Seraphina Garcia Ramirez

This is eerie coming from just leaving pax 45 minutes ago fresh off the high from the gang being really good. What a game

Doom, Me & ADHD: Nothing in Marvel's Ultimates #17 needs fixing - COMICSXF Doom learns that his torturer and foe is just another version of Reed Richards, and struggles with who he is in the face of that.

Folks are still catching up to @armaanautomatic.itch.io's brilliant piece on The Ultimates #17 and ADHD:
comicsxf.com/2025/10/26/d...

post brought to you by Cosmic Frog, a board game I just grabbed by Jenna Felli, which opens with a creation myth of the cosmology of the game, and from there only goes harder with mechanics like "leap into the Aether and disgorge your gullet of vast tracts of land into your inter-dimensional vault"

i need more games for sickos. so many are so intensely aiming for broad appeal. whenever i find a game that is unapologetically weird it feels exactly like a glass of water in the middle of the desert. do your own specific thing. give me, the sicko, something i can sink my teeth into.

I think the gap between those two is not as large as you imply here- for a lot of publishers, without secured preorders that provide production funds a smaller riskier project might not make it to physical form.

The advice for that is ultimately the same though- don’t crowdfund until core deliverables are ready for production, and keep scope considered and achievable

One of the things I took away from the analyses @gigantic-spider.bsky.social does is that the prospects for a small project with good outreach and a well considered funding goal are pretty decent- I think the other concern here is delivering not just one, but essentially multiple projects.

That person is @gigantic-spider.bsky.social , and they’re actually monthly posts! Really useful analysis that they put a lot of work into

How are the Ennies designed? An insider's look into the 2025 Ennie Awards. Part three. How does the structure of the Ennies determine its outcomes? And what does it mean for others?

Part 3 is here. The deep dive into the Ennies. If you're someone who doesn't know much about the Ennie Awards, you should read parts 1 and 2. But if you like a bit of inside baseball and are interested in award shows in general—this is the article for you.

www.explorersdesign.com/ennies-3/

How do the Ennies work? An insider's look into the 2025 Ennie Awards. Part two. What is the award process like behind closed doors, and how do the judges select nominees?

Alright, the first in-depth article of my awards debrief is live. "How do the Ennies work?" A top-down look at my judging experience from A to Z.

Please share, leave comments, and ask questions. And don't forget to read part 1 if you haven't already.

www.explorersdesign.com/ennies-2/

one thing thats crazy is that all art movements are just systems of hundreds of individual little unique goblins, none of whom did the exact movement; particles of the movement wave

What. What is the play on words supposed to be. Is it “hypnotized”? But that’s not how that word ends. What.

Derelict Delvers by Cezar Capacle A dungeon crawler in space, with a twist. What if Star Trek went terribly wrong?

Derelict Delvers is a really cool one by @capacle.bsky.social capacle.itch.io/derelictdelv...

Donate to Support Jay Dragon's sicknasty bottom surgery, organized by Jay Dragon Hi I'm Jay Dragon, a queer disabled game designer best known for her work on … Jay Dragon needs your support for Support Jay Dragon's sicknasty bottom surgery

hi i'm getting a kickass set of new genitals installed in 2 weeks from now !! isn't that fucking cool ?

i could use a little bit of help with medical bills + housing expenses during recovery and so i've set up a little gofundme!
gofund.me/394dc2e93

What do critics owe us? A few things recently happened in the discourse that raised the question, “what do critics owe us?”, in various forums across the TTRPG space. I have a response, but to understand it we must meande…

I wrote a little about criticism today. idlecartulary.com/2025/09/25/w...

An image with black text that reads "'DOOM RUNS ON EVERYTHING!' DOES IT RUN ON PAPER?'" The words "DOOM" and "PAPER" are dark red. Under the text is the logo for GUTGUN, which displays the title akin to dangling guts from the barrel of a gun.

SEE FOR YOURSELF

incaseofgrace.itch.io/gutgun

The modern equivalent of a heartbreaker is some game that no one has ever heard about that has amazing design principles that are innovative or elegant or just really well done, but that are languishing on itch because no one has ever thought to read it.

I can acknowledge that maybe my terminology or specific example (Masks) are not communicating this clearly, but I do genuinely experience those two as being different approaches to character, and I'd love to know a way to frame that which would make more sense to you.

Is there an example from another game that you feel conveys the difference in experience I have between being told my character has a job and a wife and being told my character feels angry at the world and always wants to rebel against it?

excellent taste tbh, but mangoes and oranges are lovely too! this is making me want to eat more fruit

can we get a top three list of favorite fresh fruit types

triangle agency is a fun game to play with your friends :)

@seraphimseraphina.bsky.social published a really neat case study of Triangle Agency today with @jdragsky.bsky.social's Expressionism as a frame! It's very cool to see someone doing a deep read of what's going on within our game and how that affects/supports certain modes of play.

Triangle Agency & Haunted Table Shop Purchase Triangle Agency: The Tabletop Role-Playing Game and other games and game materials by Haunted Table here!

and to @calebzane.bsky.social and @seanireland.bsky.social for designing this incredible game, which you can buy here!

shop.hauntedtable.games

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

Many thanks to @jdragsky.bsky.social for the manifesto, which you can read here,

possumcreek.medium.com/the-expressionist-games-manifesto-122d8afd1fe2

I've been thinking on how to apply the expressionist manifesto as a lens for looking at games, and I decided to demonstrate that approach by analyzing how Triangle Agency aims at expressionist goals and, in doing so, earns a place in my heart.

www.tumblr.com/seraphim-ser...

2.1 Lenses, Not Boxes I wondered whether this section was necessary, but games discourse seems to repeatedly find itself adrift in questions of whether (blank) counts as a (blank). We have seen the question repeatedly: Do games count as art? [41] Do games without goals count as games? [79] Is The Sims a game? [190] Are hypertexts interactive fiction? [157] Are Twine pieces literature? [151]. In fairness to the researchers cited here, all of whom I respect immensely, many of these sources pose or imply the question rhetorically. Still, the necessity of such a framing frustrates me. “Is a ?” is, in my opinion, a fruitless question. The question can never be answered to anyone’s satisfaction, and it often serves as either a provocation to espouse politics or as a cover to institute gatekeeping. Its agenda is usually opaque to onlookers and bewildering to those trying to advance the field from across disciplines. We should be thinking in lenses, not boxes. It is always more interesting to ask “If we think of through the lens of (blank), what do we learn?” We know it is more interesting to ask “What do we learn by considering Tom Stoppard through the lens of poststructuralism?” than to ask “Is Stoppard’s work poststructuralist?” And while some works may be more or less fruitful when examined through different lenses, sometimes the most unlikely pairings of lenses and objects are the most rewarding. Certainly any of the questions above would be much better served by reframing them in this way.

Credit to @stcymsn.bsky.social for putting words to this principle in their dissertation! It's a principle I had seen elsewhere in more words, and had been trying to follow myself, but the clear framing here helped so much in my efforts to communicate how I was approaching conversations.

"Is this play risky? is this game OSR?" close off thought. The framing presupposes limited binary answers.

"What's risky about this play? What do we learn about this game from the history of the OSR?" opens up exploration, invites specific examples, creates dialogue.

Lenses, not boxes. 2/2

This touches on a principle I embrace- lenses, not boxes. Putting things in boxes means defining hard boundaries, losing nuance, and resigning ourselves to only benefiting from one framing. Using lenses instead of boxes means we can use more of them, and see what we learn from new perspectives. 1/2