Real Life Bard

Tabletop RPG Writer and Editor, the wordy half of Bright Bard Games. I make games about little guys™ doing their best. Games on residentbard.itch.io

[resident-bard]

Longsword, Glock, Bat, Taser

Emerging from hibernation on Tumblr to make a quick post about a game inspired by one of the perennial Pride month memes I adore here:

@brightartblog and I wrote this game a couple years ago when a friend of mine tagged me in a repost of the original meme, and pretty much dared us to make an RPG out of it. So we did!

The quick pitch: LGBT  is a one-shot tabletop roleplaying game about attending Pride with your friends in a whimsical, comics-inspired universe. Overcome challenges like a haunted airbnb, a faulty car on a long road trip, or a vicious league of evil exes on your quest to have the best Pride month ever. 

After a couple years circulating, we decided to make a second edition to streamline the game a bit, give it a fresh coat of paint with new art and layout, add more character creation options, and spruce up the adventures! We also snuck in a new one as an homage to our Scott Pilgrim vs. the World inspirations for some of the game's vibe.

It's funding on BackerKit right now if you wanna check it out :]

[majestictortoise]

puttering around the house is an underrated form a self-care. make some tea or coffee. put on a podcast. sort the mail. tidy some pillows and fold some blankets. start the laundry. thaw some soup. just casually wander around aimlessly doing little things to make your space and life a little nicer. who cares if you get distracted or only do a little. you aren't being productive. you're puttering.

[amazoogle]

some bozo with the username laundryguy47 keeps jumping in to all my Halo matches and ruining them. what he does is he turns them into some kinda laundry RP. ok, listen, what i mean is, when he joins the game he gets on mic and tells everyone to go to a certain spot on the map and pretend like its a coin operated laundromat and we're all doing laundry there. and they just do it. everybody stops killing eachother like you're supposed to in the game and they go pretend to do laundry for the whole match. nobody even questions it, they all just do it like thats normal. but that's not normal. its sickening and it cant be allowed to continue

[amazoogle]

some of the sessions have been kinda fun though i gotta say. there's actually quite a bit more depth to pretend laundry than you might think. lately ive been experimenting with pretending to use fabric softener

[sherdnerd]

The most accurate thing about Star Trek is starfleet captains' penchant for dramatic speeches about humanity and hope. Turns out astronauts are actually just like that.

[idkijlovew]

Personally one of the hardest boss for me

I couldn't seem to keep up with the speed and it made me so mad

But still she's the first one I wanted to picture

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

The Golden Age of Indie RPGs

My End of Year video is on the "Golden Age of Indie RPGs," from roughly 2010 to 2025. I start with Apocalypse World's release, work through the Google+ Era, and follow design lineages and historical events that have impacted the tabletop RPG hobby up through 2025.

It's easily the most I've worked on a video. 16k words, 9 interviews, 96 minutes. I hope it does the brilliant people in this scene justice.

Transcript here.

[mhbali1]

Shakra gets a smol visitor

[kibumkim]

Have y'all seen this 😭

[apas-95]

genuinely very interested in what the people in the notes think the pilot was doing

[endcant]

this has to be what was going on yesterday bc i was 40 minutes early getting back and my homies were like hello i thought you were supposed to land at 6. and i was like. me too

[soyuzam]

Yeah I guess I’m obligated to say hiiiii. I fly airplanes. They’re so fucking safe it’s actually frustrating for us. I promise you that the administration who won’t even let hobby pilots fly for ten days after taking a Benadryl aren’t going to be letting commercial pilots do anything that will intentionally put you in danger.

The reason that flight times can be so different is mainly dependent on three things: the specific aircraft, the route, and the wind. I could go on tangents about all of these, but the point is that you can be flying the exact same plane on the exact same route at the exact same airspeed… and still get drastically different travel times due to the wind fucking with your ground speed.

(Ground speed = true air speed + wind component, if you care.)

And if you’re worried about pilots ramping that shit up to the maximum velocity… you would know if we did. Because we would have to point the nose down for the whole flight. The engines are already often operating at their maximum thrust any time you’re departing or ascending— but as my flight instructors have screamed at me since the day I started flying, “pitch for speed, power for altitude”. I’m not even sure you can hit the “never-exceed” velocities in a stable airplane without slamming the stick forward and nosediving that thang.

We also have this handy color coding on the air speed indicator! (And similar coding on the vertical tape versions in those newfangled glass cockpits.)

Lastly, almost every commercial flight is going to have two people up front. Even if the captain does something stupid, the first officer is there to say “hey, don’t do that” and make corrections accordingly. Even if they do agree to do something dumb, someone on the ground is going to tell them to cut it out. Nobody just gets to fuck around up there.

Flying is safe and fun. Mass transportation rules. Give me money so I can pay my Garmin Pilot subscription.

[eater-of-the-sand]

[brazenautomaton]

"Attention passengers, on your right you'll see a Cessna. Now if you'll just watch closely, if we can manage to get the Cessna's entire hitbox inside ours, we'll be able to damage-boost past the Colorado Rockies. This is a frame-perfect trick, so please note the "Fasten Seat Belts" light is on."

[miosanlorii]

bugs

[miikrowelle]

Some quick sherma doodles I love them...

[prokopetz]

Indie tabletop RPGs are a fun space to navigate because half of them are trying to appeal to every queer demographic all at once and the other half are so averse to the spectre of marketability that they think having a discernible target audience constitutes selling out, and sometimes it's genuinely unclear which is which.

[mathweasels]

[trustyalt]

when you say the p word around your hornet

[bombabo0]

Fleas

[ghostly-creator]

Silk songing it

[lullabyashes]

Been getting lost and killing birds

[decy-press]

🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting 🔔 ting

[fort-of-novelty]

Twilight Country, my wild west/horror fusion TTRPG, is releasing soon with Plus One Experience! Here's a sneak peak inside this accursed zine:

Twilight Country uses no dice. Instead playing cards force agonizing decisions. Wager parts of your personhood for an edge, and watch as your humanity is siphoned from your mortal body with each hand of cards you fail.

You'll be able to find Twilight Country here in the coming weeks:

RPG Zine Club

Plus One Experience

Art and layout by the wonderful @lapisslunaris!