#email update

[goromcomzine]

✨Reminder to check your spam for an email from us!

If you haven't gotten an email yet, the last wave of emails is going out TOMORROW.

[itseghost]

the rude blacksmith has enchanted me. also feeling so normal about this game that i did pixel art for the first time ever to try and draw my farmer in the game style

[you-were-meteowrong]

reblog for bigger sample size

[apple-cores]

its not enough. i gotta dissect froggy on a cold metal table until i figure out why i still dont like how i draw him yet

THIS though, no notes

[lilybug-02]

Eimmet High...temmiE high. OMG!

Part 28 || First || Previous || Next

--Full Series--

Next update may take...much longer! I have finals and an internship and not to mention I have to draw- A LOT :')

[taviamoth]

[Information 2 days old as of 20 May 2024.]

[unpretty]

this has a very good summary of everything that's been going on with wordpress if you haven't been keeping up with it, i'm going to copy/paste the list of Goings On from the table of contents to give you an idea:

I’m sorry, what happened?

Automattic approaches WP Engine to offer a “license”

Matt’s rejected, so he tries new strategies

Wait—what’s Matt’s actual deal? Why is he doing this?

Matt claims WP Engine is misrepresenting itself

Matt claims WP Engine is selling a “cheap knock-off” of WordPress

Matt says WP Engine doesn't give back enough

An aside on motivations and justifications

The WordCamp US fallout and Matt’s abuse of power

WP Engine’s reaction

Matt melts down

Matt goes nuclear

Updates: everything that’s happened since October 1st

Matt talks taking over WP Engine

Automattic releases the terms sheet, which kinda backfires

WP Engine files suit against Matt and Automattic

Matt offers buyouts to Automattic employees

159 Automattic employees take the buyout; Matt hires a famous lawyer who's a horrible human

Matt gleefully exposes a vulnerability in ACF, but prevents WPE from fixing it

Matt adds a vague anti-WP Engine checkbox to WordPress.org, but fails to clarify why, all while playing the victim

Matt commandeers ACF, using WordPress.org to steal a competitor's product

Previous lawsuits against Matt come to light

Matt responds to the 'other lawsuits'

Matt wars against dissenters with second buyout offer; threatens employees who speak out; intercepts employees' emails

WP Engine files an injunction to regain access to WordPress.org

[sanska]

That mdtb fic about Madara who can shapeshift into a fat Icelandic pony is such an inspired concept and it brings me so much joy and whimsy to read, 11/10

[Fic is Horsing Around by Achromos, btw!!]

[godlovesdykes]

Samah’s elderly mother passed away yesterday. She had been suffering from broken bones, bedsores, and infections. Samah and her daughter Hamsa evacuated to Cairo but had to leave the rest of their family behind, and now they have lost someone so dear—Hamsa calls her “the most loving person in my life”.

They’ve been fundraising for months and have only received €6433 out of €30 000. Please hear their grief and have compassion.

[vampiregerard]

[askchuuyanakahara]

CHUUYA, WHAT IF I HAVE A CURSE OR GOT HIT WITH AN ABILITY AND ONLY YOUR KISS (bc you're my one true love) COULD SAVE ME?! WOULD YOU STILL NOT EVEN BLOW ME A KISS? 🥺😿

Chuuya: "Different ones for different occasions, obviously. And different colours to match different outfits."

Chuuya: "It's shocking you haven't seen me at least once. Perhaps you've just never noticed me?"

Chuuya: "I don't get a lot of days off so I usually spend the day relaxing."

Chuuya: "I hope you feel a bit better soon!"

@bloodyjay-0666

Chuuya: "Tachihara kept calling me a 'grandpa' for typing in full sentences.. so I figured I'd type short ones, y'know?"

Chuuya: "It's not my fault no one's telling me how to send those funny picture faces like Higuchi does.."

Chuuya: "They said the world would end if I started using them, apparently."

@bioluminescentcat

Chuuya: "He better answer after all this."

Dazai: "I was sitting here, ON EDGE, because of you! For a FULL HOUR!"

Chuuya: "Huh?"

Dazai: "Huh..?"

[grndgame]

ryan leonard college boy 🤓 let's go capademics❗️

[deepwaterfiction]

Big Deep Water News 🪼🪼🪼

As some of you might know, I write not just two sentence prompts, but full length manuscripts as well. Following beta sourced from the followers of this very blog, I’ve been querying the most recent, titled BORDERLINE, intermittently for about a year.

And, as of this week, I’ve officially signed with a literary agent and am now represented by Stephen Barbara at Inkwell Management.

Prompts will continue as I work on some edits (and my regular job) and dream the manuscript gets picked up and published. If you’re interested, here’s a link to the tag on my personal, and the description below the cut!

I’ll definitely be sharing any news that comes up on this topic. It’s pretty wild but here we are. Stay weird, keep writing, and love always,

- Lilia 💫

Lin O’Leary keeps her eyes closed. That’s how you survive in the town of Florida: small, slightly run down, and sitting right on a rip in reality. Known to locals as ‘the borderline’, all anyone knows for sure is that it ate town darling Momo Kasahara six years ago, and is best left alone. Lin, a high school dropout now working at the world’s weirdest corner store, tries not to dwell on the girl she might have loved if she’d had the chance. No real friends or future, she accepts midnight shifts, saves her pennies, and ignores the faceless entity seeking instant oatmeal. 

When a grown up Momo appears one night like a ghost in the snack aisle, everything changes. Lin is sure that finding her will cure the strange gloom that’s been hanging over her and her town for so long. Remaining twin Bo Kasahara just wants his family whole again, and touring paranormal vlogger Julien True sees his chance to shoot the pilot episode of his dreams. Together the three of them must learn how to cross the borderline, unraveling the terrible secrets of Florida one by one until their rescue mission is successful. Because Momo is not a ghost at all. 

Momo Kasahara is impossible to find and furious about it. Her hometown is an otherworldly shadow, her mind is definitely going, and her only neighbors treat her with eldritch indifference…most of the time. Stuck somewhere just outside of existence, she knows she must save herself soon, before she forgets what it means to be human.

[theresattrpgforthat]

How To Find Cool Games: On DriveThruRPG!

So disclaimer upfront: I don’t use the DriveThruRPG website nearly as much as Itch.io. Some of those reasons are practical (there’s no tagging system, the catalogue is rather D&D saturated,), while others are more… well, shallow (the website isn’t as pretty).

However, DriveThruRPG is a very good tool to have in your toolbox when it comes to finding cool ttrpgs, for a number of reasons, the primary one being that it’s for TTRPGS and only TTRPGs! Let’s get started.

The Search Bar / Categories.

You can start by doing a basic search for a game that you already know about, or by searching for a keyword, like “pirates” or “zombies”. You’ll get titles sorted by “relevance”, so things that have the keyword in the name will show up first. One of the biggest downsides of this strategy is that everything kind of gets lumped in here: supplements, maps, expansions, adventures, character sheets… the list goes on. However, you can narrow down what you’re looking for by using the toggles at the top of the website. I personally usually narrow down search results by selecting “Product Type” and then “Core Rulebooks”.

One nice thing DriveThru has compared to Itch.io is that you can combine categories, so if I wanted to brows say, Gothic Horror Core Rulebooks priced under $20, well I can do that! My favourite categories are for genre, but another set of categories that you may find very useful once you’ve familiarized yourself with some games is the Rule System category. There are categories for systems like the Year Zero Engine, Forged in the Dark, BRP (Basic Roleplaying), OSR, and so much more. There’s also “other systems” and “any system” categories if you want to find something that’s unique or that can be used across games.

DriveThru also has a lot of games published in different languages, and you can narrow your results to see what’s been offered in your language. I think there are more options on this website than there are on Itch, although you might benefit by finding one or two publishers in your language on DriveThru, and then check the publisher’s website from there.

The Homepage

Another reason to check out DriveThru regularly is the sales and promotions. The top banner of the homepage will typically advertise a few things: the Deal of the Day, current themed sales, and special offers that DriveThru RPG wants you to know about. Their homepage also has Bestselling Titles, Most Popular Games Under $5, Newest Games, Featured Titles, and, if you scroll down enough, Personalized suggestions. Unlike Itch.io, DriveThru does a lot of work to show you what’s new, what’s hot, and what’s a really good deal right now, which can all be really helpful things!

When you land on a game, you’ll be able to see whether or not DriveThru sells physical copies, some basic information like book size, rule system, publisher & author, and a blurb describing the setting and other general information about the game. DriveThru has a side panel with “Customers also Bought”, which is great for showing you things that you might like, either because they surround the same theme, they work for the same game, or they are in a similar genre. (Another thing that Itch isn’t quite as good at.)

You’ll also be able to see (and leave) reviews for game, including the ratings left by other people who have picked it up. Occasionally I’ll find really useful information in the reviews, as reviewers might talk about mechanics they love or loathe, or recommend styles of play that they feel the game matches.

Finally, like Itch, DriveThru will let you know if you’ve already bought the game, and provide you with a download shortcut.

Publishing House Pages

Larger publishing houses typically have their ttrpg content sorted very nicely for you on their publisher pages, to help you find the things that you want. Modiphius is a great example, sorting Star Trek, Dune, Fallout, and their 2d20 games all in special categories.

Many publishers also have a Community Content section, which is great if you’re looking for assets, new adventures, hacks of a game system and some very reasonably priced (or even cheap) game additions. Similar to Itch, DriveThru has a Pay-What-You-Want feature for many games, although, unlike Itch, most PWYW titles require that you pay a non-zero amount.

Newsletters

When you create an account on DriveThruRPG, you can sign up for various different kinds of newsletters. Some come directly from DriveThru itself: this includes the Follow Your Favourites and Deal of the Day options, as well as weekly/monthly newsletters carrying information about new releases, special promotions, and (often) a free ttrpg product of the month.

However, on top of that, when you purchase a game or follow publishing pages, you can also get emails about new releases specific to those creators, as well as updates if a new version of a game you bought has been added. Often if it’s a game you already bought, this means you own the new version too - something that DriveThru has in common with Itch!

The Follow Your Favourites announcements will line up with whatever you’ve chosen to follow on the website. I’ve asked for updates about new Core Rulebooks, and I also get updates from the Onyx Path and a few other places where I found games I really liked. I also check the Deal of the Day offers fairly regularly; sometimes there are really really good deals offered and if it’s a game you know or like, then you don’t want to miss out on a sale!

Wishlists

DriveThru allows you to add games to wishlists to look at later, and even gives you the ability to sort your wishlists, although the process feels harder to look through than Itch does; I think it might be a UI issue.

However, because it acts like a wishlist, you can move games from the wishlist into your cart and vice versa, as well as move the games to another list. One really nice thing about the wishlist section is that DriveThru will alway show you when something you want is on sale, and how much it is normally - Itch does this too, but in this case, DriveThru is much easier to read!

I mostly sort my wishlists into Core Rulebooks and Supplements, because I don’t have nearly as many games bookmarked on DriveThru. If it exists on Itch, I store it on Itch - but there are plenty of other, “someday’ games, that I want to be able to find again in the future.

Your Library

DriveThruRPG has an app that you can download onto your computer or your phone, and it basically acts as a library that you can look through. In both the webpage and the app, you can sort your purchases alphabetically, from new to old, by publisher, by whether or not they were updated, and using similar categories as the search bar on the store front.

Free things can definitely be found here, even if they’re harder to look for. On DriveThru, most free products are things like character sheets, playtest games, or Quickstarts. However, some publishers do put up their stuff for free. Whenever I can get a Quickstart of something interesting, or if I find something being offered for free, I add it to my library. Free games are how I got started in ttrpgs, and QuickStarts are wonderful introductions to a system that usually give you a good idea of what the game is going to feel like.

Conclusion

Overall, DriveThruRPG is great for folks who like certain big publishing houses, and folks who like a good deal. I personally usually end up on the site because something in my emails caught my eye, which is the opposite of how I navigate Itch. DriveThru was my home base before I discovered Itch.io, so I still have a little fondness for the website, even if looking through it is a little bit of a slog.

One thing that might be a bit of an annoyance is that if you own something from a certain company, they might be able to send you a lot of emails for every sale and new product. If this becomes too much, you can choose to opt out from those publishers.

If you don’t want to have to actively engage with the website as much as say, Itch, DriveThru’s email system is also a big help. You can customize your subscriptions to match what you’re interested in, and then just check your emails once in a while to see what’s on offer. After a while you’ll also learn about yearly events, like the Summer Sale, which often provides big discounts on a lot of different games.

DriveThru is also a great place to start if you’re looking for print versions of games: I don’t know what shipping is like to places outside Canada, but I definitely appreciate that it’s an option, and sometimes all you need to do is find a game or publisher - once you know that it exists, you can google that publisher, check out their website, and figure out the best place to order from there.

[redmeet]

this is a tough place for sensitive people. but we need them badly.

[etherealspacejelly]

i hate the fact that doing literally anything that i even mildly do not want to do feels like trying to put my hand on a hot stove. if you let me i would just sit around doing nothing forever because trying to complete a Task activates my fight or flight response. for some reason.