Marty Chodorek 🇨🇦

…I probably meant Hegel. Not that anyone cares this deep into the message thread, but just in case. 🤓

I’m a game design enthusiast and there are so many resources that I feel like I’m grasping until the author/speaker pivots to Heidegger or something. 🙃

This blog post is so incredibly good and I'm probably going to reference it for every new game I run forever... and have it be the launching point for conversations with prospective players.

I'm not sufficiently academic to fully understand all of the words, but I think I kinda catch the drift. 😅

TFW you vicariously get a 100% objective view of yourself… and it needs to be processed.

I just saw a PT Cruiser on the road and was reminded of a simpler time.

Not to yuck anybody’s yum, but IMHO LitRPG is kinda the worst of both worlds. Or maybe I’m just old.

In my experience, Shadowdark has been good for this…

This is the Matt that came back from the future to tell 2016 Matt to start the Running the Game series. And the rest is this timeline’s alternate history.

games are good

Nothing against Simon Vance, but hearing his Lestat voice has made it very difficult for me to listen to him reading (other) audiobooks. Which sucks, 'cause he's done a lot of books that I want to listen to.

TFW that cliché “The most important ability is availability” comes barrelling back into your brain in the context of assembling a new TTRPGing group.

Cover of the original Traveller RPG, text on black background: This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone... Mayday, Mayday... we are under attack... main drive is gone... turret number one not responding... Mayday... losing cabin pressure fast... calling anyone... please help... This is Free Trader Beowulf... Mayday

Promotional material for GURPS Traveller RPG, text on black background: Free Trader Beowulf... Come in, Free Trader Beowulf... Can you hear me? Come in, Free Trader Beowulf... Hang in there, Beowulf... A universe of help is out there.

Listening to the latest @unwrittenearths.bsky.social podcast with incomparable special guest @portablecity.bsky.social ... Love the shoutout to this inspirational throwback story in two parts.

Zachary Lucky : The Lost River Sessions Help Zachary Lucky release his new album The Lost River Sessions on vinyl, CD and cassette.

In 2026, your earholes deserve these sonorous selections... Support the Laureate of the Lonesome Song, the incomparable @zacharylucky.bsky.social - Help fund The Lost River Sessions!

Take a screenshot of this GIF, and whichever new word you land on is YOUR word for 2026.

Let's. Go.

Parlor games with role-play elements were part of French aristocratic culture already in the 1500s. Such evening entertainments would spread as leisure time & literacy spread, with many such game outlines in publication by the 1800s when the Prussians "invented" the masculine preserve of wargaming.

Happy birthday, friend!

An androgynous changeling stands in a grey, snowy forest. Their white complexion is in contrast to the bright red ribbons of a harlequin mask they hold. A diamond chequer pattern of black, red and gold covers its eyes. The figure has loose, straight hair besides one braid over their right shoulder. A lark perches on the left.

Lark the changeling ❤️ an old illustration comm!

Creative solidarity means:

If you're a writer, do not use AI "art" or AI "voiceover"
If you're an artist, do not use AI "writing" or AI "references"
If you're a streamer/actor, do not use AI for backdrops, thumbnails, etc.

Never help AI steal another medium

No excuses, no shortcuts, no surrender.

A digital illustration in very comic book style. At the center is an 80s Punk/Mad Max/Tank Girl-type girl with bright red and yellow rough-cut hair, wearing a red cut up tee, lots of belts and a studded collar and bracelets etc, denim cutoffs over electric blue fishnets, and tall blue combat-type boots. In her hands she has a red chainsaw with a skull decoration on It that she's holding at the ready. There’s a bag slung over her shoulder with the handles of a baseball bat and a machete emerging from the top of it. She is reared back on one foot, having just delivered a tremendous kick to the head of a humanoid robot which is reeling backwards, face half smashed in and turned toward the viewer, arms stretched out, with flames and sparks shooting out of its neck. It's one of those retro-future streamline robot guys that you would maybe see Superman fight in a Fleischer cartoon. Behind on the left you can see from the waist up another such robot which has been dealt with similarly just before. Above and behind all this is jagged red lettering over a jagged yellow outline reading DESTROY next to dimensionalized sans-serif letters reading "A.I." (quotes included) over a 🚫 symbol. Under the reeling robot are some important anti-AI talking points rendered in rough maker-style hand lettering: 'Bad at Everything! Kill the Planet! Brain Atrophy!' I could go on but there's only so much space in one drawing. All of this has been worked up digitally to look like it's a vintage screen printed t-shirt design with cracked and worn plastisol inks. In conclusion, fuck your AI.

Bears repeating

There are 6 ways to rate a ttrpg:
Mouthfeel
TV adaptability
Aphrodisiac potency
Body armour suitibility
Chuckability
Coffin accessory suitibility

If you don’t get pre-game anxiety, are you really a storyteller/gm/dm

Toe pick!

iykyk

🍁⛸️🏒

Cartoon meme of Sonic the Hedgehog (from Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series, Jan 1994) lying down and looking smugly at the camera with a speech bubble that reads: “I want bad art made slowly by real people AND I'M NOT KIDDING”

the only good thing about genAI is that it got me to really love seeing bad art, because I know a person put in time and effort, made themselves vulnerable by showing it to others, and is trying to improve. I value that more than anything now

Awesome!!

We don’t use generative AI at Strange Scaffold and I can confirm that a *lot* of other studios are not—whether indie or AAA.

Get outta here with this normalization bullshit.

TFW you make a semi-obscure, deep cut joke in an unrelated subculture community and some strangers on the internet get it and find it amusing.

YOUR SETTINGS HAVE CHANGED
CHANGE THEM BACK

Settings > Accessibility > require alt text

I’m listening to the original 1985 London cast recording of Les Misérables. It’s going to be okay.

“...and we’re counting our blessings!”

The real treasure was the NaNoWriMos you failed along the way…

I’m quoting the punchline, but it’s worth reading the whole thread