Ricardo Tavares from 🌍 dreamup.games

6 Sept

My perennial hot takes: Actual Play has existed way before live performative play became popular and took over its original meaning. The GM is a player too, we all can wear different hats, any #ttrpg has the responsibility of defining them. Also #dndisnotforme, not my default way of thinking.

Thinking about engaged number of players for every kind of #ttrpg 🤔 given a baseline of zero. Say you have something like a choose-your-own adventure book, you skip most of the game and just pick through paragraphs.

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Say you have five people at the table and you've unconsciously made a character that is present but with little interaction. You're adding color attached to each scene, but your reflected purpose is unclear. There might be at least one other person with the same level of engagement.

With a two-player #ttrpg, can you still fall back to zero and have just one person engaged? Feels to me like one and two player games don't give you that baseline option. Ironically, the more players a table has, the easiest it is for them to check out of the game for some period of time.

Say a GM fully controls narration, the scope of each decision and any consequences. All input is filtered through as inspiration to where they envision the story should go. Say somebody plays a solo journaling #ttrpg in the hopes of sharing everything they write with a cool friend.

"How did you get into TTRPGs?" I hail from a past alternative reality in which hobby game stores were allowed to keep themselves open without exclusively selling old Hasbro shit. Therefore something other than D&D was a popular option. One look at #vtm and I was in. #dndisnotforme

I realize that "old Hasbro shit" is a pleonasm, but it's also successful branding, so here we are.

brace yourselves

#wod-memes is best memes

youtu.beWhat if Play made us Human?YouTube video by Benjamin Rosenberg

19 Sept

Friendly reminder that play has always preceded labour, not the other way around: youtu.be/jlSxKOQ_dDI

16 Sept

As a tabletop game, the thing about any #trrpg is that some a̶s̶s̶e̶m̶b̶l̶y̶ ensemble is required. So it always starts as a toy and then eventually is a puzzle or a game. Hopefully, it delivers as a game, as that's why we paid money for it, right? We bought a tool, not some set of permissions.

5 Sept

Things we tell GMs are probably things that other players should learn as well. Things we tolerate in other players are probably things we should let GMs also get away with. If that makes your game blow up, never to be played again, that's awesome. Play other things with different people.

5 Sept

Don't listen to this guy. What you consume, what you spend your time or attention on... that is something you do, not something you are. You can always do something else.

Ricardo Tavares from 🌍 dreamup.games reposted

James Davis Nicoll

@jdnicoll.bsky.social

27 Aug

Replying to @dreamup.games

DragonBane Outgunned Fabula Ultima

27 Aug

What's on your huge official list of TTRPGs people should play before any of the D&Ds? #dndisnotforme #ttrpg

22 Aug

quick #photography #bloomscrolling break have a great weekend 🌺

Francita, ✨ graphic designer 🖼️🖌

21 Aug

#Cyberpunk games may have underestimated just how much of future law enforcement would be just a spot robot taking a waymo to a scene already surveilled by flock cameras and a dji drone. Work from home is never going away now.

Ricardo Tavares from 🌍 dreamup.games reposted

@byfrancita.bsky.social

15 Aug

this will sound crazy but I'm willing to super sprint and do free layout for one (1) ttrpg for the @onepagerpgjam.bsky.social . i can have it done in time for the deadline. interested? dm me. i will reject any game with AI or hateful themes, and prioritize games that are finished right now.

Ricardo Tavares from 🌍 dreamup.games reposted

💀Elaine Lich-glow💀

@elainelithgow.bsky.social

15 Aug

I fucking love giving cold hard cash to cool artist to make illustrations. It’s such human experience. Talking over briefs, developing a style, pitching ideas and watching the WIP evolve. All while helping each other live? Sharing in human creativity is fucking great, gang.

Ricardo Tavares from 🌍 dreamup.games reposted

Ricardo Tavares

@viewfromtheweb.com

#solareclipse #photography

A shared relationship between real and fictional #ttrpg content is an essential part of these games for me. So many issues arise out of losing this connection. You suffer damage, you heal damage, number go down, number go up. Either "nothing happened" or is "just narrative". Both sides lack oomph.

And sidestepping the many dimensions of #solottrpg, if a single person holds all the fictional or real content at the table, all of this ain't working boss. If the GM is just putting pretty words together for your entertainment, we have literally lost the plot.

A real source of #ttrpg confusion is putting action and perception into the same bag of tests. Everyone should be aware of the difference, even if the game doesn't design for it. Depending on the game, we can play around with drips of information, but what we know isn't the same as what we do.

#dndisnotforme

Most #ttrpg scenarios aren't really that good. But among those we also have scenarios that go: "Eight of your friends roped you into hosting a game because nobody else wants to host as well? Say no more, it's bullshit grindhouse time!"

"We call scenarios adventures..." Well, that makes it even more ironic.

itch.ioSubmissions to #RPGenesis 2026

Wondering what cool #ttrpg people can do in one week? Check out the entries for our latest #RPGenesis game jam: itch.io/jam/rpgenesi... #gamedesign #indiettrpg #writing

What's a scene? Wrong answers only. #ttrpg #dndisnotforme

10 Aug

Having hosted my last game jam four years ago, I had no idea that now we're swimming in random AI submissions from people who have never read what your itch.io jam is about. Anyway, #RPGenesis is back, baby!

itch.io#RPGenesis 2026A game jam from 2026-08-01 to 2026-08-09 hosted by dreamup & Lady Entropy. 🇵🇹🇧🇷 Olá! Clica aqui para ler o anúncio em português Faz do teu RPG uma realidade neste intenso exercício criativo imbuído de espíri...

9 Aug

Congratulations on reaching the finish line of your #RPGenesis 2026! Check out our entries and our community at https://itch.io/jam/rpgenesis2026 Share your #ttrpg with the world and watch it rise in the ranks of itch.io Learn all about other entries and share them as well. Thank you for joining.

#ttrpg character creation starts when a potential player reads the book and doesn't really end when you start playing.

Before you say "but I never read the book", some person some time read something that is now being passed on to you. And by then they were already thinking of potential characters.

Ricardo Tavares from 🌍 dreamup.games reposted

Gabriel Kerr

@gabokerr.bsky.social

Velouria is the bardic dueling TTRPG. Duel your rivals with music and find fame through the kingdom! Get it at https://gabokerr.itch.io/velouria

Friendly reminder that, depending on some terms I'm not sure about, as a #ttrpg designer you can decide what's the fee that itch.io gets. No other specialised platform does that. You have to go to something like ko-fi.

💪 #ttrpg #podcasting

We're in the last day of #RPGenesis depending on your timezone. Maybe you're close to 5k+, maybe you need a few hours more. Maybe you're part of the super secret group who figures that now's the time. Now's the time to start writing your #ttrpg https://itch.io/jam/rpgenesis2026 Y'all can do it.

@ttrpgfanatics.bsky.social

How's your #ttrpg going? I've seen a 8309 word count today.

Ricardo Tavares from 🌍 dreamup.games reposted

TTRPG Fanatics

ttrpgfans.com2026 Diana Jones Award Winner AnnouncedThe winner has been announced for the 2026 Diana Jones Award. We look at who took home one of tabletop gaming’s most prestigious and unusual prizes.

The winner of the 2026 Diana Jones Award is the Minneapolis-based Mischief Toy Store. We look at the history and other nominees for one of tabletop gaming’s most prestigious and unusual prizes. ttrpgfans.com/diana-jones-... #Dianajones #dianajonesaward #ttrpg #tabletoprpg

Don't feel like I need to define "theatre of the mind" as a concept since it's baseline #ttrpg for me. It's the folks with the miniatures and the grids that may need to add something on top of what has always been a shared imaginary space. For example, to benefit players that may have aphantasia.

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I can sympathise with the "no, I need all the things to be inside my thing so I don't have to learn other things". But I still recommend getting to know all tabletop games if you love roleplaying games. And yes, this was easier to do when local hobby stores were a thing and not just Hasbro shops.

Reverse theatre of the mind also ties up with my recent reference to burnout bsky.app/profile/drea... If the shared imaginary space isn't really shared, put some things on the table so you can give the GM a break every session. Anything to sustain this broken paradigm.

Ricardo Tavares from 🌍 dreamup.games@dreamup.games

Maximising the probability of getting someone to just run a game for you is a very popular axiom that presupposes a lot of reactions. Almost any #ttrpg thing you say can be seen as threatening a good thing they got going on here. Just keep your DM on track as much as possible before they burn out.

And I do also love other tabletop games. In fact, wargamers could tell you about adding "theatre of the mind" on top of their campaigns until roleplaying games became a thing. Now we can just assume that's how you play a #trrpg as you already have boardgames or wargames to move stuff around.

One cool thing about actual actual play is reading about something unique that happened in a #ttrpg session that's useful to everyone that reads about it. Which is what actual play has always been about, really. Shame we lost those words to live performative play.

Shoutout to those who forged their pen in the fires of mount WriMo. You're probably chuckling at this 4200+ words deadline as you're aiming for 10k+ or 20k+ words in one week. https://itch.io/jam/rpgenesis2026 But for the rest of us #RPGenesis mortals, we have to make every #ttrpg day count.

I may or may not have seen someone break past 4k just by typing the pen-and-paper notes they've started writing on the weekend ✍️ Whatever works for you 👍

Games are culture, but can they be art? Hear me out. In the case of #ttrpg play, I believe there is unique intimate art that can grow out of the proximity and even overlap between mechanical reality and our emotional and fictional content. #gamedesign #dndisnotforme #solottrpg