Thomas M, Full-time Rascal

Graphic from the Blades '68 BackerKit crowdfunding campaign, showing stretch goal contributors Avalyn Ramsay writing "Psychic Commie Rats" and Aaron Lim writing "Report on the Inaugural Crowfoot Wargaming Convention of '68".

They announced my stretch goal for Blades '68! Let's get to $390,000 so I can write about The Inaugural Crowfoot Wargaming Convention of '68 (which split of from the Charterhall Conference On Historical and Strategic Wargames that started two years before). www.backerkit.com/c/projects/e...

A screenshot from Chess.com showing me beat a bot with 90% accuracy and the bot having 87%.

In case you thought I only play bad games of Chess:

Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

Haha, I was waiting for you to get to that part!

AI could never

I can definitely pull off Die but after that I foresee some trouble!

*at

Genuine awe that these episodes runtimes, this would wipe me out

I did not know!

TIL

no good answers sadly!

my new years resolution is to use the words looksmaxing in a conversation with my family

Weird Place (w/ Gabriel and Le)

We had a great time talking to @newmadras.bsky.social for his podcast Yes Indie'd. It was our first ever interview, and talking to Thomas felt so natural and welcoming. Thank you so much for having us on! Go check out the episode.

Reading Club: Apocalypse World

Friday afternoon library Administravia while listening to @newmadras.bsky.social discuss Apocalypse World at the @rascal.news Reading Club.
open.spotify.com/episode/4quf...

b-b-bulbasaur?

"Be reasonable about this," he says. "Meet me in the middle."
"OK," you say. You take a step forward.
He takes a step back.
"Be reasonable about this," he says. "Meet me in the middle."

Instructional Design For Tabletop Roleplaying by Levi Kornelsen A primer on applying Instructional Design to Tabletop RPGs

It's up! It's short! It's free!

levikornelsen.itch.io/instructiona...

This is a Nazi move. Stripping people of rights, invalidating their IDs, setting them up for criminalization and imprisonment.

If you don't support trans rights, you support fascism.

It's related but its efficacy is irrelevant to whether the social fabric that knitted me and my society together feels like it's crumbling faster than ever.

It's not new - just an exacerbation of neoliberal "nothing matters but the money" but everyone is saying NOTHING MATTERS louder than ever.

When we talk about the post-2023 AI shift, we talk about a host of tangled issues, whether it's good at writing code feels completely separate from the fact we're inundated with fakery, which is not the same as my friends using it for therapy and medical advice, or academic & ethical devaluation.

Yeah, there's very little today that can resist being "priced" -- forget games , people are ready to argue that you should be able to sell your organs, freedoms, etc. There's a resentment for the idea of ethics itself in some ways, as people labour under the logic of pragmaticism. Sucks.

Oh, yeah, you definitely can't expect a review.

So. Would you be okay paying for reviews? What if it was cheap? If not 100$, maybe 50$? 20$?

If I can sell your review copy, then what is the difference between paying me for the review?

What if I don't review the game?

AW has threat moves, which are based on threat type, and they do the stuff you want from a "monster action"/behaviour/consequences point of view.

This is very close to how most PbtA and Forged in the Dark games handle things. Apocalypse World didn't call them lore blocks but the threat structure is very similar. If you want to see an iteration of the AW threat, check out the factions in Blades in the Dark. Looks similar to me!

There are so many beautiful TTRPGs that have so much to say and such interesting stories to tell but people don't play them fully, or don't play them on their own terms, and all that beauty is missed.

Hey all, it is the second semester of my 3rd year in college and I need to beg for money again.

My mother got a part-time teaching job, but it's still not a lot. Any amount would help me a lot!

ko-fi.com/goobernuts/g...