my name kiki, she/her (hÀn tai se suomeksi), 18+ years old. I like posting on the internet, it's full of fun people. Maoist struggle session enjoyer. silly Rolemaster girlblogger. my interests include RPGs (both of the Japanese and Tabletop variety) and languages. sometimes I cause problems on purpose.
its good when band names are things that are nice to think about. 'imagine dragons' well i am & its awesome. 'owl city' awww cute. 'barenaked ladies' hell yeah
whether they're Good Mediaâą or whatever aside, I think mainstream liveplay ttrpg shows have been a fucking disaster for the hobby. it's hard to imagine anything that could have fucked the expectations:results differential for people more than having celebrities do college improv with dice (and an entire media production team behind them) and telling a generation of new players that's what tabletop gaming is like
liveplay ttrpg shows are not 'professional gaming', that's the whole problem I'm talking about. they're entertainment products which make format, content and form choices that would be nonsensical or obstructive at an ordinary table. it's not just "oh if only 'hobbyist' gaming groups (đ€ź) could pay for all that kit and lighting and professional writers and voice actors".
liveplay production involves story meetings aimed at making the narrative maximally entertaining to a watching audience (not the players, who are also professionals who are there to entertain that audience!). It involves editing (trimming out downtime, uninteresting mistakes, technical issues, moments where the vibe is wrong or there's friction in the room). it involves a room full of production crew watching every move the GM and players make, sensitive to wastage of their time and effort if things don't go to plan. and not for nothing, it involves an entire team of people who need to keep game publishers happy by playing and displaying their products correctly and certainly never criticising them or openly adapting around their shortcomings for the sake of the group's enjoyment.
I've played at tables where we've been lucky enough to have fun props and miniatures and printed maps and sound systems and even a bit of lighting, and where everyone in the group was a seasoned player with writing and performance backgrounds, and the experience was still full of normal natural constructive frictions that are largely if not completely absent from entertainment liveplay shows. player disagreement is normal. stopping mid flow to argue about a rule and look it up and help each other with system technicalities is normal. the music just not working today is normal. the party choosing a direction the GM didn't prepare for and having to adjust their in-character choices a little and tolerate some hastily cobbled together fluff to meet them halfway is so normal it's a running joke. someone finding a scene a little too much and asking for a break or redirection is normal. someone saying something a little ill judged in the moment and having to walk it back with as much grace as possible is normal. storylines not going to plan and petering out without major dramatic resolution, or npcs being ignored and cast off with a shrug is normal. all this shit and more is normal because a normal table is structured around the organic decision-making of a bunch of players who are primarily in it for their own fun and sense of transport, not for an invisible imaginary fandom slash consumer market. which are all the things that make ttrpg play inherently a pretty bad vehicle for storytelling, incidentally!
someone else in the tags expressed their frustration at these shows 'professionalising' the hobby, and while I do recognise and sympathise with the feeling that these shows normalise a level of polish and commercial buy-in that's destructive to the diy culture of tabletop gaming, I still have to push back on the idea that these shows are representative of 'professionalised gaming'. they're not. they're sports anime.
A game jam from 2026-06-01 to 2026-07-01 hosted by Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery. Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is an innov
Submissions open: June 1st 2026
Submissions close: June 30th 2026
(But do not wait until the submission window to sign up for the jam or start working on your submission!)
Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is an innovative investigative TTRPG about amateur detectives from all walks of life solving âfair playâ mysteries with fixed truths, while also often dealing with interpersonal conflict.
The rulebook is available (for free) at this link.Â
Eureka needs more mysteries for parties to solve, and this game jam is a community event to encourage fans to come together and write mystery modules.
This game jam is non-competitive, but any submissions the developers like will likely receive free editing consultation from the Eureka developers themselves and may be âcanonizedâ with a link within future versions of the Eureka rulebook itself.
While you're working, and especially if you have questions, join us on the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club Discord Server. It's a club for discussing and playing all kinds of RPGs, not just Eureka, run by the creators of Eureka. You can also join our "Top Secret" Patreon Discord server and further support the A.N.I.M. team by subscribing for any amount to our patreon. We'll be happy to answer your questions about this game jam or Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy either way!
Here are the rules for submission:
1. Itâs Okay to Submit Unfinished Work: Eureka mystery modules take a lot of work, and we donât expect basically anyone to be 100% finished before the deadline. Submit your work, and then keep working on finishing it up even after the deadline is passed.
2. Working in Groups is Encouraged but Not Mandatory: This game jam is non-competitive and there is no monetary prize on the line. Itâs perfectly okay to work solo or in groups. In fact, working in groups is recommended.
3. Follow the Guide in Chapter 5 of the Eureka Rulebook: Chapter 5 in the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook contains extensive advice, guidelines, best practices, and rules for the creation of Eureka mystery modules. Do not start working before you read it.
4. Modern, Mundane, and âKolchakianâ: One thing the library of available Eureka mystery modules lacks right now is a strong foundation of âbaselineâ adventures to which weirder, more unconventional mysteries can be contrasted. One of the main purposes of this game jam is to help rectify that. To this end, every submission to this game jam must fulfill at least two out of the following three criteria.
4a. Be âModernâ: It is often recommended, but not required, that Eureka adventure modules not take place within a specific year unless necessary. Whether the module takes place in a specific time period such as a decade or a specific year, it must take place in the âpresent.â That is, the 2020s.
4b. Be âMundaneâ: Investigating a mystery is in and of itself of course an extraordinary circumstance, but by âmundaneâ here we mean the mystery does not involve uncovering elements which would be considered âparanormalâ or âsupernatural.â
4c. Be âKolchakianâ: This is a specific Eureka rulebook term that you will find a better definition of in Chapter 5 of the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook, but in short it means that the investigation will take the investigators across a relatively broad area with multiple distinct locations rather than all taking place within one location, and will typically utilize the Travel rules (found in Chapter 1 of the Eureka rulebook) for investigators moving between locations. Kolchakian mystery modules will always use the Ticking Clock rules found in Chapter 1.
5. Donât Overdo It: Be careful of being too ambitious, especially if this is your first time writing a module like this! One murder or missing person already typically provides more than enough mystery solving to fill an entire multi-session adventure module. It is tempting to write about a serial killer or some other phenomenon with many victims, but if you do that then youâre looking at having to write multiple modules worth of information for just a single module. In the last game jam, many first-time mystery module writers started too big and burnt out before they were able to finish their work. Donât bite off more than you can chew!
6. Consider Optional Rules and Expansions: You can consider this rule optional too, I just thought it would be a good idea to put it here and remind everyone that Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy has multiple optional rules and expansions. Consider utilizing the Heat rules if police are likely to be a factor for instance. Eureka: Extreme Conditions also provides rules for modules taking place outside of conventional civilization. You might also find inspiration by looking at Eureka: The Fanservice Files or Eureka: The XXX-Files.
7. Submissions Must Be Adventure Modules and Be Compatible with Eureka: This game jam is for mystery adventure modules to be run with Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. If you're unfamiliar, an adventure module is a guide for game masters to running a specific scenario for their gaming group. You can find an example of one made for Eureka alongside the rulebook linked above.
8. Third-person Verbiage: Avoid saying "you" when referring to player-characters.
9. Separation of Player and Character: Ensure that your module says "investigators" when it is referring to the player-characters, and "players" when it is referring to the real people sitting around the table, and don't get them mixed up. More information on following rules 8 and 9 can be found in Chapter 1 of the rulebook. Â
10. Characters Can Be Bigoted, but We'd Rather You Weren't: NPCs in your module may express hateful attitudes, but we do not approve of hateful attitudes from submitters themselves.Â
11. Stay Grounded in Eureka's Lore: Please keep your module within the bounds of what the world of Eureka offers. You can read more about this within Chapter 5.Â
12. Submissions Must be 5,000 Words Minimum: There is no upper limit, so be careful not to overdo it, as long as your submission has at least 5,000 words. This is the bare minimum size. Most good Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy adventure modules are about 50-100 pages, as Eureka really stresses providing detailed information to the GM and players alike.
13. No Generative AI: Do not submit anything that has been created in whole or in part through the use of generative "AI."
14. We Don't Own Your Submission: Your submission is still your property. You can even sell it after the game jam is concluded if you want. Though if you do, we recommend you keep working on it a bit to polish it up, since one month is plenty of time to get a first draft out, but even the best submissions will benefit from some critique and further refinement and editing!
Additional Advice and Inspiration: Here are links to a few resources that might help you find inspiration. First, here is a tumblr post containing links to a variety of âmystery module pitchesâ that include as much advice and scaffolding for writing a particular idea for a mystery module as possible. Second, here is a link to a YouTube playlist containing videos that might provide inspiration for writing Eureka mysteries.
If you are already in the process of writing a Eureka mystery module, and that module does not fit within the guidelines set for this particular jam, don't worry! There will be other mystery jams in the future, and it's not like you even need a mystery jam's permission to make a module. It is recommended that you finish your current module before you attempt to participate in this jam, as working on two at once just increases the likelihood that neither gets finished.Â
Finally, don't wait until June 1st to sign up for the jam or start working on your submission! You can, and probably should, start working now so you have something to submit for the jam. The submission window is just a formality, you should work on your module before it opens and still after it closes.Â
Iâm not going to reblog the source because I donât want to bring negative attention to someone but I just read that âthe most important skill of a GM is pretending what happens is what you were planning all along.â
Absolutely not. This pressure to âbe in controlâ, ââmaintain the illusionâ and âbe a magicianâ style advice is precisely why people are terrified to GM.
You have one job as a GM at the table. ONE. Play your NPCs and other situation elements with the same earnestness as the players play their PCs. Thatâs it.
The âplotâ is what happens when your toys and their toys meet and uncertainties between them are resolved via the game at hand.
You are not responsible for anyoneâs fun.
You are not responsible for anyoneâs entertainment.
You are not there to stroke the players egos or service their fantasies or âstory beatsâ or whatever self-insert wish fulfillment BS they have projected onto their characters.
Stop making GMing harder than it needs to be. Just play the damn game.
Updog jokes are actually kinda insensitive, cause the average updog is actually the result of a system that prioritizes the human desire for novelty over animal welfare :/
The irony of positioning system-obsessed gearheads as the ideological opposite of Collaborative Storytelling wonks who think all tabletop RPGs ultimately have identical creative goals from which the actual text is a mere distraction is that if you actually talk to both, the second guy is considerably more likely to be the one who's never heard of any tabletop RPGs other than Dungeons & Dragons.
Like, you can totally see how one would get there. If you start with the false assumption that collaborative storytelling is the central creative goal of all tabletop RPGs, and compound it with the false assumption that all tabletop RPGs are essentially similar to D&D, "the text of tabletop RPGs is unrelated to their goals" is the inevitable conclusion â but you'd have to be tremendously incurious to just let that conclusion stand rather than thinking "hey, wait a fucking minute".
Devil Spire Falls may not be much to look at and the gameplay isn't all that great but I'm riding on a flying unicorn now so it's actually a pretty good game
Devil Spire Falls may not be much to look at and the gameplay isn't all that great but I'm riding on a flying unicorn now so it's actually a pretty good game
a banana that perfectly meets your ripeness and texture preferences is literally the best fruit on earth. it's a shame that this is 0.0001% of all available bananas
the REAL story behind touhou: In 1931 a man named Touny Houston opened an all-girls orphanage but due to poor oversight the girls often ended up getting in fights and throwing darts at each other. the girls had to either learn to dodge the darts or be killed
i do think it's important to realise even if you like the books that when white supremacists really like LOTR they aren't mistaken about the work or misguided or foolishly failing to comprehend the text. they are identifying something very much present in the work that aligns with and expresses their beliefs about the world and connecting with it
thy dungeon gal (non US citizen mode) @thydungeongal - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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