Ryan Zenith

Great advice

Thank you for having us! ❤️

Bumper berry crop beckons earthbound birds to bump bodies

Illustration of a faceless man, with five masks floating in front of the hollow area where his face should be.

Deception is what you find in the innermost ring of the forest

#ttrpg #artwork #illustration #osr #ghost

We’re being led by the anti-vaxxers of the legal sphere:

People who’ve never lived without the protections of international law and domestic regulation, so they only notice the inconvenience, not the horrors prevented.

When institutions work, their benefits become invisible, until they’re gone.

Watercolour painting of a light bulb filled with lush plants and flowers. Two white bunnies sit in the middle, partially obscured by the greenery. They look very cosy

You lose one light, you find another 🐇🌿

Gingerbread Factory + Diabolic Dialect by Storygames Chicago A bundle by Storygames Chicago, $7.50 for Diabolic Dialect, The Gingerbread Factory

I've added 30 new Community Copies to Diabolic Dialect both to celebrate the holidays and the release of our first adventure for it!

Pick up a community copy or grab both in a bundle here!

itch.io/s/177129/gin...

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.

This has some of the most indulgent and fun writing from @ryanzenith.bsky.social that I’ve gotten to see.

Which feels like it’s saying something…

"This story doesn't need a sandworm"

This is almost always wrong. Arguably, EVERY story benefits from adding a huge subterranean worm with quasi-mystical or semi-supernatural powers, or equivalent (similar to Moby Dick).

Obviously the bigger the worm, the more literary quality it adds.

Things are heating up in this train wagon. And there's still two more parts after this one.

that the Whos celebrate Christmas suggests some knowledge of Christ, but whether this is our anthropic Christ or a distinctive Who-Christ remains obscure; some have argued Christianity was introduced to them during their refuge with Horton, which of course turns us to the matter of Elephant Religion

my upcoming diabolic dialect adventure “The Gingerbread Factory” probably has my most indulgent writing

A small boy obscured by the sheaf of papers in front of him prepares to run a TTRPG

I have been thinking a lot this year about how to bring folks to games — especially TTRPGs.

There’s lots of paths, & most of them require a lot of patience — the long game, as it were.

I know many folks who are connoisseurs, restless maximizers.

But love people first, & meet them where they are.

My no-fun-at-parties take is that "christmas is a secular holiday" is an uncomfortable way of assuring me that christianity is the status quo and everything outside of that is an aberration. Sorry! It's still a christian holiday!! Just because you're an atheist doesn't make it secular!

"What she wants most of all is to crunch, gulp, and digest a gingerbread that does not protest."

- @ryanzenith.bsky.social

One of the best lines I've read in recent memory from an upcoming Diabolic Dialect Holiday module.

A watercolored drawing of a werewolf that looks more like a were-terrier-mutt holding a red lantern and a lidded mug with steam coming off. He has thigh-hight red gaiters suspended from a belt, smeared in algae, and wears an outfit and masked hood of layers of red, gold, and purple fringe.

#COMPANIONSofCHRISTMAS: Guinefort, the Cajun Christmas Werewolf!

When Santa Claus visits the bayous of Louisiana, the dense canopy of trees that blanket the rivers along which its people live preclude him from employing his reindeer-pulled sleigh. 1/

the abbot teaches the ways of woolybear winter divination

despite the miserable fall weather, the Abbot always made sure to take the novice monks out to his favorite mushroom foraging grounds. if they were lucky he'd also have the opportunity to teach them some weather forecasting tricks

A concept page of my character Brioche, a baker dough-mancer girl who controls dough and summons (bakes) bread creatures to fight for her

Brioche the Doughmancer 🫓

You know, some days I sit and think about how absolutely wild it is that we've built a society where we don't provide a place for people to even sleep at night without having to pay for it, and that we've somehow made it seem like that's normal.

EVERYONE GET MORE PASSIONATE AND SELF INDULGENT ABOUT CREATIVITY AND BEING HUMAN NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bjork is op -- disjointed hitbox

Every writer who generates a slop image for their work is a class traitor.

"I can't afford a visual artist"

So your solution is stabbing artists in the back? Stealing from them?

Furthermore, slop-generated imagery suggests slop-generated writing. That's how you're presenting yourself.

Ni quiero, ni necesito tanto.
Buenas noches,
gente de bien.

love when i write a bit of something that's so obviously from My Human Brain. like well, maybe this particular thing sticks out in a way that won't survive editing, maybe it won't hit for anybody else, but it took me to write this part for sure. so for now it is my favorite part

While I think the most obvious transferable skill from Improv to playing TTRPGs is learning how to react to situations quickly and authentically, we should also take note that Improv (especially long form) can teach narrative pattern recognition to help call back to previous themes and characters.

@thirdfloorwars.bsky.social gmed a game for @jessebmiller.bsky.social, @ryanzenith.bsky.social and I today and goddamn if Craig isn’t up there as one of the best GMs I’ve played with. Excited for the next session!

This is a good example of how we’re so addicted to the point-of-purchase because the library is free as hell

Body horror is the core of dungeon crawling for me and injury tables were something I always struggled with. Turns out, the key is to make it both a little weird and change how often death is an option.

snowttrpg.itch.io/songbirds-3e

the people of this great republic yearn for locomotive transport