Tessera
Folgen

Rach (she/they)

@wampishing.bsky.social

doodler and librarian, 30s, mostly nerding out about tabletop games rn.

89 Posts316 Follower271 Folgt
United Wizards of the Coast - CWA@uwotc-official.bsky.social · last mo.

Curious how you can help? We ask that you sign our petition for Wizards to voluntarily recognize our union, share it with your communities, and keep an eye on this account for future updates! actionnetwork.org/forms/uwotcp...

Stand with Dungeons & Dragons and Magic Workers Forming a Union!

The Dungeons & Dragons team and Studio X (Magic: The Gathering; Duel Masters) are forming a union! We are joining the ranks of United Wizards of the Coast - CWA (UWOTC-CWA) and following in the fo...

actionnetwork.org

Rach (she/they)@wampishing.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Getting my preorders of Arcana Unleashed and Stonetop on the same day does sort of seem to reveal just how much my usual joke about paying my TTRPG Indulgences isn't actually *totally* a joke, lmao.

Rach (she/they)@wampishing.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I've got complicated feelings about PAX U Houston. Traveling to TX for trans friends is a rough ask, but also I know what a boon that will be for the local community that now WON'T have to travel to attend a con. And TX is not the pure red hellhole some northerners think, nor is the south broadly.

Dr. Emily Friedman@ecfriedman.com · 3mo ago

Anyone who says with their full chest that Actual Play is one thing is going to be working from a false first premise. It’s shoddy, cheap thinking, & it isn’t helpful to our understanding either of AP or of its (debatable) impact on people’s play.

Derf Backderf@derfbackderf.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I quick search of the original posts here supporting Cleves and time after time, the person making the post is an academic. Meanwhile, the comics community responded largely with silence. Or worse, by attacking Tillie! Without reading EITHER BOOK! We REALLY blew it here.

Rach (she/they)@wampishing.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Gonna make an effort to be on this site a little bit more I think, as much as my instincts are to remain in my little discord-based hole. Reckon keeping up on things is easier with at least an eye peeking around the corner.

Rach (she/they)@wampishing.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Me: I've spent enough money in the past month on non essentials, I should slow my roll Side Quest Books and Game: We're having a 25% sale Me: Me: Me: I should buy more ttrpgs, and also maybe another shelf at this point

Rach (she/they)@wampishing.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I find a lot of the arguments between different sorts of ttrpg fans and systems mostly tedious and offputting, but seeing someone say "the rules don't matter!" as a positive DID make me feel like I had been punched in the kidneys. So there's that.

Alexander Chee@alexanderchee.bsky.social · 7mo ago

'She also documented how few women were in federally sponsored clinical trials for AIDS drugs... That was significant, she told The San Francisco Chronicle, because “the clinical trials are the only way you can get treatment.”' Long helped save so many lives.

Gregg Gonsalves@gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 7mo ago

It’s hard to express how important Iris was to ACT UP’s scientific development. She was the catalyst who started it all. Iris Long, Scientific Mentor to AIDS Activists, Dies at 92 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/h...

Grant Howitt@gshowitt.bsky.social · last yr.

Writing a GM section is hard. So instead I wrote down every role I could imagine that a GM might play and instructed the reader to kind of figure it out themselves as they go

WHAT DOES BEING A GAMESMASTER INVOLVE? As Gamesmaster, you’ll have a lot of different roles to play. Here are some of them in no particular order; you’ll adopt all, some, more, or none of these during every single session. You don’t have to be all of these things all at once, nor do you have to do all of them yourself - when you’re starting out, as long as players are getting the chance to roll dice and mess around they’ll probably still have fun. As you play more, you’ll find which ones you enjoy and which ones you don’t, and you’ll find your style. FUN ADMINISTRATOR If it wasn’t for you, this game would never happen. You arranged a time and date. You reserved the back room in the pub to play. You helped everyone make their characters. You’re the first person they talk to if they can’t make it to a game, and you’re the final judge as to whether a session goes ahead as planned or must be rescheduled. You’re taking responsibility for all the background details that let the foreground details - the game - work. PETTY GOD This is your world. We just described it in loose terms - it’s coming out of your mouth, and you’re making all the decisions. You can adjust numerical values up and down as you wish. You can wipe cities, countries, concepts off the map entirely if you don’t like them. You alone determine whether things are possible or impossible, and you can dictate how dangerous a given task is with ease. Nothing happens unless you want it to. The player characters are scrubbing about in this world of yours, and you graciously let them do so, because they’re having fun. And so are you; you call the shots, you set the boundaries, you show them the fantastic world you’ve dreamed into being. ORACLE You are the sole focus of interaction that the players have with the game. In one direction, you are the source of all information about the fiction at the table: so if they want to know what colour a non-player character’s eyes are, they have to ask you and you’re beholden to tell them, or tell them how their characters could find out. In the other direction, you are the fuzzy authority that stands between every player and us, the designers of the game, and therefore the interpreter of the rules. All fictional and mechanical action goes through you. A CAST OF THOUSANDS You are everyone else in the world that isn’t a player character. You invent and then adopt their mannerisms, you spin together obvious motivations and secret desires, and you flip between your charges with ease. Sure: many of their voices might sound …TOUR GUIDE We’ve written a guidebook for a world that doesn’t exist, and you’re the tour guide who’s leading slack-jawed holidaymakers around that world. You know everything there is to know about the game world - and if you don’t know, you can make it up, and that’s just as good. You’re relentlessly enthusiastic, you give evocative descriptions, and you clue the players into what’s interesting or important - and you know all the best places to take them, too, so they’ll experience the world as best they can. WET COMPUTER At the core of every roleplaying game is a set of rules that power the experience, and you are the fallible, non-silicate computer on which these rules run. You know the rules, you enforce them (or ignore them, as you see fit), and you remind players of how best to interact with them. Players might use some bits themselves - rolling to hit, for example, or keeping track of their character’s health - but you’re the ultimate authority on what rule to use when. CON ARTIST Players? Bunch of feckless rubes. Look at them, wide-eyed and open-mouthed: they think this is a living, breathing world. They think that you’ve got this all written down, like some kind of Tolkien; they couldn’t be more wrong. You’re just making it up on the fly. There’s nothing behind the curtain, no master plan, no wheels within wheels: just you, regurgitating some half-remembered details about Bloodborne and talking about bones breaking a lot because that makes them wince. They’ll buy anything you sell ‘em. WORKSHOP LEADER You don’t have all the answers, but you know where to find them: inside the players’ heads. You ask them questions like “Who are we meeting here?” “What’s the most dangerous thing that awaits you on your journey?” “Which one of you does this guy hate the most?” and then you listen to the answers and incorporate them into the story. You love it - it saves work, saves time, and means that the players are more involved and engaged than ever. Involved and enga…DRUMMER The drummer sets the pace. In a band, they dictate the song’s tempo. In a regiment, they dictate the marching speed. (In a marching band they do both, presumably.) You’re in charge of saying when things begin and end, how long a scene takes to play out, how long a non-player character waffles on about their problems, how descriptive an average description is, and so on. You can cut away from situations and cut back later, you can put the pressure on players to make a decision, or you can leave them to chat to one another unobstructed as the hours roll by. ABSOLUTE BASTARD You’re going to kill them. You’ve trapped them in your lair. They dared to step up and try to defeat your monsters, overthrow your villains, and now they’re on the back foot. Smash them to fucking bits. Throw ‘em through a window, rip off arms and legs, take grim pleasure when their luck turns against them. No-one gets anywhere by being nice all the time - and the players don’t want you to be nice all the time. They want their characters to get beaten up, humiliated, murdered, hung-drawn-and-quartered. You know that this is a masochistic endeavour and you are happy to indulge them. TORTURED ARTIST You always wanted to be creative, and this is your outlet. You’ve spun a world of torment and tragedy (or light-hearted slapstick, depending on the game) for your players to explore - or crafted a complex story within someone else’s, full of betrayals and comeuppances and juicy details. You’ve taken the time to make something clever and you can’t wait for your friends to admire it; what matters most is getting the artistic intent of your world across to the players so they can react appropriately. OBSESSIVE FAN Oh my god. You love the player characters so much. Like your favourite character in your favourite TV show, you’re fascinated to see what they’ll do next - and you can probably take a good guess at what it’ll be, because you know them so well. You get a bit sad when bad things happen to…
Rach (she/they)@wampishing.bsky.social · last yr.

Time to bother my previous landlord about getting me my deposit back so I can sign up for some events myself without it being fully irresponsible lmaoooo. Looking at you warrenguard and yazeba's and dread and GOD is the side quest calendar truly an embarrassment of riches always.

Joseph Fink 🦃🍁👽🦾@planetoffinks.bsky.social · last yr.

1 in 12 Americans live in California. 1 in 35 Americans live in LA County. LA is America

Doug Mack@douglasmack.bsky.social · last yr.

not the main issue here but i'd really appreciate it if democratic politicians spoke out in support of big-city life and culture with the same energy and reverence that all politicians have for small towns los angeles is "real america" and so are all the other big cities the president hates

Rach (she/they)@wampishing.bsky.social · last yr.

Something that excites me about #Daggerheart is the Macmillan distribution deal. Being in Barnes and Noble,etc, being very beginner friendly, and shouting out game influences early, in narrative flow, could leverage that CR money and pull to potentially bring total newbies into the TTRPG space.