying attention, it was only when I walked into Games & Stuff that I realized that the hardcover book came bundled with a box. I was very curious about this.

TTRPG DND Thoughts: Elves 🧵 We know them, we love them, too often we fall into the role of letting them just be the "better than everyone else" race and allow them to feel that way about themselves. Another element is there is too often too many flavors of elf.

This has a massive overlaps with something called “Bait and Switch”. It’s generally seen as a bad thing hated in #TTRPGs. Difficult to pull off and lauded in other media, but far far too easy to do in a game. It’s not as clever as we think. And as soon as you give a warning, the twist is spoilt.