v0.2 release!

June 22, 2023

Machinations of Court and Frame pre-production notes: Noble Houses and their Agents

June 20, 2023

I don't have an actual cover for this one yet so for now you get a screencap from the SRD title. This one's still at pretty high level. But I did some of that high level work and I wanna talk about it!

Speaking of the SRD, this is the third Total//Effect game I initially proposed/outlined/etc on the Total//Effect SRD. My general (self)-pitch was:

As promised, the compilation is (finally) here!

June 14, 2023

(Read the original on itch here!)

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.

...

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.