As promised, the compilation is (finally) here!
June 14, 2023
(Read the original on itch here!)
Blog Posts
TTRPG Quarterbacking part 2: Solutions, kind of? Mostly vague ideas about solutions.
June 5, 2023
Somehow this one didn’t make the great cohost migration! I’ve converted and back-dated it appropriately, and lightly touched up a header or two, but otherwise it’s intact. - Binary, Sep 22, 2025
So I outlined the problem (as it is) in part 1. This is the part where I think out loud about what to do about it as a designer.
Foreword #
I’m going to put this as the first thing because it can’t be stressed enough and because I don’t really want to hear about how this isn’t an issue at anyone’s specific table or whatever because that’s not the point. Communicate with your players. If someone’s doing it a little too much you can probably just ask them to cut it out and they probably will. Folks are generally pretty reasonable.
v1.1 release! Some extremely preliminary diceless rules!
May 29, 2023
Thinking about (a very broad definition of) quarterbacking, especially as it relates to TTRPGs (part 1)
May 24, 2023
Somehow this one didn’t make the great cohost migration! I’ve converted and back-dated it appropriately, and lightly touched up a header or two, but otherwise it’s intact. - Binary, Sep 22, 2025
This is going to be a bit meandering and I’m not going to have answers at the end of this post because it’s already too fucking long. Bear with me.
Disclaimer/preface: I’m mostly spitballing based on my own experiences as someone who has both seen and done this. I’m sure there are better terms for what I’m saying and that I’m probably reinventing the wheel. I’m fine with that. I know about the killer/explorer/socializer/roleplayer model for multiplayer games already, it’s useful and there’s definitely an intersection point on a venn diagram of where it interacts with this but it doesn’t 100% map to where I’m going with this.
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Diceless but it's APOCALYPSE FRAME, or: I Do Love The Token But I Am Now Worrying In A Different Tangential Existential Way
May 16, 2023
Same idea, different game. I'd considered dicelessness for APOCALYPSE FRAME first, actually, but decided it wasn't worth putting it in the core game because I wanted it to come out ever. The big reason I'd do it is that rolling dice actually does slow things down quite a bit and for the most part players usually just reroll with Tension in combat so it's not like consequences come up that much unless folks are using low-die Armaments with low Tension or rolling low Attributes for some reason.
...Removing/Reducing Dice in ANOINTED, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Token
May 15, 2023
I had been thinking about the topic of randomness when writing entries for Regions for ANOINTED23, but Spencer Campbell (GilaRPGs, creator of LUMEN/RUNE/etc) wrote two blog posts (with a third on the way) that got me thinking about it. Specifically, I'm wondering if I could/should just remove dice almost entirely from ANOINTED, my GMless or GM'd/group or solo soulslike game in development.
...Liminal Void: Professions (like Classes but not really). What are we doing here?
May 3, 2023
So I'm thinking about what I'm doing with Professions in Liminal Void. A Profession is like...a class, kind of/sort of? It's got a starting skillset (basically a broad Skill category), a little passive ability that differentiates it, a few changes to being able to recover/reload/recharge in combat, and a starting equipment package (which includes an outfit, a capital-T Tool, and two consumables).
...Dungeon23/ANOINTED23, March and April roundup (oops)
May 2, 2023
Updating has been pretty spotty for reasons of "I wrote basically 150 pages of Game in these two months"! But as I had time to catch up on Month 4 and finalize it, here's my two.
...v2 released!
April 20, 2023
Liminal Void updates: Advancement is hard and weird
April 6, 2023
Advancement in a game is tough. Or rather, like all things in game design, you can kind of just do whatever with it but it'll have long-ranging implications as to player behavior. As much as we don't like to admit it sometimes, numbers going up very frequently provide a throughline and driving force for campaign-length games, but how those numbers go up matters. If you give XP for gold, guess what, your game is now at least partially about making money. If you give XP for killing things, guess what, you're going to see a lot of killing. If you don't have XP but just give out character levels when important milestones get finished, they'll frequently beeline to those milestones. And so on.
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