TTRPG designer, cat servant, regency romance enjoyer, talks about movies and pro wrestling too much my games are here https://jen-adcock15.itch.io/
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thinking of readjusting back to having a medieval view of the seasons, where there's really only two - summer is from March to September and winter is from September to March. spring and fall are just variant forms of summer and winter. this way "midsummer" and "midwinter" are real things again
I have begun outlining and the next newsletter is going to be a real banger, soooo make sure you sign up to get that in your inbox mailchi.mp/3eea8c0e2287...
In Foucault’s Pendulum, there’s a moment where it is revealed that a certain character’s downward spiral was a result of chasing one perfect moment of fulfillment he had as a child and then never felt anything like it again, and that moment involved playing a trumpet. And you know what? I get it
Sorry for gloating that I have lived a charmed life (have deeply felt the emotions expressed by the song Walking on Sunshine)
Greg sent me this and it’s making me irrationally upset lmao imagine not ever experiencing being Trumpets Happy, imagine not feeling like Walking on Sunshine, imagine not understanding even the vicarious bliss of “I used to think maybe you loved me, now baby I’m sure” COULDN’T BE ME
If my friends say things like this about me after I die, you will have to kill me again as the shame and embarrassment reanimate my ghost
And then you read his Wikipedia page and it’s like well okay then fair enough
You know it’s good when you get like 50 pages into a book and have to stop to google “what was this guy’s fucking deal”
Anyway #nowreading The Odd Women by George Gissing
I think I might… read 100 books this year? I didn’t really set out to do that, but I’m on number 75 now and September isn’t even over yet
It gets less and less eyecrime each time I add a layer of quoting here. They're even starting to be like, reasonable simulacra of characters that people could pick up and understand!
game design is when you ask questions about dragons and witches and stuff
I say as I open up a google doc full of bullet-pointed questions about dragons and witches and stuff
and MAKING games? don't even get me started 😎
Also, side note: weekend morning games just HIT. I used to be in a Saturday morning Masks campaign that kinda fell apart, but it was a real banger way to start a weekend day. I can’t even say I was part of the Saturday morning cartoons generation; we had 24/7 cartoons by the time I was a kid lmao
Did you know? Talking about games and thinking about games and writing about games are all cool but are still way less cool than playing games?
I got to play #SundayAMSwords with @epidiah.bsky.social today! What a fun time! My sad dreamy eagle prince got scourged by the golden flails of a malevolent swan woman! As you do!
I think I say this every year, but Baku is what Monaco wishes it was (yes, both scenic street races, but Baku actually has competitive fun-to-watch racing)
I MISSED MOST OF THE SHOW WHAT DO YOU MEAN WORLD CHAMP KRIS STATLANDER
You know what’s real nice? Having a little backyard fire and some s’mores with your pals
He also told me that I’m the only woman he knows who’s not on some kind of psychiatric meds. Unrelated. Probably unrelated
Greg told me to post this: “I guess the holy trinity is also a kind of throuple, although I hate that interpretation” - @gdposta.bsky.social after I said that the trinity was a throuple
Mina Shirakawa gearing up for a no-holds-barred/street fight match by wearing pink camo cargo pants with slits cut up the sides and fishnets underneath to make em cunty...... no one does it like her
Lotta talk about mindfuck short stories going nuts for 15 pages, not enough talk about how 100 page novellas make you pace around the house for an hour until you suddenly burst into tears in the kitchen
AND THERE'S A MOVIE OF IT WITH COLIN FIRTH AND KENNETH BRANAGH???? letterboxd.com/film/a-month...
this was really breathtaking, by the way, an immediate standout in a year of really good reading
Anyway he’s mad that Danny’s new memoir covers the scandal, so I’ll just throw this out there: I would absolutely read Hans’ memoir of the scandal as long as the publisher and editor maintain his style lmao, it should read like the Riddler’s chess-themed cousin wrote it
The cheating scandal was undoubtedly really hard on him, but like, just watch his interview last year with Daniel Naroditsky, who seems fully willing to give him space to set the record straight, and it… mostly sounds like this
I’m sure Hans loves chess but it really seems like his first love is tweeting like a third-string comic book villain, he always does this and it’s funny to me every time
they did it again :) my players went to go talk to a dragon in game tonight :) dragons is big cats
on a Carly kick, with the Emotion 10th anniversary edition coming up, and I just want to say: nobody appreciates Dedicated Side B “Let’s Sort the Whole Thing Out” like I do open.spotify.com/track/7kynjj...
something very 2000s about finding out your favorite fan-artist, like THE big name artist in your tiny tumblr fandom over a decade ago, stopped posting art because she went to med school and became a doctor, and was in fact, like 16 years old when she was drawing all that lmao
annoying task I was putting off all week ended up taking approximately 10-15 minutes to complete and now I never have to worry about it again. I will learn nothing from this. thank you for understanding.
thank you everyone being nice about my finished games, it is motivating me to keep working on these fuck-ass rectangles
Ah, I hope you're able to find a group for it soon, and I hope it's worth the wait! 💚
I have been lucky enough to hear from teachers, librarians, scout leaders, union leaders, and others about using this game in educational settings and it makes EVERYTHING worth it
Every time I hear about a teacher or librarian or scout leader or whoever in an educational capacity using the game, my heart grows three sizes 💚
Playing this game with One Shot was such an incredible experience, I really feel like we showcased the strengths of the game and what makes it special, and it's always so special to me to get to play the game with folks who GET IT, so you should definitely listen to
This was such an incredible session of the game, I'm so glad we were able to do it 💚
I like specificity and narrowness of scope! I like how that allows me to build simple mechanics that pack a lot of punch because I'm not trying to do everything! I like exploring webs of character relationships! I like characters with secrets and strong desires! I like hard choices and failures!
I kind of struggle to pitch my whole body of work as opposed to a single game because I feel like you can look at those listings and be like "this is all over the place" but I can tell you some things I really like and always strive for in my games!
I make RPGs with elegant mechanics and strong themes and they're all on sale for September only! GETTEM jen-adcock15.itch.io
my very first published RPG adventure still continues to gather truly fantastic reviews
also this movie featured my FAVORITE phenomenon: appearance by someone who was in SANDITON, this movie had the actor who played Sanditon's own REVEREND HANKINS, and he was PLAYING A PRIEST, how do you get typecast as a priest, because this man has done it
I think if I was an ostentatiously evil bad guy in a comic book who rode around my dominion on an ostentatiously evil train, I would probably anticipate and prepare for the likelihood of my many enemies blowing up sections of train track in order to thwart my various schemes. but that's just me
If I was a 16 year old boy this would be my new favorite movie in the world I think
I can’t believe the bad guy in those Black Phone movies is just called “the grabber” like let’s maybe take a second draft of this one
"it's just for playtesting, it's just for playtesting, it's just for playtesting, it doesn't need to look fancy right now, it's just for playtesting" fuck-ass rectangles
I am also having a slightly surreal moment as I realize that I am wildly overcaffeinated and also they're playing Bohemian Rhapsody very loud in here, which is like SO great, love that for me, but also that's like a lot going on
this is how the Panera death lemonades get you, I think
they accidentally made my coffee iced at the cafe today (I am normally a hot coffee only type person) and I was like hey no big deal, it's hot out, I'll drink it, but I have made a critical error: it's TOO EASY to gulp down a whole iced drink MUCH faster than a very hot drink of equivalent size
the thing that I did real good for myself in making games like The Price of Coal (pre-gen characters only) or THAW (instructions to write everything on notebook paper) is that I spared myself the need to design fucking character sheets. god I hate making character sheets. why do I ever do this
why am I always having Amy March feelings
We're EXTREMELY close to 500 backers. If 7 (or more!) interested parties haven't backed the campaign yet, that'd be a Good Number to use in promo etc. going into the final week!
IT WORKED, I am the first person to log and review it letterboxd.com/film/euripid...
anyway, this is a really long thread to say that I was trying to tinker with the timing for Pax Deorum to see if I could get it closer to 2 than to 4, but I don't know if that's going to be possible for the type of game that it is and what I'm trying to do with it
I think one-shot type stuff is a little different, like I'm more willing to say that Price of Coal should take you around 4 hours than I am to say it for DD, because DD assumes multiple sessions of episodic play that you can return to in a way that a one-shot game doesn't
Dollhouse Drama is pretty reliably 2-3 hours including character creation. I think I COULD stretch it longer, but I have never wanted to; generally by that point people are really using up their per-session accessories and they're ready to see how things wrap up
I was so hesitant about putting an approximate play-time on the box for The Price of Coal because it COULD be kind of all over the place. I think we ended up saying "3-4 hours" because that WAS most common, but I did see one group blast through it in about 2, and one go as long as SIX hours
at a convention slot I can fairly comfortably fill 3-4 hours, but also a lot of that is one-shot type stuff where you're also doing character creation as part of the session (and I also take more breaks than I used to lmao, I have lost my iron stamina)
the VAST majority of RPG sessions I've run for my regular home game groups come in much closer to 2 hours (we will exclude my weird outlier teen games where we'd play for 8+ hours on a weekend because we were 14 years old)
one funny thing that I feel like I've never QUITE worked past in my brain, in my many years of playing and running and designing RPGs is that somewhere along the way, I developed a hard thought of "an RPG session is 4 hours" which is... simply untrue
I am watching the new Quinns Quest and I just wanna say that "small claims court of the imagination" is a very good turn of phrase, thank you
My recommendation request yesterday was a test and you all passed (many good games I either already like or would like to play, but crucially, no one said anything resembling the thing I am thinking about making)
LMAO I think that's entirely a question of perspective but we could for sure count Velvet Glove
getting into wrestling was a curse. specifically I got hit by a curse of “constantly typing up and deleting thirst posts about 52 yr old Adam Copeland”. it’s terminal
GUESS WHO found all her old magnetic poetry sets
Oh it’s fine, I just laughed!
The cards are tarot-size by the way 🤣 I was so confused when I heard you say they were smaller, I was like “does he just have giant hands???”
lmao and I wish itch was working so I could go through my library again but ALAS today that does not seem to be the case
I see that this is just someone married to like, a regular non-notable guy, a non-wikipedia-having guy, but "Spouse: Jeff" is killing me
YEAH
OF COURSE Dallas
YEAH
I 10000% get what you mean and love it, but it is also very funny to see this from you, perhaps the most wizardly person I know
Hey this WHIPS ASS, this delights me on every level
Yeeeees YEEESSSS excellent thank you
YES, that’s one for sure
YEAH great shout, great shout
I think my actual answer out of my game library is Avery Alder's Going for Broke, which has sitcom vibes about your funny sitcom pals coming up with kooky schemes to make rent. very grounded, very small in scale, "regular" guys within the sitcom framing
this is hard because us fucking nerds always wanna inject some wizard bullshit but I am not looking for wizard bullshit in response to this question
hello tabletop roleplaying game friends, I am looking for something highly specific and if you know of it, I would like you to tell me: what is the MOST mundane slice-of-life RPG you know? ideally not a solo game, but will also note these. no magic. no weird little guys. regular guys. regular life.
update: I created a TMDB account so I could add this to TMDB, which is letterboxd's data source. letterboxd FAQ tells me this will be there within 30 hours. I might be insane. www.themoviedb.org/movie/154799...
how do I add this to @letterboxd.social to be logged there, real question
my friend messaged me "DROP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND LISTEN NOW" and I still got jumpscared by hearing my name 😅 what great company to be in, and to hear it spoken of so nicely! 💚
(I love Anne Carson, do NOT get it twisted here, but...) tired: the tumblr-viral Anne Carson "not to me, not if it's you" screenshot wired:
hey do you wanna see something cool as fuck today? Oxford put on a production of Euripedes' Orestes in the straight-up original Ancient Greek, complete with theatre masks and reconstructed music, and they put it on youtube with English subtitles youtu.be/e4hkHcDbt8I
if I think it's too cloying and schmaltzy, then obviously all the critics who liked it are twee simpletons. if I like it and think it's just right, then obviously all the critics who disliked it are noxious cynics. this is a very simple system with no flaws at all
the review embargo is up for A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, can't wait to see who else draws the line in the exact same place I do when I see it
#nowreading A Month in the Country by JL Carr
when I feel like my creative ideas are too basic in any given moment, I hear Lars Ulrich going "I think it's fucking STOCK. what part of that is UNCLEAR TO YOU. I think it sounds STOCK TO MY EARS." like oh shit I don't wanna be stock
some kind souls have variously uploaded the songs on youtube over the years, at least youtu.be/y2RkE-H7RP8
who do we need to talk to at Capitol Records in order to get Skye Sweetnam's second album, Sound Soldier, available on literally any US streaming or music-buying platforms, because it was only released in Canada and Japan in 2007. I have been asking this since 2007.
Anyway I’m really enjoying Magician of Tiger Castle, it really is like the guy who wrote Holes wrote a book about a depressed 30-something wizard (the guy who wrote Holes wrote a book about a depressed 30-something wizard)
Game night getting canceled is always so disappointing until I remember whatever book I’m reading and how much I can read in a few hours of surprise free time lmao
Thank you, and I hope you enjoy!
cool fun reminder that all my games are on sale for the rest of the month itch.io/s/158590/202...
I'm SO glad these kids are readers and also that nerd kids of every generation have loved dragons and mythology and stuff. It makes Christmas and birthdays SO easy.
it was really a hop skip and a jump from these to RPGs when I was a tiny tween lass, because you know what these big shiny magical tomes look like? the 3.5e covers, which I am adamant are the best-looking D&D books, regardless of their content
Niece requested “anything dragons” for her upcoming birthday which is basically the greatest thing I could ever hear. I loved these when I was her age and hopefully she will feel the same
