Maxime

YouTube video by Evil Hat Productions Blades '68 Crowdfunding Trailer

It's 968 AC.
An artificial sun shines down upon Doskvol. Autopods cruise down rows of peaceful, prosperous houses. Beneath it all, strange actors and twisted conspiracies work their shadowy agendas.
Blades '68. The future is now. Don't miss it:
www.backerkit.com/c/projects/e...

CAIRN sort aujourd'hui !
J'ai eu l'immense chance de travailler sur ce jeux d'escalade exigeant et contemplatif !

Merci @thegamebakers.com !

YouTube video by A.A. Voigt The Golden Age of Indie RPGs: 2010-2025

My End of Year video is on the "Golden Age of Indie RPGs," from roughly 2010 to 2025. I start with Apocalypse World's release, work through the Google+ Era, and follow design lineages and historical events that have impacted the hobby up through 2025.

Stories in Games Aren't Problems, They're Solutions Lots of video games have terrible stories, but that's no reason to give up telling them.

I'm not going to re-write a whole piece I already wrote 8 years ago, so here

www.vice.com/en/article/s...

Last Train to Bremen by Caro Asercion A tragedy for a doomed quartet

Thirteen years of retribution, paid in full.

The 2025 Possum Creek edition of LAST TRAIN TO BREMEN, a Tragedy for a Doomed Quartet, is now available on itch: seaexcursion.itch.io/bremen

An image of a green/brown moon, cut down its equator, floating in a sea of clouds. In the foreground at the bottom of the image, a group of shepherds or nomads, along with their alien animals, look off to the horizon. Upsidedown at the top of the image, but still In the foreground at, a group of adventurers climb over rocky hills and look into the horizon.

Impulse: Cut something of yourself free. It could not have been a blade—no hand nor hardpoint is strong enough to wield a sword so large. It could not have been a searing beam, as the edges bear neither char nor residue. It could not have been a dip into the Great Void nor the edge of Realis-Itself, both of which are known to take pieces of those worlds that come too near—for the halfmoon Twaincut bears no radiant aura, no abyssal mark. It is simply a half-sphere, smaller than most moons yet still its own by all rights, perfectly flat on one side, and curved as orbs ought on the other, rotating in the blue light of Realis like a gamepiece floating in black water. It would be a puzzle, except for the greater one: Whether human or beast, to be born on Twaincut is to be born twice—first on the prairie-like Flatside, and then, after one’s first death, on the village-dotted Hillside. Or else reversed in order. And so to live on Twaincut is to live twice, soul and sense contiguous, yet with only fleeting memories of the life before. A nomad lord turned village priestess. An ox of the field turned ass of the mountain. A chicken-keeper turned sage of the open sky. A child lost and then a child again. Simplicity and complexity, ease and ambition, clarity and ambiguity. This is the amateur perspective. No, it is not so obvious as that. The plain is flat, but it is not simple. The hill requires effort but not all who climb have aims. It is a dream place, a haunting. Life and death, youth and age redoubled in on themselves. Spend a while there and you may wonder what I did: Perhaps Twaincut simply split itself. People Sentences Twaincut flatsiders always see without horizons. Twaincut hillsiders always seek what’s beyond the peak. Twaincut mystics always remember both lives. Place Sentences The Twaincut Flat always provides for those who journey far enough. The Twaincut Hill always turns a traveler down a new path. Twaincut depths always split outsiders in two.

So that you can enjoy it in its full beauty, here's the PAXU Realis postcard image in high quality, along with the in-game text & Sentences of Halfmoon Twaintcut's that Si was working from!

Coming soon: Realis A new tabletop roleplaying game by Austin Walker

Surprise, we're getting pretty close to the final version of REALIS!

ICYMI: I've been making a TTRPG about mystical moons and living spaceships and sentences that can kill you. A preview is available now (see my pinned post), but the full version draws near!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...

Apocalypse World has had a bigger impact on my life than any other roleplaying game. It's just a phenomenal game, designed by phenomenal people. You should pick up a copy of the new edition!

There was a time we backed every #pbta #ttrpg project. Then folk's creative drive outpaced our capacity, as well as our shelf-space. It was a wicked cool moment. In 6 days, we're hoping you'll back #AW3rd, and keep the momentum rolling!

🔥 Dernières 48h pour préco Brindlewood Bay et son supplément exclusif Voyages en France !
👉 urlr.me/7dFNTa

💡 Prenez-le en physique dans les options pour débloquer + de budget illustrations pour Laëtitia Van Gasse !

💕 pour les partages

🫶 Merci à Lachesis de 2d6+Cool de nous avoir prêté sa voix !

C'était trop cool de pouvoir discuter brièvement avec vous, merci !
Maintenant j'ai beaucoup de lecture devant moi 💙

Bannière présentant le jeu et l'atteinte du palier 300%

🎉 300% !

Le supplément Voyages en France sera joliment illustré par Laëtitia Van Gasse + maquetté par le brillant Nicolas Folliot !
Merci de rendre ce rêve possible 💕

Le PDF sera offert à tous les backers ! 🔥

🚀 ULTIME OBJECTIF : à 400%, Voyages en France sera imprimé !

+ de détails + bas

1/

Aujourd'hui, c'est la journée mondiale de la traduction et ça coïncide (presque) avec le lancement de la précommande d'un jeu que j'ai traduit !
Brindlewood bay est un excellent jdr et c'était un plaisir de me plonger dans son univers, autant pour le traduire que pour faciliter des parties.

YouTube video by Editions de la Fabrique Imaginaire Brindlewood Bay VF Bande annonce

🎉 La précommande pour la VF finale de Brindlewood Bay est ouverte !
www.gameontabletop.com/cf5531/brind...

🔎 Un jeu d'enquête différent, où des grand-mères résolvent des affaires de meurtres, prennent le thé et se frottent à un complot surnaturel 🍰

💕 sur les partages!
youtube.com/shorts/C7A6O...

Au fait, vous savez qu'on a un petit projet JDR secret qui va se lancer en décembre ? 🤫

apocalypses.net

Sometimes you read an article that makes you feel like... idk... 15 years ago, some of us got on an express train and saw what was on the tracks ahead. And now we're on a call to the people on the slower train, now approaching, and they cannot comprehend the landscapes we describe as familiar.

Et si tu n'as pas envie de participer à ça, le seul moyen c'est de ne plus créer, ou uniquement en privé.

Non seulement l'IA générative inhibe la créativité des personnes qui l'utilisent, mais aussi de celles qui créent vraiment.

C'est l'anti-muse par excellence.

4/4

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...

How Do You Handle the "Inside" of a Hex? (George Lucas Special Edition) [Context for this post: this is a re-write of an old post of mine I wrote back in 2021. I wasn't happy with my explanation, and it's filled ...

Redux of an old post of mine that was borderline unreadable, but which had a nugget of wisdom worth salvaging.

There are two totally different types of hexcrawl and nobody else seems to have pointed this out before.

knightattheopera.blogspot.com/2025/09/how-...

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…

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

World Wide Wrestling is not only an excellent game about wrestling but it’s a great game to help you recenter the way you think about playing games as a group. Having everything necessarily contain a play-within-a-play of sorts will change the way you think about sharing spotlight.

The Vision of Escaflowne (1996)

#animationtidbits #sakuga #animation #2danimation

I write a lot about miserable game development stories, so it sure was a pleasure to hear that one of the reasons Silksong took so long was that Team Cherry is having too much fun making it and didn't want to stop

Graph titled: How I Feel About a Piece of Art The vertical axis is labeled: I think it's (blank spot) at what it's going for. The spectrum ranges from Bad to Good. The horizontal axis is labeled: I think what it's going for is (blank spot). The axis goes from Boring to Interesting. I have color coded regions of the graph. Areas falling under Good and Boring, Good and Interesting, and Bad and Interesting are labeled "great" The extreme corner of Good and Interesting is labeled "Disco Elysium" The area falling under Bad and Boring is labeled "Oh haha thanks I'm Full". The areas in the middle are labeled "S'ok" A nebulous area at the extreme of Bad and Boring is labeled "Live Action Disney Reboots"

here i updated this graph on how i judge art with some cultural reference points to help

Graph titled: How I Feel About a Piece of Art The vertical axis is labeled: I think it's (blank spot) at what it's going for. The spectrum ranges from Bad to Good. The horizontal axis is labeled: I think what it's going for is (blank spot). The axis goes from Boring to Interesting. I have color coded regions of the graph. Areas falling under Good and Boring, Good and Interesting, and Bad and Interesting are labeled "great" The area falling under Bad and Boring is labeled "Oh haha thanks I'm Full". The areas in the middle are labeled "S'ok"

this is the criteria by which i judge art and media

screenshot from the RRD discord of a message I posted today. It reads: "Grant Howitt — 2:26 PM Hey there - sorry about the delay in response. I wrote this game so long ago I cannot remember my motivations behind doing so and the rules you describe seem alien to me. I suggest you follow your heart and choose whatever option feels right to you."

instituting a statute of limitations on rules queries in the Discord

the "stop doing maths" meme but it's perception checks in D&D "STOP DOING PERCEPTION CHECKS CHECKS WERE NOT MEANT TO SEE IF YOUR CHARACTER CAN PERCIEVE WHAT’S IN FRONT OF HIM YEARS of ROLEPLAYING yet NO REAL WORLD USE for stopping the whole adventure because of a crappy dice roll Wanted to exclude a player anyways? We had a tool for that, it’s called «SOME ROCKS FALL ON YOUR HEAD, YOU DIE.» «We just /saw/ what was important for the plot! I wanted to run around in circles for hours! It’s bullshit !» - statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged LOOK at what Game Designers have been demanding your Respect for all this time, with real games printed on real paper (this is REAL DESIGN made by REAL Game Designers): (some character sheets and a panel from ORDER OF THE STICKS in which the bards declare "well, looks like a good place to rest" while surrounded by ninja goblins) «Hello I would like to miss what I came here for please» they have played us for absolute fools"

Daggerheart isn't trying to move beyond D&D, it's trying to rewrite D&D to serve the players already at the table. And, frankly, it succeeds. A long essay on game design, why "D&D is a genre," and how Daggerheart understands that great rules don't make for great roleplaying... great stories do.

Les saisons en question sont Autumn in Hieron et COUNTER/Weight.