#tabletop rpgs

[reeder316rkogaming]

Streaming at: July 2, 2026 at 08:09PM Game: Tabletop RPGs Current viewers: 0 Stream preview: https://ift.tt/tb6hp3n Channel URL: https://ift.tt/ifBOrKt

[reeder316rkogaming]

Streaming at: July 2, 2026 at 06:03PM Game: Tabletop RPGs Current viewers: 0 Stream preview: https://ift.tt/tGaJ3sI Channel URL: https://ift.tt/f1sy6qK

[prokopetz]

I used to make fun of people who insisted on using super toxic heavy metal paints when we can synthesize basically any color until I got into miniatures painting and like... I still try to have the ones I'm touching constantly be nontoxic, my azo yellow ink is fine, turbodork yuzu works for some of the more magical elements, but the cadmium yellow is just better. It is more yellow. Everyone I've shown the bottles to side by side agrees - it is the yellower yellow. My big models deserve it.

I did make sure to swap my paint water cup for one I won't accidentally drink out of though (mason jar with a pony in it). Probably shouldn't be eating or drinking out of anything that's touched my old workspace tbh.

Tabletop gaming has always had a special relationship with toxic materials even compared to most other arts. At least we (usually) only need to be concerned about the paints these days – it's really only within the last twenty years that it's become safe to assume metal miniatures don't have lead in them!

(We're not just talking trace amounts, either. Ral Partha was selling metal minis whose alloys consisted of up to 80% lead as late as 1993.)

[prokopetz]

Why is it so seemingly common to see crunchy gamebooks (not just D&D, lots of games) follow a method of writing where game terms that are invoked dozens or even hundreds of times will have only one passing mention of the term's definition.

Never repeated, never pointed to by any other passage, not even given in an index or glossary, just secreted away in a seemingly random spot like a game of Where's Waldo in a 200+ page text.

This isn't meant to be venting, it's genuinely perplexing that an approach so specific and so counterproductive seems to happen so often. What's the deal?

Most tabletop game designers are very bad technical writers.

(This isn't a knock against game designers in particular; most people in general are very bad technical writers, even among those whose job is to be good at it. It turns out that assessing how your own writing will read from the perspective of someone who doesn't know the things you know is an extremely difficult skill to learn!)

[prokopetz]

When I was like eight years old I read a novel where the protagonist gets isekaied to a fantasy world and immediately bumps into a wise mentor figure who purportedly wants to help her become a wizard, except it turns out that he's teaching her a fake magic system that does nothing except drain her power for his benefit. This wasn't even the actual plot of the book (the scheme is uncovered after like one chapter), but I've always wanted to do something with that in a tabletop RPG where the GM is actively lying to the players about what the rules are and they have to figure out how the "real" mechanics work. I haven't put any deep thought into how that could actually work from a structural perspective that doesn't just immediately devolve into yet another tedious exercise in "here's the vague suggestion of a system, now have the GM make something up", but it's on my "to do" list!

[prokopetz]

Queer-Friendly Indie Tabletop RPG #137: This world has no patriarchy or gender inequality, yet somehow evolved exactly the same cultural institutions as every other generically medieval fantasy milieu.

Me: And we're not gonna delve into that even a little bit, huh?

Queer-Friendly Indie Tabletop RPG #137: Here's 5000 words exploring the implications of undead skeletons being fully integrated members of society.

Me: Okay, now you're just fucking with me.

[richardgarfinkle]

Worldbuilding as Exploration of the Interesting

I started reading SFF and comics in the 1960s. I started studying logic including modal logic in the 1970s. I started playing RPGs in 1976. The summer thereafter, inspired by a great High School English teacher, I read every epic poem I could get my hands on.

I started writing SFF in the 1980s. I started homebrewing RPGs around the same time.

For all of these the one thing that most held my interest was in building worlds that were internally consistent and which explored ideas that interested me in ways that I had not otherwise seen them explored.

I should probably say that for me, something is interesting if its implications and its interactions with other things are surprising and which keep growing and evolving as one explores them.

The stories and worlds that interested me were ones where the way things worked always mattered. And where those ways could in some form or another be picked up and played with.

I also enjoy it when supposedly incompatible models of things and world views could come together and be revealed to be aspects of a broader understanding which in turn lead to knew capabilities for playing.

Some people try to make art that they would enjoy. I’ve always tried to make art out of what I can infer from what I am interested in and enjoy. So that rather than trying to bring other people to my ways of thinking, I use is my thinking as a starting point for an open ended process that others can pick up and play.

This is how I world build for books and for games. One of my joys in GMing and writing from this approach is seeing what others do with what I’ve made.