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For example: whenever someone in our house steps out of the shower, the cat (8M) jumps into the tub and starts licking up all of the water. IMPALF?

We should stop asking AITA and start asking IMPALF: Is My Pet A Little Freak

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We should stop asking AITA and start asking IMPALF: Is My Pet A Little Freak

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* exits the narrative and goes home *

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hey americans there is a recall on testosterone gel because they found benzene in it! please check the lot numbers on your batches, benzene is really not something you want to be rubbing into your skin, also you might be eligible for compensation because this is just insane what the fuck

more on this page:

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D&D as a "queer game" is extremely recent historically. I often see people pointing at D&D in the 70s as evidence for D&D not being queer, but like I feel that is missing the forest for the trees. Sure, the creators of D&D made it for a very specific crowd that very much did not include queer people, but that was also the norm for D&D until very recently.

And to be clear I don't think even the latest edition of D&D is meaningfully clear, but it's literally the first edition of the game that acknowledges queer people the existence of queer people openly and positively, instead of in passive mention or as monstrous caricatures. When people say "D&D was always queer" they're either talking about their personal experience divorced from the game as a text (which I don't think makes for meaningful conversation: at that point any game is queer) or literally just talking about the most recent edition and somehow letting that color the whole history of the game.

When people say "D&D was always queer" that's of course an obvious lie. But it wasn't just a brief moment in the 70s when D&D was "not queer." It has been so for pretty much all of its history and as such has lagged much behind other games. And ultimately it still isn't really a queer game unless you consider stories of killing dragons with swords where the elves are sometimes gay meaningfully queer narratives (I don't).

And you know what: it's 100% okay to enjoy D&D, the game that is not queer, as a medium for telling stories that might be queer. But also it would kind of kick ass if you looked at games written by queer people which actually center queer experiences. Or if you still just want to play a dungeon game you could play a dungeon game made by a cool trans woman who's gay.

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D&D as a "queer game" is extremely recent historically. I often see people pointing at D&D in the 70s as evidence for D&D not being queer, but like I feel that is missing the forest for the trees. Sure, the creators of D&D made it for a very specific crowd that very much did not include queer people, but that was also the norm for D&D until very recently.

And to be clear I don't think even the latest edition of D&D is meaningfully clear, but it's literally the first edition of the game that acknowledges queer people the existence of queer people openly and positively, instead of in passive mention or as monstrous caricatures. When people say "D&D was always queer" they're either talking about their personal experience divorced from the game as a text (which I don't think makes for meaningful conversation: at that point any game is queer) or literally just talking about the most recent edition and somehow letting that color the whole history of the game.

When people say "D&D was always queer" that's of course an obvious lie. But it wasn't just a brief moment in the 70s when D&D was "not queer." It has been so for pretty much all of its history and as such has lagged much behind other games. And ultimately it still isn't really a queer game unless you consider stories of killing dragons with swords where the elves are sometimes gay meaningfully queer narratives (I don't).

And you know what: it's 100% okay to enjoy D&D, the game that is not queer, as a medium for telling stories that might be queer. But also it would kind of kick ass if you looked at games written by queer people which actually center queer experiences. Or if you still just want to play a dungeon game you could play a dungeon game made by a cool trans woman who's gay.

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New Itch Games Dec to March 2025

Missed an edition of this regular round-up of new games on itch. If this is the first time you’re seeing one of these: they are mostly games that came through this form. I haven’t played or read them but each of them has something that made me sit up and pay attention. This is a particularly bountiful episode because I would play all of these games.

Deluge at Drizzle Distillery: There’s a magical storm at the holy water distillery! Oh no! An adventure by Mun Kao for Kala Mandala, his fantasy SE Asia setting.

Land in the Mist Starter Set: This is a horror game where you play through specific scenarios set in the real world between 1750 and 1850. The starter set contains all the rules and has an adventure, Of Pagans and Reindeer, set in Northern Finland in 1811. (Rat in a Suit / PWYW)

unfamiliar: A game of magical familiars who have lost or been abandoned by their wizardly masters. It’s partially inspired by We3 which is one of those sad comics designed to hit you right in the feelings. (Feature Creep / PWYW)

What Happened To Margot Kwan: This is a mystery for Girls at the Genziana Hotel, a PbtA game of maids in a hotel investigating the disappearance of one of their own. This moves the game to an American university town. Genziana Hotel is a really interesting game and this adventure/setting moves it into more explicitly Life is Strange territory. (Mynar Lenahan)

Tactical Espionage Action: Dice Goblin Games wrote 16 adventures for FIST, the occult espionage game, in two months. They include: infiltrating casinos, volcanic lairs, frigid research stations, colonial horrors, and of course, Satan trapped in a beach ball. (PWYW outside the bundle)

Alone in the Loop: A solo journalling game of a time traveler experience hope and despair as they explore the same loop over and over again. Great premise. (Paul Doyle / PWYW)

Mum Chums: A slice of life game about motherhood and looking after children from Tanya Floaker. It’s a real world game exploring real world themes, simultaneously high stakes and low stakes in the best way. (Unlimited community copies)

Faire Season 2: A group of historical reenactors at a Ren Faire-type event get pulled into an actual quest of myth and magic by the power of The Dream. It uses the Belonging outside Belonging system to explore our relationship to our roleplay alter-egos. (Okami)

Ringmaster: A Descended from the Queen game about a dark, magical circus. Honestly, that was enough for me. Like For the Queen, it revolves around a powerful NPC, the Ringmaster, and ends with a pivotal question: is the circus your home or your prison or both? (Spotless Dice Games)

One Of Us Will Die: A social deduction RPG of tragedy and fate. One of the characters, the Mark, knows they will die at the end but can’t say so. One of the characters is trying to kill the Mark before they can fulfill their destiny. The rest of the group are trying to save the Mark and maybe sacrifice themselves instead. (Titus Villanueva)

The Archivium: A solo dark academia game. By day, you’re a student. By night, you’re a guardian of a secret, magical library. You build out the archive and its weird classification system and play towards one of 16 endings. (Lich Light)

In Love With The Moon: The year is 1968. You are a team of scientists, crowded in an old castle where the air flows thick with LSD and there is a maze of rooms below you stocked with every scientific oddity, all for one purpose: to get you to the moon by whatever means necessary. (James Kerr / PWYW)

Ring-lationship Disc-ord: A game where you play Crokinole (!?) to tell the story of two people who are locked in an argument that stems from their past and identity. Truly one of the worst names for anything ever (I say this with love) but I am a sucker for using folk games to explore a story that resonates with their existing mechanics. (Colin Mancini, Sociable Turtle Games)

Codename: Cinderella: A cute one page game about espionage agents working for the Fairy Godmother to execute nursery rhyme-inspired missions. (Fuzztech)

The Burning of the Free Port of Dohn Amuran: This is an adventure for Grimwild from Natalie Ash. It’s a powder keg situation featuring a violent dockmaster, a free union of boat captains, and the adventurers with a chance to prevent bloodshed and broker a fragile peace.

Deadline: A GM-less, map-making, news-chronicling game. Play journalists who are capturing the story of a changing city with their headlines. The city itself is in the grip of an industrial revolution and all that entails. (Wanderers Tome)

I really enjoyed making this list. It just reminded me that there’s so many interesting games out there and I wish I had time to play them all. These designers are all doing fascinating work and making weird art. It makes me happy and I hope making this stuff made them happy too.

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My new game, Heart of the Cards, is now available!

It's an epistolary game using affirmations inspired by YuGiOh, please check it out.

This was actually a commission I did a few years back, I only just got around to releasing it now.

I have no idea how to market this game so any effort to boost it would be greatly appreciated.

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The Quickstart. The Home Game.

My biggest enjoyment of RPGs comes from running games for people who have never played before. It's what I did for years before covid, and it's why I started designing games. It's something I'm actively starting to do again after a long hiatus. So it's time to make a new home game.

USE CASE The home game is not the perfect game. It's not my desert island game. It's something I am primed to run with minimal friction for new players, where we start playing fast and get a lot done in 60-120 minutes. Some key factors for that:

no rulebook or other external reference needed

basic rules fit on one side of one sheet

customization fits on a small selection of cards, which can be chosen, dealt randomly, and/or traded

rolls lead to interesting choices and big changes

THE SCAVENGING The home game isn't a game I designed. It's a game I stapled together from Apocalypse World, The Veil, and some of my own work. Here are some of the big features and why they were chosen.

- Feelings as Stats: Before every roll, the players have to decide how their character feels. One might worry that this slow things down, but in practice, I've never seen the decision take more than a few seconds. Encourages players to think about the situation emotionally.

- Plain Language: As much as I love powered-by-the-apocalypse games, "moves" and "+1 forward" and other language that lives in the genre isn't very intuitive. So I took a page from Belonging Outside Belonging games and just put "You Can Always…" above the basic moves. And I tried to give them clear, plain-language names.

- Limited Starting Choices: I love playbooks, but passing them around, choosing one, reading the whole thing, and choosing a playbook move can take a while, especially with anxious players who struggle with choice paralysis.

Here there are only 19 moves (mostly called "specials," more clear language), and I tried to pick ones that appeal to the main player types I see:

emulates a trope (warrior, wizard)

asks NPCs for help

befriends animals

chaos monster

And if the game goes past one session, you can add more moves, including from other games, to zero in on a genre. (Someday I'll write a long post about how PbtA doesn't NEED a genre and that it actually rules to mix and match playbooks and moves from different games.)

FINISHING TOUCHES People like cards and little gewgaws, so the specials all fit on cards, and I bring along character cards from Shadowlord!, an old Parker Brothers game, for players who struggle with picking a name or vibe. The leftovers become my NPCs. If I were doing sci-fi, I'd probably find a cheap copy of Coup; I always thought those character cards were beautiful.

A WORK IN PROGRESS I laid this out and printed it the other day, but I've already decided to cut two basic moves (Sway and Ultimatum) because they can get a lot of that info from Read a Person. And I'm going to turn the money move into something closer to Blades in the Dark's quantum inventory. ABC (always be changin) your home game (YHG).

MORE MORE MORE Check out The Ostrichmonkey Hack by Josh Hittie @ostrichmonkey-games and Home Game by Adam Vass.

Get PDFs of my home game from this Google Drive link.

This whole thing is probably related to my Worksheet Manifesto.

What's your home game?

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God I had so much fun joining Aaron & Max for this

I'll jump at any opportunity to talk about Triangle Agency

There is a new episode of RTFM, the RPG book club podcast. @goblinmixtape joins me and Max to talk Triangle Agency. Is corporate horror for the youths? Does metafiction have a place in RPGs? And who is the yellow voice?!

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Bannerless Games TTRPG Grant

Ken Lowery of Bannerless Games is offering 5 $250 grants to TTRPG designers! If you're looking for your cash to fund your work, check out the grant application here!

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For Riley Hopkins' Interstitial 2e Jam, you too can now play as a Character, but Transgender...

Cool moves about being a cooler transgender person, channeled through Interstitial 2e. Follow along with yours truly (having played Trans Woman Vash the Stampede in a home game) and play a character from your media of choice But Transgender.

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Now at IPR: Tollund

“The crops have failed, and your village is starving. The Council of Elders says the gods demand a human sacrifice to restore the fields. You have been selected as an offering in exchange for a fruitful harvest… but you must be willing. Your fate lies in the black waters of the bog, but not yet. Use your remaining time to make final preparations, talk to loved ones, and consider your decision. The choice is yours.”

Inspired by the Tollund Man bog body of Denmark, Tollund is set in Iron Age Northern Europe. Experience events over four days as you choose your fate.

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Tollund-Print-PDF.html

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As it was becoming clear the US was headed into trade war territory, I got really interested in farming and the logistics of keeping people fed. I turned that interest into "your cool city needs a food supply," available now!

it's a hack of "i'm sorry did you say street magic" and "Microscope," two gold-standard worldbuilding games. It was polished by Nico MacDougall, who gave me some great advice on how to make this game really align with the themes and ideas I had in the draft.

I've always been a sicko about logistics and agriculture (growing up in the US midwest will do that to you), and I hope this game helps people think about how great a privilege it is to eat.

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The Extra Ordinary Kickstarter is now live!!!

Have you ever wanted to play a story game about kids with powers on the run? Are you a fan of Maximum Ride, Percy Jackson, or Animorphs? Did you wish all the kids in Stranger Things had powers like Eleven? Does a mix between X Men and The Goonies sound like a good time to you?

If yes, check out my game! Extra Ordinary is a rules-light, narrative-driven storytelling TTRPG about kids with extraordinary powers on the run from danger in the ordinary world. It uses no dice and has no game master—instead, everyone has narrative control and responsibility, and you use tokens to determine story beats and action outcomes. Funding now on Kickstarter!

The Kickstarter | The Quickstart | The Actual Play Video (part 1) | The Actual Play Video (part 2)

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Hey hey, as a librarian, can I just say don’t pace yourself at the library. I get a lot of customers saying “oh I shouldn’t get too many books out at once” but like you should!!!! Max out your card, take everything we have on a subject you’re interested in, make a book fort in your home. We love that shit! It doesn’t matter if you read them or not; just take them for an adventure and bring them back whenever they’re due!

For public libraries, one of the ways we secure funding year to year is lending. Governments don’t want to fund more books if they’re not being used and the way we measure use is by issues. Regardless of whether you read it or not, whether you have it for a day or a month, if you issue it to your library card, we get the stats! It makes the library look good!

Help your local library; get books out even if you know you can’t read them all!

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Role-play chambermaids investigating a gothic mystery in a nineteenth century alpine hotel

The Girls of the Genziana Hotel are the chambermaids who serve what few guests sleep in the hotel's rooms. It is the beginning of nineteenth century: the Napoleonic wars have come to an end and the Holy Roman Empire has fallen. The world is changing, but the Genziana is far away from it all, nestled in the Bavarian alps.

But you don’t care about war or politics. You care that she’s gone missing: Marga, the boyish girl with the wild curls.

Nobody is looking for her. Nobody except for you.

(Cover art by Em Acosta)

During the day, the girls will have to balance their work as maids and their efforts to further the investigation. During the night, the girls will brave the same dark hallways that swallowed their friend. They will deal with the strict head of staff, the entitled guests, the rest of the employees, and night's eerie nightmares, hoping to find those responsible for Marga's fate without suffering it themselves.

The Girls of the Genziana Hotel is Powered by the Apocalypse and Carved from Brindlewood, taking its best parts from Night Witches and The Between to facilitate a game about subverting the patriarchal threats of the hotel and investigating a horrific mystery. It just got a major update and undergoing another round of edits to prepare it for a physical release.

Check into the hotel on itch.io.