Marc Hobbs

Hi, I’m Marc 👋 I’m a game designer based in the Pacific Northwest. I make GMless games with my wife under the banner of Less Than Three Games! 🔗 Website lessthanthreegames.com ✏️ Blog lessthanthreegames.com/blog/ 🎲 Itch lessthanthreegames.itch.io/

If you follow me, there’s a 99% chance you also follow Ben, but for that 1% slipping through the cracks… 🚨 Microscope 2nd Edition is on Kickstarter! 🚨 M-Scope is a galaxy-shaking game that is a must-play for literally everyone who enjoys storytelling, roleplaying, or being creative. Go get it! 🔬

What's that? An update from Marc, who never posts anything? Shocking! ⚡️ Pottery Shards has finally reached a point where I'm sharing it with a small number of outside players for test runs. Things are looking good! I'm excited to tell you more--eventually!

Our This Means War game last night was hot hot hot! Spotlight rounds are a ton of fun - we all do scenes about one character, using simple secondary characters to great effect. Marc's patriotic professor mixed university politics with war politics and totally disillusion'ed his star pupil.

I got to play One Missed Call by @chobbs.bsky.social and @thehintguy.bsky.social at Camping for Gamers. This ranks high on my 2p RPG list. Mechanically simple while supporting the goal of play. It explores the words we say and the emotions we leave unspoken when trying to make long-distance work.

One Missed Call is a two-player game that my partner @thehintguy.bsky.social and I wrote together when we first started dating. It's about loved ones separated by space, and it's one of the few games that makes me cry every time I play it!

I did a little write-up of a playtest we had a few weeks ago of @thehintguy.bsky.social's current project - Pottery Shards! This one is getting close to being done! Now I just need to figure out what the best archaeology themed emojis are...

Pffff tidying up the table I picked up the In This World papers from a game @thehintguy.bsky.social played with his friends yesterday wtf this is so great lol. @lamemage.com Look what your games make people do 😂

Thanks @al-lukehart.bsky.social, @lamemage.com and @thehintguy.bsky.social for such quotes as: “Boats should be seen and not heard”, “I saw a community who didn’t respect the arts once. The next year we went back? Ruins”, and "Get in loser, we’re going raiding!" ❤️

Anyway, if you want to actually have a holly-jolly Christmas game, may I recommend @thehintguy.bsky.social's Save Christmas quest!

You know what tells you a lot about a society? Our LAWS. What do we punish? Do we enforce them fairly? Do we think our laws are just? So of course I made world-building game about that… arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/48...

Bleh I’m so bad at social media. Listen to me talk on this wonderful podcast! Oh and listen to the first few episodes with the gameplay too—the hosts are charming and played a great game! #ttrpg #gmless

Work continues on my current project, a versatile archaeology world-building game currently titled “More to Explore”. Got an awesome session in at Go Play NW and now it’s back to the workbench for tinkering! 🔧 ⚙️ #trrpg #gamedesign

Really excellent time at @goplaynw.bsky.social last weekend (July 19-20)! Every game I played was great and the event organization was so smooth and streamlined. Shoutout to excellent donut host @seannittner.bsky.social (and others!) I look forward to Go Play every year and can’t wait to go again! 💚

I had such a lovely @goplaynw.bsky.social this weekend! Huge thanks to the organizers for cultivating a welcoming space and for all the behind-the-scenes work that lets us enjoy the magic of playing games with friends, old and new ❤️

I represented Groundtable (GMless) all the way: Follow, The Final Girl, In This World, Kingdom, and my newest project More To Explore.

#IGM25 sponsor Less Than Three Games is @chobbs.bsky.social and @thehintguy.bsky.social who design creative and collaborative story-driven games. Physical copies their games Downfall, Epitaph, and Fedora Noir can be won by registering for IGM at the link in our bio. Thanks lessthanthreegames.com !

Someone asked me if D&D is a good game, but it wasn’t my turn so I had to wait. Then I failed my roll so I couldn’t answer.

Someone asked me if Polaris is a good game. I said they were asking far too much.

Someone asked me if Epitaph is a good game. I said sure, if that's how you want to live your life.

All aboard motherf***ers 🚂

Had a rockin' game of In This World last night where we finally chose "trains" for our topic! (@thehintguy.bsky.social made his train dreams come true)

An 80s Night today is the equivalent of a Sock Hop in the 90s This has been my quarterly post, see you in August

Have fun! Share your map after the game if you can! ✨

Working on game design today. My latest project is about archaeology, and after several successful playtests l’ve… started a fresh draft. All part of the iterative process! ✍️😮‍💨

I think it’s very telling that bald eagles actually make squeaky, chirpy little noises, but Americans feel compelled to substitute in another bird’s cry in all our media.

Ground Table 🥳

"These are the kind of games we make (or want), what we think they should do, and what we value." Stating our ideals, loud and clear, and putting them all together in one place. GMless, Story Games Seattle-style Some are obvious. Some might make you go hmmmm… arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/45...

This is what I was talking about—GMless isn’t quite sufficient as a descriptor, and until we get these principles out there, we’ll continue to struggle to explain what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s looking real good!

If you want to celebrate Valentine's Day by playing a short 2-player game about making phone calls in a long-distance relationship: 1. That's very specific, and 2. You should check out One Missed Call by me and @thehintguy.bsky.social 💕 lessthanthreegames.itch.io/one-missed-c...

I've had a ton of fun playing this with my 6yo board-gamey kid. It's a really great length and good level of complexity for both of us to genuinely have fun

I love my trans family and friends. The world is a better place with you in it ♥️

“jagoozzi”, if you will

Tabletop game devs of Bluesky, I require thine aid! 📯 What do you call this fold, and what instruction would you write if you wanted a player to fold a card like this?

Just busted out a telescope to look at the Moon and Jupiter. Hella ‘stronomy bro

Oh, to have the social freedom of kids at the playground. They’re literally in the middle of a two-player game of tag, and then one just calmly says, “I’m all done” and walks off. It’s simultaneously the rudest and most self-empowered, limit-setting behavior imaginable

Caroline and I were so sure we weren’t going to do Santa with our son. We told him when he was younger that Santa was “a story”. 📕 Yet now he won’t believe us when we suggest Santa might not be real! He’s decided on his own that it must be true, and his faith is, so far, unshakeable. 🎅🏻

Our "save xmas" Follow quest. How it started: Fun hijinks with a talking reindeer asking us to rescue Santa from a cave of Krampuses How it's going: A deep exploration of parent-child bonds, growing up, and processing trauma @chobbs.bsky.social @thehintguy.bsky.social @allukehart.bsky.social

Hello #ttrpgsky! I continue to do a bit of curation today on my #ttrpg #starterpack, removing a few inactive accounts and adding some new and exciting folk. Does anyone have any recommendations on who to add? go.bsky.app/GYoBnaY

My new Save Christmas quest for Follow (@lamemage.com) is out now for free! But where did the wonderful, awful idea for it come from? How many sizes too big or small IS my heart? 💚 Find out on our Less Than Three blog!

How much father-daughter drama and theme can we fold back in upon itself in a scene? Apparently a lot, very very quickly. arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/43...

This session was so much fun! 🎄 One player was Jack, a jack-in-the-box and the Detective’s partner. Bit of a hardass, but he’ll pop up when you need him. 🎁 I played Goody Gumdrop, a sugarplum fairy serving at The Red Stocking. I was, as the Detective said, “Too good for this train.” 🧚‍♀️