Josh D | Vaulted Pyramid

Stranger Things should have just thrown off the pretense and had a fucking dragon as the final boss. Like an eldritch Tiamat. The show is just a 80s horror skin over a fantasy framework, so fuck it, go big or go home.

The biggest problem Stranger Things ran into is that it’s a show where the heroes are expected to prevail. A bunch of kids can’t really kill an eldritch particle hive mind, so they need an entity that’s more tangible to be the antagonist. Hence Vecna, which sucks the wind out of their coolest ideas.

My favorite bit of obscure Star Wars lore is that Hutts are hermaphroditic, choosing to either mate with a partner or reproduce asexually. Their gender presentation is based on their present mood and may shift several times over the course of their lives.

The Resident Evil 0 solution!

Truly a travesty when every new album by a band you love is their worst album.

Wouldn’t surprise me if it had something to do with the Disney acquisition too, as that was right around that timeframe.

I bring reassurance in these trying times. Muppet Treasure Island is as good as you remember it to be.

The worst part about being an influencer is not that your livelihood is tied to chasing trends based on an algorithm you have no control over. It’s that you’ll be 35 and still under the ever present threat of getting caught up in the “high school” tier of petty drama.

The International Player's (p)Review by Golden Achiever

@golden-achiever.bsky.social has The International Players Review series. A mix of game stuff and folks talking about game stuff.

golden-achiever.itch.io/the-internat...

Chris gave me the wonderful opportunity to blab about my first true love, with this week’s episode of Ansible Uplink diving into the Star Wars WEG RPG and Tatooine Manhunt. It’s a good one!

But go join the Patreon so you can listen to the full 3 hour lost in the weeds deep dive when it drops.

Interesting! I'll take a dive in.

Is there a storygame out there that has a similar scope and framing to Lady Blackbird and Bluebeard’s Bride, but also provides a bit stronger of a procedural framework for the exploration aspects?

Finally got around to watching 28 Years Later, so here’s a one sentence review.

It’s a good film, great even, but man does it have that Alex Garland signature of playing with some incredibly compelling concepts, but not really knowing how to bring them all together in the end.

This will even help add dynamic interactions to contained spaces like dungeons. Do the inhabitants patrol their territory? Is there any friction between factions? When do the inhabitants sleep?

Even simple elements like these give the players more to work with when deciding what to do next.

3/3

This places player agency closer to the forefront, as it presents meaningful choices and introduces the prospect of failure if the adventurers do not act in time. These are living worlds the characters inhabit, not static video games waiting for the characters to come.

2/?

One way to pretty much instantly make your RPG adventure/module better written from the onset is to take into consideration the timeline of events that will occur if the adventurers do not intercede, even if it doesn't become a focused aspect of the design.

1/?

Thirty Days of Bleed Within a high-pressure, nonstop roleplaying game, denizens of Over/Under found it difficult to extricate their character’s emotions from their own.

"Players reported dreaming about Over/Under, losing sleep, even forgetting to eat."

@lincodega.com writes about the intensity of Mothership Month's hyperbaric roleplay experience and the bleed that resulted from a lack of conventional safety tools.

Right? Like it’s such a present part of even things like Clone Wars and Rebels but was basically just entirely forgotten about for the movies haha.

One of my favorite things about Star Wars is that in the opening scene of A New Hope on the Tantive IV we’re introduced to the concept of blasters having a stun setting. But then we do not see it used in live action again until 2017 with The Last Jedi.

The Vita was alright for its time, but once you hold a Switch it’s game over, no going back.

Revamped and reorganized the website, giving it a new hierarchy order and adding a bunch of new things. It's definitely worth spending some time poking around.
liminalhorrorrpg.com

Mine is a GPX model, which is like $20. Sounds terrible, but I specifically bought it because I expected it to sound like shit haha. It’s part of the charm.

I have a piece of shit one from Amazon and the We Are Rewind model and am happy with both for different reasons haha

General advice is to find something original that works. But if you gotta buy new:
- We Are Rewind is among the better modern options, but unfortunately lacks the speaker.
- Beyond that, check out Turntable Labs. Their LoFi One is supposed to be one of the better ones with a build in speaker.

One of the things I'm most proud of in life is having been involved in the cleanup of a lake that was one of the largest remediation projects in the country. But now I've spent the last decade watching that lake get polluted again, since the tributaries that feed it haven't been remediated.

Now that its out, time for a some peeks at what's inside The Forsaken Reach! A bit ago, @worldchamp.bsky.social approached me to make something cool for Necronautilus, which the answer was obviously hell yeah. We settled on this idea for a "campaign framework" ...

It’s something we’re discussing, but we gotta work out some of the logistics before confirming one way or another, as the first two were published under contract.

lol, that would be interesting. I pulled a good chunk of it straight from the pages of the book itself, so it would be familiar to those who have read it.

Salutations, Mr. Gray! by Unenthuser A Gothic Horror Trophy Dark One-Shot

Revisited Salutations, Mr. Gray! by running it with my group tonight after not really looking at it for a while. Man, this shit fucking whips. This might be some of my best writing. If you like Trophy, you gotta play it. I’d even give you a copy if we’re mutuals.

unenthuser.itch.io/salutations-...