Valeria Loves

Critique Navidad: A Stranger’s Just a Friend Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either giv…

On the 6th day of Critique Navidad, my true love sent…a passionate love affair between a queer man and a mythical creature? You know already if you’re clicking through to find out what I thought of A Stranger’s Just A Friend idlecartulary.com/2025/12/06/c...

I’m not even half finished with my response to your last post you can’t do this to me.

There’s a terrific random encounter very similar to this in Crown of Salt.

Podcast #220 - Gerding’s Game Gulag In this pitch-black episode of the Shut Up & Sit Down Podcast, Quinns tells Tom and Matt all about his time at Cabin Con in the United Situation of America! On this podcast, we’re talking about a clus...

Quinns has played this already. His play report is the reason I own the game. (Starts 30min into this podcast, so good.)

www.shutupandsitdown.com/podcastle/po...

Outrageously correct.

DEAD WEIGHT: Death Begets Death MOTHERSHIP FREEBIE: Transmissions from the Datacache

A new Missive is here! I review @norgad.bsky.social's Mothership module DEAD WEIGHT, drop a house rules FREEBIE for adding Datacaches (inspired by #OVER/UNDER) to your Mothership table, and More Cool #TTRPG Stuff. Check it out: meatcastle.substack.com/p/dead-weigh...

Valuable lunatic behavior

The Explorateur: Issue #14 Monthly design jams, critique, theory, and inspiration for tabletop rpg designers by rpg designers. Vetted. Looted. Curated.

The Explorateur #14 is out now! The only newsletter designed to level-up your design skills (how's that for sales copy?).

Please like, share, and subscribe. If you have any links you particularly like, drop a comment on Explorers Design or here.

www.explorersdesign.com/explorateur-...

I had long forgotten that Courtney’s posts were referencing prior discourse on Illusionism - what crucial history!

You’re spot on in identifying how quickly the concept shifted from theoryslop to boogeyman. Great post.

Incredibly important post.

Please talk about your Guild Wars experiences!

I wrote a #mothership module about greasy spoon diners, dementia, gendered violence, and uploaded intelligence.

Minimalist Jam 4 entry - No Art, No Layout.
Judge my writing as I’ve judged yours.

valerialoves.itch.io/yonkers-fles...

Guest Post: On OVER/UNDER, by Our Man In California Ahoy! You probably know what this newsletter is, since you signed up for it. But if you don’t, why not come by the Discord and ask someone? Perhaps Marsh or...

The latest TEETH newsletter features a guest essay on OVER/UNDER by prolific journalist and role-player @markwallace.bsky.social

It's really good. Have a read!

Mapping the Blogosphere An interactive graph of TTRPG blogs, showing who links to whom, how communities change over time, plus stats and how it all works.

Spent the last month mapping the blogosphere by its links. The graph is finally ready

Communities clump into a big hex and the whole thing looks like a star map

What are blogs anyway but stars in the sky?

elmc.at/mapping-the-...

To check out the graph directly follow this link:

graph.elmc.at

A Body of Work (w/ Emily Allen)

Cannot recommend this episode highly enough.

open.spotify.com/episode/4h39...

YouTube video by Movie Music HQ "The Civil War" Soundtrack - Ashokan Farewell

God it would be so funny to put this under clips of designers talking about Google+

I misread this image so badly that I can only really hope to illustrate what I saw.

( Also a good excuse for an #art study )

I need a big sword for gender reasons

Since you already took Mythic Bastionland I’m going to bend the spirit of the question and say Foundations by Tom Ana.

leyline.press/products/fou...

ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Bear Blog Free, no-nonsense, super-fast blogging

bearblog.dev

As an ignorant internet baby who knows nothing about anything, it’s been absolutely perfect. Zero regrets.

Me when I learned about 19xx from a bradleygames guide a decade after beating Hector Hard Mode

Every first FE playthrough is wonderful trash garbage

Local Heroes by amandalee A one-shot RPG for 4-5 friends and a Wizard

hi this is a game I made
amandalee.itch.io/local-heroes

I am upset.

Release Release 1.0 · thesmithplays/FireEmblemLegacy Fire Emblem 7 Legacy Fire Emblem 7 Legacy is an enhancement hack which sits as a side project in TheSmithPlays Legacy Series of Romhacks. If you know Smith, one of his guilty pleasures outside Poke...

Your heart’s about to give you a rough couple of weeks sweetheart.

When you get to FE7, play this romhack instead of the normal english release.

github.com/thesmithplay...

Who told you to start the series with Binding Blade? 👀

Agreed! So excited to see what all the game designers sucked into O/U create next.

In the past, LTRP was an unintended byproduct of other types of games. What happens when we instead support text roleplay from first principles?

My DMs are currently flooded with variants of “There are more of these??”, which validates the need to standardize language around the playstyle. Looking forward to reading the paper @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social linked and see how much groundwork has already been done.

bsky.app/profile/guyi...

May I ask how you phrase the question?

What words did you use to describe the practice?

I need to know everything about this immediately.