Aaron A. Reed

"Which would you rather play, a GMless or a diceless RPG"

To which I say, "why not both"

To which you say, "examples please"

Leaving out (checks notes) every single one of my games, let me throw out a few. If I miss your favs, chime in!

Hey it's #SteamSale! You can get
🔥 IMMORTALITY for $9.99
👁️ TELLING LIES for $4.99
☕ HER STORY for $4.99
& wishlist Project C and Project D whilst you are there...
It's a good time to play good games in the present and wish for good games in the future! ✨
store.steampowered.com/developer/Sa...

Wow, Alien Earth started out so strong but has sure gotten real dumb the last couple episodes...

It’s an honor to help launch this series with @anasalter.bsky.social

⬇️ 🚨🚨Heads up, this sale ends tonight!🚨🚨

This is a _rare_ occasion when my physical books are on sale as well my digital stuff (probably increasingly rare if the tariff situation continues to worsen).

The Expressionist Games Manifesto “Work! Intoxication! Brain-racking! Chewing, eating, gorging, rooting up! Rapturous birth pangs! Jabbing of the brush, preferably right…

good morning, i wrote a manifesto about a new direction for game design / play
possumcreek.medium.com/the-expressi...

I cannot recommend Aaron's books enough, they are fantastic games and 50 years of text games is an amazing dive into the history of games that has largely been left out of the popular consciousness

Downcrawl 2E - Aaron A. Reed | Downcrawl | DriveThruRPG Explore cursed mazes. Build stalactite cities. Get addicted to mushrooms. Welcome Down. Downcrawl is a tabletop roleplaying toolkit that helps you build and explore a weird, wondrous underworld so far...

Reminder: my #BookSale this weekend includes:

🚪 Subcutanean, spooky novel that changes for each reader: subcutanean.textories.com
⚔️ Downcrawl 2E, #TTRPG of underworld exploration: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...
💾 50 Years of Text Games, history of interactive fiction: if50.textories.com

ReSkies or NuBlues or whatever they're called on here much appreciated 🙏

Absolutely! But with only fifty chapters there were hundreds it would have been great to cover that didn't make it in 😭

(I mean that very literally, I had a long list of over 1000 possible games and a shortlist of several hundred...)

At that last link BTW you can pick up a print copy of Where The Rock Stops: I only did a tiny print run of 100 zines, so grab it soon if you want it!

Also, this is a rare sale where my physical books are all discounted too, so snag a 50 Years of Text Games or Subcutanean if you've been waiting!

Screenshot of DriveThruRPG showing the Downcrawl Deck and other recent RPG titles at a 20% discount.

🎃🍁🍂AUTUMN SALE!🍂🍁🎃 All my books and games are on sale for one week only to celebrate the impending arrival of cooler days and pumpkin lattes.
RPGs: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher...
50 Years of Text Games: if50.textories.com
Subcutanean: subcutanean.textories.com
Cool swag: aaronareed.net/store/

Cover art for Where the Rock Stops, a Downcrawl adventure zine, showing black-and-white woodcut-style art of a zeppelin floating beneath a rocky ceiling with huge dangling stalactites.

#Downcrawl2E Adventure Zine #2 is here (and ON SALE for launch week)! Explore a new underworld region clinging to an endless roof over bottomless void, in the legendary place Where The Rock Stops. #ttrpg #hexcrawl #DriveThruRPG
www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

and SPEAKING OF SALES... (1/2)

All Will Rise, the game empowering players to tackle real-world problems With its rousing card game about activism, indie studio Speculative Agency hopes to inspire players to engage with issues such as pollution and the climate crisis

our game about DEAD GODS and TAKING BILLIONAIRES TO COURT FOR THEIR CRIMES is in the graun!! thx @yourkyotowife.bsky.social for a thoughtful write-up touching on our complex conversational systems & how joy + rage power transformation 🔥 @allwillrise.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/games/2025/a...

@aaronareed.bsky.social's Downcrawl has blown me away with its simultaneous simplicity and complexity.
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Name a #TTRPG creator (designer, writer, illustrator, etc) you are currently obsessed with and a short point about why.

I'll go first!

Incredible 😂

YouTube video by Aaron Reed 30 Seconds a Day on the John Muir Trail (JMT)

I hiked the 211-mile John Muir Trail #JMT in the Sierra Nevada this summer, and made a video montage of thirty-second clips from each day of my trip: youtu.be/KXIiEFTvQ64

Look, some of you are sickos banging on the window at night, saying YES to more games like King of Dragon Pass

and YES to kaleidoscopic psychopomp journeys into underworlds

so you gotta say YES to Thousand Hells, it's the law

Lucky enough to be one of the writers involved in bringing this wild stygian world to life! If you've ever wanted to barter with a dead swan god or infiltrate the fortress where souls go to be flensed, wishlist this game...

Selfie of Aaron in his kitchen wearing a backpacking pack and a slightly nervous smile.

Map of the John Muir Trail showing it starting in Yosemite National Park, passing through Ansel Adams Wilderness, Devil's Postpile National Monument, the John Muir Wilderness, and King's Canyon and Sequioa National Parks, and finishing at Mount Whitney.

About to fulfill a long-time dream by hiking the John Muir Trail through the Sierra Nevada. If you need me, I'll be back in August. 😎🌲🏔️

Not sure which zines you mean?

YouTube video by The Dungeon Dive Keeping it Underground - Downcrawl 2e - overview with game play

Great coverage of #Downcrawl2E from The Dungeon Dive with this video walkthrough explaining the game in detail and playing through a few moves as Bartok the Brother Botanist! #ttrpg
youtu.be/_zuQYhMwTgs?...

The cool conference: narrascope.org
Link to toss them some $$ to keep the lights on: iftechfoundation.org/give/

This is a great org and event! If you support narrative in games, every little bit helps!

Biggest things I liked about Arc:
* Not having to care abt the difference between tab/bookmark/history (there's just pages, some starred, some active)
* Different workspaces 4 diff sets of pages
* Auto-pruning old tabs (I used to use an extension for this)

Any recs for similar browsers/workflows?

Pour one out today for the Arc browser, which elegantly solved a number of web surfing frustrations using clever human design ingenuity. Officially discontinued today in favor of an AI clownshow. Getting so goddamn sick of this hypewagon paving over everything beautiful and useful.

(Systems: Toon, Apocalypse World, 500-Year-Old Vampire, Alice Is Missing, Chasing Adventure, Changeling: The Dreaming)

Traditional post-#TTRPG con list of characters I played this weekend:
* speedy cartoon ferret
* post-apocalyptic battle twink
* sad vampire from 1600s China
* high school friend who moved away
* avenging bard with violin crossbow
* changeling troll

This is objectively the best hobby

Oops thanks for the correction! Uninformed no-research con-lagged posts are the worst

An entire table filled with sundry arts and crafts supplies

A collection of black butterfly wings, silver skeleton hands, seashells, spiders, and eyeballs wrapped in red thread, a visual representation of my vampire's utter abandonment of civilization and reversion to their primal nature.

A depiction of the unfortunate incident where my vampire was forced to eliminate his mortal followers by burning down their village, which he promptly forgot about.

Played "500 Year Old Vampire" by @timhutchings.bsky.social at #KublaCon with a truly glorious arts and crafts spread provided by our GM, best letter writing and vision boarding game about being a sad vampire and sad vampire historian ever

Narrascope 2025 | Celebrating Narrative Games NarraScope 2025 at Drexel University is an event that supports interactive narrative, adventure games, and interactive fiction by bringing together writers, developers, and players.

Today is the last day for in-person registration for NarraScope. (Registration for remote attendance is open until June 18th.)

narrascope.org