Replying to
@metin I'm not sure that's a fail. One of the things you're going to be thinking about as soon as you open to that page is Uranus. It's clearly perfect.
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LexTenebris
@lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
mastodon 4.7.3+vivaldimodWriter. Podcaster. Game designer. Game enthusiast. Journalist. You know, all those terrible things that personalities can develop.
Creator of the digital garden Grim Tokens, discussing solo/co-op tabletop RPGs and wargames.
266 Followers
42 Following
18 Posts
Joined July 03, 2023
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#SoloRPG #Accessibility #TTRPG #Loner
Check out how rules-light systems like Loner offer a seamless, low-barrier entry point for visually impaired players to dive into the world of solo and classic RPG adventuring.
Replying to
@MikeFerdinando@dice.camp This is a brilliant idea and I, for one, would love to endorse it with double underlining.
Tired of the mindless "number go up" grind? See how games like _Ironsworn_, _Loner_, and _Wushu_ prioritize actual narrative depth over the hollow dopamine hit of a stat increase.
https://grimtokens.garden/Thoughts/Character+Progression+More+Lateral+Than+Vertical
I suppose it's time to actually show people my work. *Running Breathless* is a game about being chased and dealing with problems along the way, sometimes not even your own.
https://squidlord.itch.io/running-breathless
Maybe you're a psychic kid who's escaped from the hospital or the school for unusual talents. Maybe you've made the heist of your life. Maybe you're the worst kind of criminal scum. Maybe they're right behind you.
Catch your breath when you can. Go to ground if you find someone you can trust or a big enough sucker. The one thing you're guaranteed to do? Run.
*Running Breathless* is a TRPG for one to five players, GM optional, based on the *Breathless* SRD.
Check it out. It's pay what you want, which means you can pay absolutely $0.00, and I won't be mad. In fact, I encourage you to do so. It runs pretty quickly, so you can even throw it up on the table while waiting for other players to arrive for your main game. It's fast, a little bit cruel, and you should have about 50-50 odds of getting away with it. Whatever it was you did. The chasers know.
#TTRPG #4DRoleplaying #gamedesign
How is it that the mainstream tabletop RPG hobby reinvents the wheel every five years when we've solved a problem 20 years ago?
https://grimtokens.garden/Thoughts/4D+Roleplaying+-+WTF+Mate
Replying to
@enfors I have a very easy and obvious counter-argument.
The monster listing should be in alphabetical order. That's how we remember what the name of something is and then find it easily, which is going to be the primary mechanism by which you engage with the content. However, it also needs an index by level so that you can look at the level of things in a given range, find out the names, and then go look them up. Sorting by level is going to be way less useful the majority of the time.
#TTRPG #GMing #advice #facilitator #GMless
Stop being the "dancing monkey" for your RPG group and discover how GM-less systems and decentralized play can turn a burnt-out Forever GM into a lifelong Player of Games.
#TTRPG #play #Initiative #liveplay
Last night I went out to watch my local community theater do a session of D&D live on stage. I have some thoughts, not unpleasant ones.
https://grimtokens.garden/Thoughts/Initiative+-+Meet+the+Cast+at+the+Aurora+Theatre
Replying to
@enfors Let's say that before the game you go through the index and find monsters that look alright. You've got the time, after all. You've got a few hours. You jot down your list of things that you want to do during the session, including what monsters you want to bring to bear.
Now, during the session, you have the name of the creature you've got, but for some reason you forgot to write down a special attack, and you know it has one. Now, under time pressure, you need to find that monster while your players are looking at you in the book so that play can continue.
I want those monsters in the book in alphabetical order. The indexing for level can be slower than the sorting for finding on the fly.
Replying to
@enfors Remember, thinking a thing doesn't make it so.
I know the process of putting things together and when things need to be done under stress. You are never going to be looking up monsters that are close to one another in level under stress. That's just not when it happens.
Either it's going to be while you're doing prep, in which case you have hours, or it's going to be while the PCs are doing things and you're putting something together for the next random encounter, assuming you haven't intelligently already put together random encounter tables.
Which brings up random encounters, by the way, and the fact that random encounter tables include the name of a creature and not its stats. Anytime you go to resolve a random encounter, you don't need to search by level, you're searching by the name of the thing. You want that to be the quickest, easiest, lowest friction activity.
This is just a matter of looking at the workflow and seeking the point of highest friction.
I'm not saying that an index of creatures sorted by level isn't useful, because obviously there are uses for it. It's just not the primary use of a list of creatures.
I couldn't stay quiet after seeing that disastrous Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG promo, so here is my take on why the game looks like a hot mess and the tabletop alternatives you should play instead.
https://grimtokens.garden/Thoughts/Dungeon+Crawler+Carl+May+Be+Best+Left+in+Space
@HolosDiscover looks -- interesting. It can follow on as far as I'm concerned. If I didn't want my stuff to be public knowledge, I wouldn't post it in public.
I finally get to say I'm big in Japan, and I get to talk about a discovery of a game that I haven't picked up yet. Shinobigami looks promising.
https://grimtokens.garden/Thoughts/The+Japanese+Leakage+-+Shinobigami
Having trouble coming up with Iron Vows for scoundrels? You don't have to be a good guy to swear.
https://grimtokens.garden/Thoughts/Scoundrel+Vows+in+Ironsworn-Starforged
I don't normally jump on the meme train, but the Hot Takes RPG grid was too good to pass up, in part because I got to do the graphical layout.
https://grimtokens.garden/Thoughts/About+Me+-+Tabletop+Game+Template+Edition
#TTRPG #RPGaDay2026 #Ironsworn
Distance hides in the oddest gaps — between places, between years, between people. And then you find it under a hill, measured one stone at a time.
https://grimtokens.garden/Articles/RPG+a+Day/2026/RPGaDay+2026+-+24+-+Distance
#TTRPG #RPGaDay2026 #Continuity
Regret is the price of a game where what you do actually sticks. If the table leaves you with nothing to regret, it left you with nothing at all.
https://grimtokens.garden/Articles/RPG+a+Day/2026/RPGaDay+2026+-+26+-+Regret