Lyme

Crush Depth Apparition by amandalee eerie survival horror on a haunted submarine, a stand alone ttrpg now funding for Zine Month

Here's one I really like: amandalee.itch.io/crush-depth-...

A Cool and Lonely Courage - Plane Sailing Games | DriveThruRPG It is the Second World War. France has fallen to the Nazis and Churchill needs to disrupt Hitler's war machine. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) recruits women as well as men for combat operatio...

Of course I post this and immediately I see a post above by @planesailinggames.com listing three very-good non-mashup non-speculative games:
Grey Ranks
Red Carnations on a Black Grave
A Cool and Lonely Courage

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2...

But at the end of the day, a simple mashup is usually the best elevator pitch, elevator pitch really matters, and it's easier to mash a fantastical element in than a nonfantastical element. In retrospect Velvet Glove is a mashup - crime + teen.

Pure espionage: White Lies, Minutes to Midnight, Covert Ops, James Bond, Top Secret, Mercenaries Spies and Private Eyes, The Spies That Death Forgot!, Wilderness of Mirrors, Cold Shadows, Black Seven, Spy Master, Classified, Agents of SWING, DoubleZero

And, also, the pure military games: Night Witches, 12:Hours, Twilight 2000, Phoenix Command, The Price of Freedom, Delta Force: America Strikes Back!, about a dozen 80s-era pure military sims I could get from old lists.

And then, also, dozens of crime/gangster/action movie RPGs of varying levels of quality: Gangbusters, Wiseguys, Streets of Bedlam, Dog Town, Crime Network, Haven: City of Violence, Outgunned without some supplements, Cartel, Vice Squad: Miami Nights, Velvet Glove, loads of d20 supplements

Interpreting this as games that contain no fantastical elements:
-Rosewood Abbey
-Pasión de las Pasiones
-The Price of Coal
-Good Society
-Star-Crossed (artwork implies genre mashup but text does not)
-Primetime Adventures
-Boot Hill
-Dallas: The Television Role-Playing Game

Free money?

I won't be at PAX U, but the good folks at Pandemonium will have my games there via the magic of IPR. Look for player-friendly horror engine Fear & Panic and weird worldbuilding game Dawn of the Orcs at booth 3701! Other RPG friends will have their games at the Sidequest Games booth!
#PaxU #PAX

My experience of running a FLGS that gets mostly locals wandering in suggests that the received wisdom of RPGs being a hard sell as a hobby is not accurate. If you'll run it, they'll play it. Ask Games Workshop how this kinda thing works

Celestial Bodies by Charlotte Laskowski, Binary Star Games Mecha TTRPG - Titan Edition

I just listened to @itsquinns.bsky.social on Dice Exploder get very excited about the possibilities of Tetris-style inventory in RPGs and really hope he finds out about Celestial Bodies, which does all those things with Tetris inventory!
selkie.itch.io/celestial-bo...

It was worth reading after the "but..."

OSR guys really be like "Games are at their best when they confront the human condition, when they explore the depth of human emotions and pit the rules against the players' desires. Anyway, here's another defense of rolling d6 for initiative."

If you're going to #PAXU, check out @sidequestbooks.bsky.social's booth! They'll be selling a whole mess of great independent RPGs, including my own! I'm terribly grateful to them for the opportunity to get my stuff out there!

Non-Investigative Horror Adventure Jam A game jam from 2025-09-04 to 2025-12-13 hosted by Lyme & plasmophage. The Non-Investigative Horror Adventure Jam This is a jam is for writing non-investigative horror adventures. The goal is to write...

If anyone wants to try pushing the boundaries of the horror rpg genre a little, the non-investigative horror jam is still going through mid-December!

itch.io/jam/non-inve...

Image designed for the Jamaica Disaster Relief Bundle. The Jamaican flag is in the background with large text for the event. There is a green and yellow shadow under the text

Hi Everyone ^__^
The Jamaica Disaster Relief Bundle Jam is still running for 4 more days until the 16th ^__^
itch.io/jam/disaster...

All Games and Ttrpgs are welcome ^_^
The bundle will be supporting Jamaica's Disaster Relief after hurricane Melissa.
#JamReliefBundle #charity #gamejam #ttrpg

Some days it's hard to tell if I'm being derivative or channeling the zeitgeist.

October 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective October: big month for Kickstarter, not so much for Backerkit, and Gamefound is around too I guess. Here's the raw data , let's dive in: 181...

"But I want to sound some alarm bells about the influence that these platforms are having on the TTRPG space, and the push toward professionalization that could crowd out smaller artists."

An astronaut floating in space with coming soon over it

Null space Freelancing in the solar system of the 24th century Basic rules

NULL_SPACE IS COMING

ZINE MONTH 2026

MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW SOON

In modern colloquial English, "ramen" can refer both to the noodles alone and to the noodles served in a broth. When served in a broth, they are a soup. Other varieties of noodle served in broth are also soups.

Mary Poppins versus Cthulhu I thought I would share a fun little game with you all, it's called Mary Poppins vs. Cthulhu. It's a hero vs. villain / good vs. evil type g...

An account of the same game played in an earlier decade:
louisewrites.blogspot.com/2009/06/mary...

Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein vs Chris McKay (Renfield)'s Dracula

trench comic

I'd call it, "decimal dice". Maybe d-one-point-zero-zero.

Also, if you have someone with one of the more upper-class English accents, it will probably put me to sleep. This isn't always a bad thing, there are several podcasts I listen to specifically when I have trouble sleeping, but it means I probably won't hear the end of many episodes.

I listen on cheap earbuds while commuting on loud public transit, so I need performers with distinctly different voices to be able to tell the characters apart. If two people have similar voices, they might be excellent performers on their own but I'll be lost pretty quickly.

The only real downside was in The Old Days when someone might mortgage their house for a print run of games that would never sell, but I think modern digital distribution and crowdfunding models really lower the chance of someone putting themselves into financial hardship chasing an RPG dream.

A very hot take: fantasy heartbreakers are actually fine. Any time a human being sets out to make a game they learn something more about games and about themselves. Drawing badly, singing off-key, dancing like a fool - these are still some of the human experiences that make life richer.

Metatopia begins tonight! Best four days of the year.

Most of Harry's better ideas actually come from his friend, Mave Marneson.