Here's a random GMing thing: when the group needs to talk with someone, look for a natural countdown and anchor the scene off of it.
The florist only has time to talk while he prepares the bouquet.
As the convo goes on, keep coming back to him working and being closer and closer to finishing.
This essay took Doyle two years to write and the result - about war, about being a soldier in your mind - is worth every minute.
jude-doyle.ghost.io/the-rat/
Tattooing ‘throw away the genre emulation’ onto the inside of my skull. Good shit from @sandroad.moe. www.failforward.moe/2026/03/i...
A bonobo’s pretend tea party suggests that imagination predates humans. A study in Science shows that Kanzi, a 43-year-old bonobo, could track imaginary juice and grapes in during a tea party, reliably distinguishing pretend from real objects. buff.ly/7ysy0fq
#ShareGoodNewsToo
New blog, for the first time in months. I wrote about the source of the joy I find in drama-focused gaming, using a response to Sorensen’s Three Question Taxonomy as the scaffolding. Enjoy!
My blog: afcbrodie.mataroa.blog/blog/joy/
Sorensen’s: samsorensen.blot.im/sams-thre...
Podcasting is what happens when you industrialise the Shakespearean jester.
Listen to @mealofthorns.bsky.social
Feel pretty sure Storm of Wings is the bleakest Harrison book. Expanding his motif of a momentary impossibility of communication into a constant cosmic reality is an act of some awesome pessimism. Eden Kupermintz is right about scale.
overcast.fm/+ABDNpY3yI14
Listening to this Strange Horizons pod on book clubs, and chiming with the value of a book club being a space for discussion where, uniquely, a book does not have to preemptively justify its presence through what it may contain. Its import derives from my friend’s interest.
I say this with real sincerity: While I think we've pulled certain parts of The Train to the forefront with our take on Sangfielle, moving them towards Horror Entitites actually makes them much, much less powerful and scary than they are (and especially were) in the real world.
Been thinking about @explorersdesign.bsky.social's recent post ("Against Dominant Mechanics") and what we can strip away to maximize the RPG experience.
Yes, there's a backhoe in this.
Everything Harrison gets from the everpresent ruins of the Afternoon Cultures in Pastel City is obtained with greater power and less labour of my eyes, by a Council’s (official?) cliffside rubbish tip in Climbers.
It is wild, reading MJ Harrison’s Pastel City after having read Climbers and Course of the Heart, how “he” is in there - particularly in a classic M John refusal to speak - and also how the fantasy is a wall between “him” and me.
I submitted one post for the Bloggies, in the reviews category. It's a review I wrote of All That You Know, an actual play podcast, and how it as a low-documentary actual play communicates its images despite my inevitably wandering attention.
Harrow’s The Everlasting absolutely rules, goddamn what a book
Gary Larson: In my cartoon I invented Cow Tools as a cautionary tale
Cows: At long last, we have created the Cow Tools from classic newspaper comic Cow Tools
With Muybridge, it felt like running.
I really liked B. Catling's The Vorrh, and also, I plan to pass it back into charity book circulation. I kind of wish I could cut the Muybridge storyline out of it as its own thing. Perhaps that would diminish the effect, but, with Ishmael et al. even as I enjoyed reading, reading felt like wading.
Not only does this blog’s topic relate closely to what I want to do with my in-progress game - short version: what if BitD Scores were made of relationships - but also tasker.land’s grounding of theory in TTRPG history, enriches that theory significantly.
tasker.land/2026/01/22/maps-m...
Cool game idea by @Bakenshake! Can see myself having a fun time with this.
theplayreports.com/posts/epis...
Six warmups for TTRPGs (mostly from improv):
1. Indigo Montoya
Each player creates an introduction for their character in the style of Inigo Montoya, as if it were directed at their main motivator - Greeting, Name, Personal Connection, Action To Be Expected.
The constant delight of the TTRPG blogosphere is finding essays that express points you have been edging towards for ages, with far more sophistication and thoroughness than you could ever have managed. This is one of those essays (HT Patchwork Paladin).
lichvanwinkle.blogspot.com/20...
Immediate Bloggies addition. In full agreement about laws - they’re in my game and now so is this. Determined to show the thing. Fascinated by where the chain of argument ends.
wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2025...
god help me someone asked what i'm looking for in short fiction. how do i say: horror but not like that, questions without answers, short, and fucking weird. the thing that makes good short fiction to me is that the final act of the story is in your head, not on the page
please fund my startup which provides political advisory services. yeah it's called Wormtongue.
So amped for this. Really diving into TTRPG blogs was one of the best things I did in 2025, and can't wait to see what more there is to read!
I mean the bizarre thing here is that doing anything in any organisation requires persuading and motivating diverse individuals, unless of course your entire working life has been spent in organisations that rely either or coercion, or, don't have diversity.
It's counterintuitive, because there's a generation that's accustomed to James Cameron being the interior decorator of their inner landscape. But with this series he just... did not do that. They make a ton of money and have zero fandom, and that's no different from a lot of other successful series.
This is also my intention :D. I listened to most of Sean McTiernan's M John Harrison podcast series this year, which both reminded me how much I love his writing, and showed me how much more there was there. I also finally read Climbers which, holy hell.
