what if i was very literally doomed by the narrative itself and you used your bloody hands to bend the foundation of reality and change my fate. and we were both girls.
Thanks for the tag @luciferbecons and @horrorgirlreads
Last song that I listened to: Aimed to Kill by Jade LeMac
Favourite content to watch: D&D livestreams, youtube video essays on convoluted fan culture, wholesome game shows (game changer, taskmaster, great british bake off), fantasy TV shows with half-decent to very-decent writing
Favourite games: Dragon Age :-) Baldurs Gate 3 :-))))))
Favourite colour: turquoise/teal
Favourite animals: cats and red pandas
Favourite food: cheesecake
Sweet, spicy or savory: sweet
Current Obsessions: BG3, constant D&D brainrot, a webtoon called Only Hope
Last book I read: Magician by Raymond E Feist (for work) and Happy Place by Emily Henry (for fun)
Last thing I googled: a kiss scene from a TV show lmao
Relationship: terminally single in the un-fun way, lads ✌️
Fun fact: I recently got a new tattoo (sun and moon on each wrist) - it's my 3rd tattoo!
Last song that I listened to: currently listening to "labour" by Paris Paloma, the last song that finished was "The Horror and the Wild" by The Amazing Devil
Favourite content to watch: things that make me feel Feelings or that are just very aesthetically pleasing or interestingly shot; I will just watch Autumn de Wilde's Emma. (2020) over and over; Game Changer; Studio Ghibli films
Favourite games: Good Society, anything Firebrands-based, anything with my friends (✿◕‿◕✿)
Favourite colour: anything deep and saturated, especially dark red
Favourite animals: cats and narwhals
Favourite food: charred broccoli with delicious seasoning
Sweet, spicy or savory: all of the above all at once
Current Obsessions: mechanical keyboards, writing spicy stories, photography
Last book I read: Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan... look... it was research...
Last thing I googled: how to spell Emmanuelle, but then before that it was "fema emergency alert test"
Relationship: partnered!
Fun fact: I was second chair baritone horn in the countywide junior high honor band.
salt & vinegar chips are snacks for fucking masochists. literally the entire flavour of the goddamn chip is “acetic acid, which will hurt your tongue, and then just salt on top of that to hurt it worse”. it’s brutal. this chip is designed to hurt you
Since the 2023 Record Collection Jam has been announced (go see the post here!), I wanna talk a bit about the games I've made for past editions of the jam a little bit.
The first full, published game I ever made was for the 2019 jam, and is what really started my path down game design! Before that, I'd dabbled in what a lot of people call "homebrew", making some playbooks and classes for other games, but honestly, that was still game design I just didn't realize it yet.
Anyways, the first game I made was Reaching in the Dark, inspired by High as Hope by Florence + The Machine, which is still one of my favorite albums.
This is going to be a smidge on the longer side, so the rest is under the cut!
Mechanically, it's loosely derived from PbtA (though I don't think I can rightly call it fully PbtA since it lacks full moves), and shares the 2d6+stat and success/mixed success/miss result distribution. There are four different classes/playbooks to pick from, each with their own special abilities. As a Form grows, they can gain new abilities or moves.
Players take on the roll of Forms, set adrift in the mist-filled Land, with the GM roll being the Choir, the guiding voice that determines how the Land responds to the Forms' journey of recollection, memory, and identity.
The game has a very airy, floaty feel, which was directly channeled from the album that inspired the game! There's a "bestiary" of different Denizens one can encounter in the Land, each one directly inspired by one song off the album.
After release, I created a Revised Edition, which gave the game a little more structure, which is the text currently available. A couple years later, I also gave the game a layout refresh, which is what you see in the images above. Here's the first page from all three versions side-by-side so you can see how the game grew over time. Starting with the initial jam version, the Revised Edition, and the new layout;
I think its important to highlight what a first game can look like! You don't have to go overboard to make something that resonates with people!
The second game (more of a setting with a small game bolted onto it) was for the 2020 jam, A Stroll Through the Patchwork Kingdom. This was inspired by the album Designer by Aldous Harding. The source album is this, folksy and esoteric jaunt, and I wanted to capture the surreal nature of the lyrics in the game.
Stroll ended up being a very loose "hexploration" of the titular Patchwork Kingdom, where each song off the album inspires one location-hex.
The final game is compact, surreal, and a bit "Alice in Wonderland-sy". Each location is a character in its own right, and comes with two different random tables to help the table fill out their version of that location and their own Patchwork Kingdom. I specifically left hexes on the map unlabeled so that the table could fill in their own unique locations as they explored.
I ended up tossing together a simple Blades/Forged in the Dark inspired attribute system for use with the setting, but the setting itself remains system-neutral.
All in all, Stroll is very compact, but still contains some of my favorite nuggets of writing. It could be fun to revisit that setting down the road, and expand it somewhat.
The last Record Collection game I've made was for the 2021 jam (I sadly didn't have the time for 2022's jam), and that was Fractal Romance inspired by the album Swimmer by Tennis. Which remains one of my all-time favorite albums.
Fractal Romance is built using some core elements found in Belonging Outside Belonging games, namely evocative playbook moves and a token system. It's also somewhat of a spiritual sibling to Reaching in the Dark, exploring some similar themes of identity.
Players take on the role of Forms drawn into the endless Fractal Palace, where you just sort of, chill and explore. Locations and NOCs are randomly generated using regular playing cards (which are the tokens in this game). You also gain and spend cards by using different kinds of playbook moves, or you can play cards from your hand to change the situation at hand.
I call the game a hangout, because the "objectives" of the game are purposefully loose. Its really just about exploring the spaces you create with your friends.
The game has a hazy, vaporwave-adjacent vibe, and has been compared to Paradise Killer (which I only played after I ended up making this game lmao). Legitimately, I think Fractal Romance is one of the coolest games I've made.
Anyway, that wraps up my own personal Record Collection! Hopefully I can get something together for this year's jam. If anyone reading this has ever considered making their own game, I encourage you to try it out for this jam! Just pick your favorite album and have some fun.
Also, if any of these games interest you, I'm planning on putting them on sale and in a bundle while this year's jam is running, so keep an eye out for that next month.
mechanical keyboard posting because maybe i'm turning into that person but i have used a lil 48 key ortholinear board for like 6 days maybe and now my ability to type on my normal staggerd 65% keyboard is DED and GONE
back when i was in middle and high school i used to write stories all the time, then college and grad school happened and that died out, but thanks to playing games, it's BACK, this is the old me who used to say that i wanted to be a writer, who used to go home and type whole plotlines out, it's so exciting to be back here
I’ve spent the last few months working on a new Powered by the Apocalypse game, mostly driven by my long-time love for Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series and now revitalised by how feral I feel over the way that Pentiment reflects and expresses the power struggles and tension that underlay medieval history.
(but also I can’t deny it’s in part shaped by my disappointment that Game of Thrones doesn’t do anything interesting with a tone and a premise that’s pretty compelling—cynical medieval politics! a dynastic powderkeg! a grounded and grimy tone!).
Anyway, the other day I finally got the pitch in a place where I’m happy with it—direct, succinct, and (hopefully) evocative:
The Bitter Litany is a tragic Powered by the Apocalypse game of fantasy intrigue and hard choices. It tells stories about the inexorable force of history, the human cost of duty and ambition, and the bleakness of court politics.
Players take on the role of key figures in the court of a petty kingdom—princes and assassins, advisors and priests—and explore their secret griefs, their fraught relationships, and the fragile dreams of a brighter future that they cradle tight against the storm.
As the years crash upon them like waves, we play to find out what they will cling to amidst the current of history, what tragedies will claim their lives and legacies, and who will follow them in this bitter litany.
dailybridgerton
titsay
origamiaround
kaledo-art
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
