Aaron A. Reed

Still available for one more week!

Downcrawl-Skycrawl Bundle Adventurer! This new Downcrawl-Skycrawl Bundle presents Downcrawl and Skycrawl, twin toolkits from designer Aaron A. Reed that help you create spontaneous tabletop roleplaying adventures in the Deep, ...

Downcrawl 2E and Skycrawl are this week's Bundle of Holding! Get both #TTRPG games and ALL supplements at tremendous savings while you can. Explore weird and wondrous environments in pointcrawl adventures through forgotten labyrinths and skyborne kingdoms...

bundleofholding.com/presents/Dow...

If you're like me, you can't get anything done without emotional support tea. I am deeply soothed by the ancient ritual of boiling the water, choosing which tea to get down from the cabinet, letting it steep on the desk beside me, and then completely forgetting about it until the following evening

Here we go...

Announcing the Visible Zorker Project and Patreon! Remember how I did Visible Zork 1 and 2? I'm going to do Zork 3, and then continue through Infocom's entire canon -- in chronological order, one per month.

blog.zarfhome.com/2026/01/the-...

Cropped cover for "The Drizzle Depths" showing woodcut art of a flooded Victorian street, rain drizzling down and faint stalactites dimly visible on a distant roof above.

Rain falls deep beneath the earth, and will not stop. How will you survive a damper, slimier, flooded underground? Can the Godswimmer be found? Will an Aquaeon Conclave be called? Sink or swim in...

The Drizzle Depths
Downcrawl Adventure Zine #3
#ttrpg

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

And heads up: you can also now get **all three Downcrawl Adventure Zines** together and save a few $$. Each is a unique no-prep adventure for your #Downcrawl2E campaign. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

Cropped cover for "The Drizzle Depths" showing woodcut art of a flooded Victorian street, rain drizzling down and faint stalactites dimly visible on a distant roof above.

Rain falls deep beneath the earth, and will not stop. How will you survive a damper, slimier, flooded underground? Can the Godswimmer be found? Will an Aquaeon Conclave be called? Sink or swim in...

The Drizzle Depths
Downcrawl Adventure Zine #3
#ttrpg

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

On the night before Christmas, your party encounters the bones of a reindeer...

Traverse the Midnight North in Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists.

🎁 Wishlist now: store.steampowered.com/app/3794210/...

I understand Christmas is a nice time for some people. If that's you, I hope you have a wonderful week. If it's not, remember you're not alone.

All 35 talks from ThinkyCon 2025 are now available to watch on YouTube · Thinky Games In case you missed any of our 2nd annual online convention centered around the making of the games we love so much, every presentation from ThinkyCon 2025 has now been uploaded to our YouTube channel ...

All 35 talks from THINKY CON, about making puzzle games, are on YouTube: thinkygames.com/news/all-35-...

#puzzlegames #gamedev

Wait, No, Hear Me Out: Simulating Encounter AI in Slay the Spire with SQL. Bring your best warding potions, safety sigils, and blessings: this talk is a light dip of some cursed queries to show how to simulate Slay the Spire's encounter AI with nothing more than SQL (and a lot of free time). Along the way, we'll go over some basic data structures for simulation, declarative vs imperative programming and how (with a little probability) even simple systems can lead to memorable, complex AI.

Roguelike Celebration is happening today and my awesome friend Johnathan is giving this inspiring talk (gonna be a great time). www.roguelike.club

Hell yeah man! Thanks for sharing the link, it's such great stuff.

Nice! Looking forward to reading a deep dive on a tough design space many designers engage with.

"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...

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