Just posted this essay about the OSR, but more so about how TTRPGs have created their own genres and these things we consider cliques or movements are actually greater extensions of what TTRPGs have done unique from other mediums.
www.patreon.com/posts/155858133
Read Dai Dark, there's nothing like it. Nor is there anything like SFULTRA: Sean chasing down what makes a work of art itself instead of something else
Anthology of the Killer will be available on the Nintendo Switch/Playstation network tonight/tomorrow
The best game of the 21st century. By thecatamites/garment district/Stephen. With music by @demonshome.bsky.social and some art by me
A quick digital watercolor of hills and strange sky effects
Messing with digital watercolor to make a quick weird thing
I accidentally made it smaller than I wanted
#art #digitalart
HYPRBEAT_JUSTWHOAMI
@bottino.games
Edutainment feat. Kasane Teto
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZUg...
The first thing I do in the Tomb of Horrors is lose a finger, no, an entire arm to the mouth of a freakyfuck. The girdle of femininity/masculinity is listed as a curse. I like to sit and read injury tables in tabletop games, I do this a lot. When I watched The Fly, I ate a cheeseburger and wondered if meat was supposed to be like this, and we don’t dangle our feet over the edge of our bed because they might get stolen. Deeper into the Tomb of Horrors, SLoth, my dark elf priestess I carved with a chipping push-pencil, walks through a door and loses her god and gains a dick. This is funny for all involved. “Wow, girl with a dick,” they say, choking on corn ships. Somewhere in the depths of the castle, Falin DungeonMeshi is resurrected using meat that is not her own and she loses part of her humanity. I am a delicate mote of consciousness, and she is helpless. I pull apart playdoh and feel sickened imagining my arm like that–all stringy and stretchy in the palm of my hand. Is it true we dreamed in black & white before they invented technicolor? “The first thing to do is to clarify the difference between biological sex and psychological gender.” Someone typed that. On a forum. I am googling about the belt of femininity/masculinity.
I would summarize the Fruitful Void as being the space between the written rules of the game. Vincent Baker says, “design your game to pose a question, then don’t design it to trample on the answers!” It is a space where play exists even when there are no rules to support it. It is the most human and defining aspect of tabletop roleplaying games. The truth is that the Fruitful Void always exists in play. There is no void squeezed small enough by mechanics, procedures, or rules to erase it. There is no area left so large by white space to let it disappear. The Fruitful Void is not one, single space at the center of play, nor is it the sum of all the various spaces that comprise it–It is fully itself in every instance of its existence. Each instance equal in weight regardless of its size. There is no one, single person, designer or otherwise, who can regulate the depth of the Void. It should always be considered infinite. There is no distinction great enough to separate diegetic and non-diegetic rules, mechanics, or procedures in regards to the void. They share equal weight and should be considered one and the same. Everything is part of play: the people, the place, the fictional world, the means of communication, the diegesis, the non-diegesis, work...
It is impossible for a tabletop roleplaying game book to hold the answer to every question. It is impossible for it to hold the tools necessary to find the answer to every question. It can’t account for every person who will read it or what they will do with it. It’s not a program that produces the same outcomes every time. These books are limits of language and definition. They can’t contain every rule, procedure, or decision. It is an impossible task and a ridiculous thing to imagine a game book can do. And this is by design. I want to posit that a tabletop roleplaying game book is purposefully incomplete and can never be complete. Part of the beauty of tabletop roleplaying games is that it doesn’t have all the answers and can’t determine every possible outcome, and that by accepting that as a starting point, the discussion of games as books will help us understand its distinction from play. “Conversation is the medium in which a roleplaying game plays,” Vincent Baker writes on his blog. And in all conversation, there are things that Bateson would call “muddles.” A muddle is a sort of play that happens in conversations, where the parties involved in the conversation work to understand that language used in the conversation so that questions can be answered and answers can be understood by...
I think incentive is impossible to avoid if you are writing mechanics for a game even if those mechanics are diegetic or completely non-diegetic or even if those mechanics are as simple as HP or as complex as a legal code and to pretend like removing XP removes incentive is missing the medium for the storygame and i also think it’s important to look at a game text not as a “how to be a person” guidebook that’s meant for children and to give it the respect of a work of art that, sure, we would hope has something to say because even if it thinks it doesn’t have something to say, it is saying something because that’s how the written word works it’s how art works and we’re in a medium that is an artistic one and i think defaulting the art to only play is missing the rest of the medium because the reality is that play is infinite and cannot be limited no matter if there’s a literal script involved, i mean, han sorbo said “i know” and the whole world cummed their pants and when I play paper’s please it makes me think about things differently and when i sit down to play an osr game i look at my hp and hope i don’t die today and when i look at moves list i don’t just assume the game is telling me “this is all you can do” and i instead assume that this is a living breathing world that can exist if I choose to engage with it and that maybe engaging with it will change me or, more...
warmth attracts cold bodies is a collection of non-fiction writing about tabletop roleplaying games. trying to understand the medium and put to words why they are so special.
Find it on itch: snowttrpg.itch.io/warmth-attra...
people seem to enjoy it~
I made this tinkering with ideas for a Trophy or Songbirds sci fi horror hack and need to go baaack to it
A piece of promo artwork showing F-15C Eagles engaged in a dogfight, launching missiles ahead of them as a fiery explosion rises into the sky
"Every time I flew with him, his skill stood out." says a brown haired male soldier in fatigues in a burned out structure
"I met him above this very sky." recalls a former pilot in a home with many photographs and books in the background, an example of the liive-action greenscreen
Taking flight today in Japan 20 years ago: the finale of the 'Holy Trinity' of PS2 Ace Combat games: Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War.
Holy shizz, is this game something special. Its story a framed narrative of a documentary via live-action cutscenes that your actions will affect.
New youtube video! this one is about body horror, dungeons and dragons, and rolling 3d6 in order. It's the lead essay in my new zine which is also available on itch right now!
youtu.be/Of4I8bUxY9E?...
Photo of a red-tailed hawk sitting on a light post
Red-tailed hawk landed real close to me
#photography #nature #bird
Here's a meme: I want uglier games that are harder to understand made by people who've never read a TTRPG, and I'm not kidding.
I have written a manifesto against understanding. Against bullet points. Against it all.
www.patreon.com/posts/152873...
Art of snowy mountains. Ink drawing, water colored white (and some blue), and ink washed over in places.
Hmmm, unsure how I feel about.
#art #watercolor #inkwash #ink
A quick oil pastel of snowy mountains. Water blended, dry, and water dipped methods used.
First time trying oil pastels
#art #oilpastels
Moon and trees
#photography #nature
Quick water color of the sun over hills
I had left over paints mixed so made this too
#art #watercolor #painting
An ink, ink wash, and water color picture of stained glass and stone walls/floors
Purposeful perspective weirdness going on. Dunno how I feel about it. Tried out some water color too
#art #ink #watercolor #inkwash
"You play as Fawn-A2, 'chosen for enlistment' as a Cicada combat unit 'due to unforeseen circumstances in your previous life' and tasked with (...) eliminating threats using a cybershotgun that may or may not be intelligent and may or may not be some kind of digital antichrist."
Inkpen , water color pencil, and ink wash picture of a door.
A digital art piece a megastructure with many visible buildings and walkways, pipes etc.
My first major digital art attempt
#art
I released my first youtube video of the year. this one is about my time with Death Stranding, skateboarding, desire paths, and slowly becoming like my dad.
youtu.be/4hClmI56DKU?...
Snowww
#photography #snow
