iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I have been enamoured with the design goal of the 1HP Dragon since I read it, and I think Realis serves the same goals. So, I put them in conversation, and it’s been really helpful for better understanding what I like about Realis! afcbrodie.mataroa.blog/blog/r...

afcbrodie.mataroa.blog

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The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) @themerl.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

can't stop thinking about our latest Google review

A Google review with five stars. It says "I’ve never been so amazed by a place before, This and Puregym are tied first place"

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Anyway reading continues to be the most fun game (3/3)

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

But you can also read it in the reverse direction and make Melian's gift to Beleg indicative of elvish meanness. 'Cause I read ROTK and Sam's careful itemisation of lembas as a stock of calories, and like...that's just good bread dude. What do you mean the elves don't just give it to people? (2/3)

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

There's a great thing that happens in the Silmarillion in which the first giving of lembas is a literal demigod giving it to Beleg Strongbow, The Ultimate Bro, as he goes to support his best friend Turin and you know the goal is to have that magnify Galadriel's gift to Frodo & Sam (1/3)

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Atmospheric Underworld @atmosphericunderworld.com · 28/09/2026

Signposting was what I named the underlying tension that drove me to the N/OSR. After months of wrestling with it, I think I've nailed down what it is, why GMs rely on it, and how it goes wrong. This post was months in the making; come check it out! atmosphericunderworld.com/signposting-...

atmosphericunderworld.com

Signposting, Signseeking, and Agency Spirals: Hazards for the Ambitious in Tabletop RPGs

How psycho-social patterns of expected behavior erode the fundamentals of RPG play.

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

But imagine the restraint of that. Not just having titans in your head, but (I assume) the capacity to write titanically, and choosing not to do so, because your story takes place in a smaller time. It's cool!

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's also fascinating because while these modes are both present in LOTR, neither of them are present to this extreme, which is of course the point. There is no duel in LOTR to top the duel of Morgoth and Fingolfin, because LOTR is a diminished age.

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The amazing thing about the Silmarillion is how any time I pick it up I could be in for either a deathly-dull endless-feeling spooling-through of proper nouns, or, a level of mythic grandeur I otherwise only find in an a life-changing anime. And these two modes can appear at any time.

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Sean from SF Ultra said repeatedly that MJH makes doing criticism of his own work harder, because of how he's better than the average author at reading himself

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Samir Sirk Morató @spicycloaca.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

not only are there 19 stories in Gore Poetics, but there are 19 original collages that go with each one, which IMO look just as cool in ebook form as they do on paper 🥩✨️✒️ if you want a chance to see them all for free, enter the giveaway!

This is a monochrome collage depicting flames, a graveyard, and torn book pages. Two light-wreathed dogs float over this apocalypse. The title centered on this collage reads "PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE (refrain)" in gothic church lettering.

This is a monochrome collage depicting a faceless entity made of needles and blades. They stand over a broken teacup, crying. The phrase "sharp house" is transposed over the middle of the image in wiggly, grainy text.

This is a blurred image of a collage with one clear image spotlight floating in it. In the spotlight, a leaf burnt with the grainy words "the halved world" is visible.

This is a blurred image of a collage with one clear image spotlight floating in it. In the spotlight, a heart-shaped padlock is visible.

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Jack Bernhardt @jackbern.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

THE GREAT BRITISH SEWING BEE: oh my this is fun, oh what larks THE GREAT BRITISH REAPING BEE: well this is a spot of bother and make no mistake, what on earth

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

We'll only reach it when authors can write about revolutions as something other than solutions or disappointments

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

it's so annoying when the blorbs assume i'm gnusto when i'm nitfol

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Andrew Gillis @andrewgillis.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

As promised, here's a thread about my prep for the Dark Ages playtest I am playing on Sundays. The recording of our first session is here: youtu.be/eM3huoccFQY

youtu.be

Dark Ages: The Playtest || Session 1

YouTube video by TheVODViper

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Good ep! Enjoyed this one enough I kept listening to the janked up audio. Very much agree that game books are the external intervention in play, in the way the author of a book you're reading is.

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Seraphina Garcia Ramirez 🔜 PaxU @seraphina.diceexploder.com · 25/07/2026

New arrivals! Persuasion I’ve played before and adore, Sykes-Picot I’ve wanted for a while. But Swords Against. Haunting. I’ve yet to decipher much (and I’ve not opened the letter) but what I can see is dragging me deeper, beckoning me to lose myself in the mystery (and see myself in it, perhaps.)

Three boxed games propped up on a gray couch. Left to right, they are titled Persuasion, Swords Against, and Sykes-Picot.

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michael lutz @ztul.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

GIZMO: Never fear! My simulations show a 76% chance of Farmhouse Mystery Kid victory FOOTBALL CASEY: *held upside down by kraken* not the stats I wanna hear, Einstein! JOLLY ROGER: *slashing with cutlass* —and for Ada and Tessa and the winter sister born on the voyage, ye took them all from me, aye—

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Valeria Loves @valerialoves.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

An argument for human connection masquerading as a book review. valerialoves.com/why-didnt-si...

valerialoves.com

Why Didn't Silent Titans Change the World?

Apprehension is worth the effort

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Amy Borrett @amyborrett.ft.com · 27/07/2026

NHS hospitals using Palantir’s patient discharge tool have registered “no noticeable improvement” in performance, according to new @healthfoundation.bsky.social analysis that contrasts sharply with @england.nhs.uk's claims More @financialtimes.com as.ft.com/r/6300abcb-e...

Line chart of the share of beds occupied by patients with a delayed discharge across NHS trusts using Optica showing performance was already improving before adoption of Palantir's tool and deteriorated again in the year after

Line chart of the share of beds occupied by patients with a delayed discharge, pooled share across each group showing trends are similar at hospitals that use Palantir's tool and those that do not

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Seraphina Garcia Ramirez 🔜 PaxU @seraphina.diceexploder.com · 10/07/2026

Voting for the 2026 ENNIE Awards is live! I’m one of the candidates to be a judge next year, and I’m asking for your vote! In this thread I’ll explain what that means, why you should vote for me, and where you can read more of my thoughts on tabletop games. vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2026/ 1/

vote.ennie-awards.com

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Really enjoyed being an asynchronous interlocutor on this episode (with apologies to Thomas for his needing to read some overlong comments :D). Looking forward to the new season, and in the meantime have made a mental note to blog about the setting mechanic I made for my homebrew Heart campaign.

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Marty Cahill @mcflycahill90.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

If you're looking for a book to show up for, let it be the new epic from thee legendary @wildeeps.bsky.social, Kai Ashante Wilson, THE FALL OF ELVENESSE. Check out that cover art by the talented, Paulo D. Campos & preorder the book right freakin' now! www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-fall-o...

cover for the new book by kai Ashante Wilson, The Fall of Elvenesse

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

This I think will be the first of a few blogs that revolve around actor stance, a way of playing TTRPGs I've become increasingly attached to. It's about how to make a character using a playlist, and why you might want to do that. afcbrodie.mataroa.blog/blog/play-on/

afcbrodie.mataroa.blog

Play on — afcbrodie

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Maybe something in there about nature as a barrier and drain on resources, vs nature as a source of romantic challenge…but that’s loose

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I don’t think I can hang anything on it analytically, but, it’s fun to think about the scene in Two Towers where Sam and Frodo climb down a cliff, with the scene in Storm of Wings, where Tomb the Dwarf climbs up one

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cmrn knzlmn @ckunzelman.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Extremely good stuff from melos here as always, especially this (which is amplified by 100x in the TTRPG world for reasons I cannot discern but nevertheless see)

I think there is partly a ritual function to these discourses: the participants are able to strengthen their identities as gamers and people who value games.
So in this sense, the point of discourse is not to reach any concrete end (and base on seeing the same discourses for decades, there seems), it's really arguing as a means towards having the identity as gamer/game designer.
Which... is not really an issue unless someone goes overboard and like, drags someone into it who doesn't care.
(But idk... sometimes you do really want to change the world with discourse and it's hard to do that without encroaching
on other beliefs...)

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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

“Writing is hard.” Thrilled to share that this simple idea led to a new paper in Political Analysis! Where most text methods focus on content, I test if expression is also effortful action. I find simple measures like character counts reveal attitudes and predict voting. cup.org/4cUmoXi 1/

Text as Behavior
Text as Behavior published in Political Analysis

by Omar Wasow

Abstract

Text analysis typically focuses on content—such as sentiment or topic—but expression is also a form of effortful action. Building on this insight, I propose using simple features of open-ended tasks to study text as behavior. This approach treats expression, such as writing, as cognitively, emotionally and temporally “costly” for subjects but inexpensive for researchers. I show basic statistics like the number of characters can approximate effort and significantly improve estimation of quantities of interest, including candidate choice, the probability of turning out to vote and psychological states about which a subject may not be fully aware. Further, these methods can convert nonresponse into informative data; validate survey instruments; serve as mechanism checks; be hard for a subject to “game”; work across different languages and analogize well to real-world situations. In sum, text as behavior can help address a range of issues related to quantifying attitudes and actions.

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Paul Musgrave's comment that "Substack is like if the Ferengi had invented “humanities”" remains undefeated.

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sam “ludonarrative disinterest” sorensen @samsorensen.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

there's another episode of DEAD LETTERS out today! this one is about the GLOG, the Goblin Laws of Gaming, the biggest, weirdest, and coolest branch of the OSR. we cover blogging, 3.5, bizarro skill systems, Delta templates, and more. give it a listen! open.spotify.com/episode/60GT...

open.spotify.com

Spotify – Web Player

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jess @jessfrom.online · 16/05/2026

or, tbh, a lot of mainstream actual play, in which what is primary is the narrative they are sculpting away from the table. fiction-backwards: deriving the present from the past. fiction-forwards: considering all emergent possibilities from this present moment of gameplay & choosing one. then

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jess @jessfrom.online · 16/05/2026

the campaign to that arc. fiction-backwards & fiction-forwards are still fundamentally about emergent narrative, it’s just a question of what direction you look for that emergence. they are, at least in the ways that matter to me, more alike with each other than they are with play cultures where

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

He turned a machine gun into a book and it worked, impossible. Thank god I didn’t read this when younger, I would have tried to copy the style and it would have been so embarrassing.

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Pacing my house back and forth on repeat because I just finished James Ellroy’s White Jazz while drinking an instant coffee, and now my mind feels like sweaty dynamite

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

That might be the case. Though quick googling suggests freeze-distilled beer wasn't invented till the 19th century. Also...man I'm over my skiis here, but given the storage time this distilling method implies, would that method require the beer to have hops in it? If so, that's also anachronistic.

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Like, these are not real issues right? The answer is ‘cause it’s fun stop asking’. Except, of course, if a reason for touting the game is because it isn’t a generic fantasy melange. But it is. It’s cool! It has great ideas! But qualitatively, the world of Stonetop is no more grounded than Faerun.

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Whisky (distilled alcohol) was invented in the 13th Century! Thousands of years after the Iron Age! And quite apart from how does Stonetop have access to chemistry, how do you have enough spare fuel to be distilling whisky WHEN YOU CANT CUT DOWN TREES?!?

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Every time Quinns says ‘This game isn’t like other fantasy! It isn’t just a big melange of peoples’ vague ideas of what “the past” is!’ and then goes on to describe how an isolated Iron Age village HAS WHISKY AS A PRIMARY EXPORT I kinda want to start yelling

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

I really enjoyed the Quinns’ Quest review of Stonetop. It celebrates what is good about the game, and also helped me to see some mistakes I made running it, that if I hadn’t made, would have made my game way better. AND ALSO…

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

...creates drama in choices when you're having to choose between what your character wants in the moment, and what the XP trigger says you should want to do.

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

This is a great question to ask! In my play (which is very focused on being a character who is not me) specific XP triggers are a support for staying in character (this is what people like you do) and also have a second life as a diegetic rule for 'how people like you are supposed to act' which...

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

I wrote a blog to condense all the fantastic TTRPG blogosphere GM advice I’ve read into something I could easily consult and use. Maybe it’ll be useful for you too! afcbrodie.mataroa.blog/blog/s...

afcbrodie.mataroa.blog

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Adam @afcbrodie.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

15 MPs each submitting 1,000 or more written questions over the course of a single year screams AI to me.

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