Author and tabletop role-playing game designer Epidiah Ravachol. Perhaps known for:
Dread
Swords Without Master
Worlds Without Master
Vast & Starlit
Wolfspell
To be concluded…
(he/him)
Writing up an example of play for the new edition of Swords Without Master and I've completely scrapped three drafts already. I kept thinking purpose of the document was to illustrate the rules, and everything got bogged down in minutia that had already been capably explained elsewhere.
The focus should be on people playing, not the rules they are using. How are they expressing themselves and negotiating with those rules.
At long last, Swords Without Master shall slip the bonds of Worlds Without Master, issue 3!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unwrittenearths/swords-without-master?ref=4g25pr
Funded so fast, I'm reeling!
Folks!
⚔️ The Season of Swords is upon us! Swords Without Master is coming out of the pages of Worlds Without Master Issue 3 into a full, stand-alone release!
🔮 Follow the Kickstarter page to get notified on launch in early 2026
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unwrittenearths/swords-without-master?ref=4g25pr
Folks!
The year is 2025 and I am officially a paid electronic computer programmist!
Right now...
Swords Without Master
is in
Worlds Without Master, issue 3
But in 2026...
Swords Without Master
will be in
A stand-alone, printed omnibus from The Unwritten Earths Symposium!
Saw this blank notebook on sale at the local grocery store and I'm already backing the Kickstarter for whatever #ttrpg its eventual purchaser scribbles in it.
I celebrated by learning to play the He-Man theme on my devil's femur.
[WARNING: Headphones off and volume down.]
I've only been coding for five years now and even I'm nostalgic for a time when vibe coding meant installing a dracula colorscheme and firing up a YouTube synthwave channel while you type up your 67th todo app.
There are a lot of bad, probably AI-generated, tech tutorials out there that heavily rely on AI-generated images.
If you're out there fighting the good fight and writing tech tutorials, keep that in mind. If I'm scrolling through search results and see a preview image of a haphazardly slapped together cut-and-paste job on some stock photos I'm going to think, "At last, signs of humanity!" and I'll stop scrolling to investigate further.
Hey folks, Nathan D. Paoletta and I are cooking up something good here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unwrittenearths/adventure-and-hobbyist-annual-2025?ref=avlq4e
Give it a follow so you don't miss when we launch in a few weeks.
Never mind. I take it back.
I just saw a Discord bot respond to a help request with AI slop and a disclaimer that said it wasn't responsible for the accuracy of the information it provided, even if it was information about itself.
Now I'm a Linux man page stan.
Starting to get art for the new Unwritten Earths Symposium project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unwrittenearths/adventure-and-hobbyist-annual-2025
And folks, FOLKS!
Front end folks!
Let's say I want to replace a character in a sentence with a SVG. You know, like how the monks used do with their drop caps and illuminated manuscripts.
What's the most accessible way to do this? How do I ensure screen readers know what's going on?
Hey, it's Valentine's Day!
I bet you're thinking, "Today would be a great day to check out a romance game, especially a queer one, or even several! Oh, and, it would be great if I could benefit a charity like Outright International while doing so!"
Well...
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/511948/queer-love-bundle-bundle
Hey software devs,
Please, even if you find it helpful to ask ChatGPT and its ilk technical advice, please, please, please don't just copy and paste that mealy salad into a blog or Medium post or whatever. I've grown so weary of slogging through this.
Learning to build a web app from scratch is a fun journey from…
"Here are about 10,001 programming languages you can use to build your web server"
…to…
"Here are exactly 0 programming languages which can center a
(I've centered the
I do appreciate the quantum state of D&D where it is both whatever you make it so there's no wrong way to play it; but it's also a giant pile of trivia that you can absolutely can get wrong and should be corrected on.
My personal horror story is realizing how old Dread is this year.