Lucid Valent Thought

Video games are constantly reminding you vital information: "cut off their limbs" "fire destroys the biomass" - yet for some reason the moment it comes to TTRPGs people the general done this is: "why yes the players should magically intuit these things of course"

First 5 ttrpgs I've played: 5e LANCER PF2e Mausritter MAID rpg I should really run an irl group for the white wolf street fighter game sometime, it was the first rpg i read.

New World of Horror Update is dropping on Halloween 2026 per Steam page!

I only just realized that the new Nathan Fielder movie was about a real convicted fraudster named Elizabeth Holmes and it wasn't a sherlock thing.

There is no worse feeling that trying to flex by using the amazing phrase "as wont to do" but autocorrect changes it to "want" at the last minute making you look like a rube and a pleb.

Casting a net of questionable size here, if you’re an ex-BioWare dev (or know of one who may not see this) working on something cool you’d like featured in a roundup at Kotaku, drop it below. Store page links helpful, and let me know what your role was at BW. Projects big and small welcome! RTs plz!

Fucking bleak man

"Call of Cthulhu changed he name of this lovecraft god" the fact we all know which one immediatly showcases this was a wise change

Theres been this weird shift in rhetoric around movies where when something comes out in the cinema all you hear about is how much its making and its box office record rather than if its good or not or what it has to say. Like every media outlet acts like they fund this stuff.

They say when you design RPGs you have to "kill your darlings." wrong. pick your favorite SRD and kill someone else's darlings

A lot of Western analyses of "why is anime like that?" tend to make a lot of erroneous assumptions about who it's for and what the economy of the business is like, lol The reality is "about 90% of anime is marketed primarily at teens" and "most profits come from merchandise, not views"

I do find it crazy how every FAQ for anything is locked behind a discord group that requires an intense ritual to access the right group, amidst a bunch of upselling spam - all while your id gets leaked. And youre just trying to understand how a rpg rule works.

This is the current issue I'm running into GMing Draw Steel. Not only does it not provide a solution to this problem but there is a frustration in scope of rolls between its granular trad skill-test roots and pbta's rolls resolving scenes

Now, there are some PbtA and post-PbtA games that do take "acting under fire" as their core template, and build their resolution rules on top of it. Significantly, crucially, they add new systems that deal with the problem I'm describing. Blades in the Dark's position and effect, for instance...

15 years ago when Apocalypse World was new and people were beginning to understand and work with it, it was seductive to look at "acting under fire" and see, not one basic move of several, but the template underlying all the game's moves. Like @kierongillen.bsky.social 's classic gag:

General indie game dev trend that I think rubs me the wrong way: People who talk about game design by latching onto some piece of terminology, conflating it with "boring focus tested AAA slop", and just generally showing that they have no idea what it actually means

As others have said, this is an example of a certifiably bad move or bad GM call, but I think it’s worth delving into why this example feels so relatable and pervasive. Because though you can pretty easily point out how this is against the rules and principles of PBTA, it’s also pretty common.

hard agree world of darkness has always been an Urban Fantasy setting.

Something that has been made clear to me through Larp is that for a lot of folks, rules being accessible means "Rules I don't think I need to read" Like.. we've had our rules called complex to understand because we added a Diagram. You know.. those things used to make rules easier to parse.

This. Good code should make you go "oh...Oh that's CLEVER" Or "Oh shit... that's how that works!" These responses are genuine and human, and the same sort of 'oh that's how that brush stroke works!' from art. It's creative writing that DOES COOL THINGS.

I would rather have a small scene with consistently invested, engaged participants than a much large scene with a significant amount of people only engaging on a casual shallow level.

Can you imagine how smart and good it would be for there to be a "flaw" that gives you extra chargen points but makes it impossible to steal items

it makes me cry every time a dev makes a game where everything is pixel art except like 2 of the main ui fonts are inexplicably clean smooth high resolution vector fonts, you NEED to COMMIT!!!!

Ok, so, back when social media ads were worth anything you'd target them based on what people were into. The funny thing is, for a crowdfunder, you target FIRST by "likes crowdfunding" and THEN refine by "... and also ttrpgs". But mainly crowdfunding. I think about that horrifying fact every day

I was made aware of a thread on the dndmemes subreddit (a place I never go) about Girl Frame, and after reading a few replies I'm reminded of the northernlion bit about how it's so fucking sad that many people's favorite media is the thing that "makes sense" and not what lights a fire in their heart

You know how a lot of people will gleefully talk about how Bethesda games are incomplete, buggy pieces of shit that barely work but they're incredible because of the modding potential, and the jank is the entire charm? Okay so sit down while I tell you about what I hate most about tabletop rpgs

I will not create and release a 20 page pf2e house rule document. I am better than the 5e gms. I will not create and release a 20 page pf2e house rule document. I am better than the 5e gms. I will not create and release a 20 page pf2e house rule document. I am better than the 5e gms.

I may have only learned I could post the full thread at once after making the first initial post. Perhaps I am the fool. #Pathfinder2e putting it back in the tag now that I've actually ranted.