iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 06/10/2025

"Oh waitress, I just wanted the hate entrée, I didn't ask for a side of consequences"

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 06/10/2025

Jesus Christ. I had to check if this tool ever got a buck from me and thankfully not

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Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness @tangledwilderness.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

People hate what is happening, which means there are people around you who want to help stop it. You are not alone in wanting to take action. Step up and help; it works.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 06/10/2025

Social media site that’s just an RSS feed aggregator under the hood. Every account is an RSS or Atom URL. Turning comments into replies on posts in a consistent way would be the big benefit

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 05/10/2025

As a US citizen who values liberty and free speech, I feel like you get the freedom to refer to us any fuckin way you want, without the need to justify it to anyone

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 05/10/2025

They're really dealing maturely with the big issues of the day

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Binary @binarystar.games · 05/10/2025

Papercult is still up and running and thriving, which is something I *should* periodically remind people when the owner of this site isn't crashing out, but especially when they are: papercult.club

papercult.club

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 05/10/2025

I've had roommates who know me and still are reluctant to interact with me because of their past experience with other men. I'm glad not everyone feels that, but unfortunately, some people do.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 05/10/2025

Some of the reasons I’m lonely and angry are because how bad men act reflects poorly back on all men. So more opinions, please, because fuck those guys

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Binary @binarystar.games · 29/09/2025

VOID_SHIFT is out (digitally)! It's a solo deckbuilder that takes like, I don't know, half an hourish to roll through a job. 30 cards to assemble a 15 card deck, 6 job cards that comprise what you're doing. binary-star-games.itch.io/void-shift

binary-star-games.itch.io

VOID_SHIFT by Binary Star Games

Assemble your deck and don't get fired.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 04/10/2025

I want a Liam Neeson action series where God raptured his daughter and he’s getting her back by any means necessary

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 03/10/2025

This was a question I didn't ask in my list, but I think it folds in the question of funding: what do the assassins do, when they aren't assassinating?

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 02/10/2025

- What of assassins who want out? What of infiltrators who want in, in order to expose the assassins? - People don't do well when deprived of relationships and grounding. How do the Brass Masks keep their members emotionally satisfied?

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 02/10/2025

- People don't want to die and will take steps not to. If your enemy sees your door painted blue, they can probably guess who you have in mind. What would they do about it? What could they? - Contract murder is anathema to public order. What do those in charge think about all this?

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 02/10/2025

- Is the randomness of the poison options a deliberate choice by the people who oversee the group, or a consequence of availability (e.g. two-headed cobras aren’t in season right now so you get the glowing purple sap)? - Might individual assassins also specialize in other tools, e.g. hidden weapons?

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 02/10/2025

Are you interested in some suggestions or opinions about what you're building here?

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 02/10/2025

The Hitman games do a good job of presenting this sort of situation as a puzzle dungeon, and this feels like it's in the same territory

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 02/10/2025

1. Led by Elon Musk, the far-right has exploded in a campaign to get Netflix to remove shows with queer and trans characters. If Netflix capitulates to their demands, an already strained market for LGBTQ+ animators might become even more dire. Subscribe to support our journalism.

erininthemorning.com

Elon Musk Leads Campaign To Force Netflix To Remove Shows With Trans Characters

Musk's posts have been seen by tens of millions of users, and many conservatives are now attempting to force Netflix into a removal of LGBTQ+ content.

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Rascal News @rascal.news · 01/10/2025

Unionized workers with @kickstarterunited.org are poised to strike if the crowdfunding platform's management doesn't approve their new contract. The union has demanded a four-day workweek, minimum living wage salaries, and protections against generative AI encroachment.

rascal.news

Kickstarter United workers will strike beginning October 2

Demands include enshrining the four-day, 32-hour work week in their contract.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 01/10/2025

Adventures of the Oxford Commando, Style Soldier

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 01/10/2025

Shown in each clip: a source of misinformation, reciting programmed responses with no introspect or capacity to acknowledge mistakes. Next to him, an avatar of ChatGPT

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 30/09/2025

I just got a VERY interesting email that allies in congress were upset that so many of my readers were calling about the anti-trans provisions. I'm here to say: good. I won't let them throw our rights under the bus by cover of night. All's that to say, keep up the calls. They're hearing you.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 30/09/2025

Curiosity drove me to look up “Frater Ravus” and the identity of this person and the provenance of that quote seems very fuzzy

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 29/09/2025

Time of Eve. “In this cafe there shall be no distinction between humans and robots”

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 29/09/2025

And it serves that purpose perfectly

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 28/09/2025

If you ever played or even read through something I wrote, a comment would be great even if it sucked. “I posted nothing“ is indistinguishable from “this wasn’t worth my time“ to me, and the latter is the worst possible outcome for me

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 28/09/2025

My dungeon design philosophy is “build a facility that would serve some practical purpose” and I think this is where I lose most people

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 27/09/2025

I want to see Michael Holt and Hobie Brown hang out and talk hero shit and be recognized for carrying their respective goddamn films

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 26/09/2025

It’s always d-bags offering d-bait

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"

theguardian.com

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians

Exclusive: Tech firm ends military unit’s access to AI and data services after Guardian reveals secret spy project

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 25/09/2025

So what's the experience of prophecy? It's a feeling, like deja vu. Like many feelings, experience with it, and willingness to engage with the feeling, makes you more able to pick apart the nuance of it. There's a rightness to it. Successful prophecy is thus experience with and trust in that feeling

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 25/09/2025

There’s time travel, but that has its own rules. If you travel to the past and disrupt events, you get a new timeline. Quantum effects interacting with the human brain tend to smooth out little differences, so timelines are noticeably distinct from each other

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 25/09/2025

The superhero setting I’m writing for describes prophecy and omens as the equivalent of memory of some suitably weighty event - ripples of knowledge extending into the past. Prophecy isn’t something you do, but something you perceive. You can’t just prophecy next Tuesday’s lunch menu.

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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 24/09/2025

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

Unless I'm writing solo games, "games other people want to play" has to have some kind of part, I think :)

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

Anyway! I have time to think about it, and hopefully a good design will emerge from that time. "Good" for my goals, anyway - I get that an awful lot of people want games that just drop them into a carefully-sculpted experience. I just prefer other approaches. I'm a weirdo but I'm okay with that

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

I think there's another benefit to this approach, aside from characters: you can change the menu of available moves, and let PCs load up from things like "deep crisis" moves when things get bad. Unlockable, situational moves you can make at the right time.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

This is game-specific, I get that. But with a GM and with other players, it may be that a given move you took may just never be applicable. I've had this happen, both to myself and to other players. What happens when you have a budget for character moments, and you chose a moment that never came?

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

But is there value in decoupling moves from characters? Is the selection of moves supposed to define the character? In some games, yes. In some games, maybe. But the thing about moves is that, if they really are genre moments, a given move may never come up!

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

The Hothead is going to like PE-style moves more than Math-style moves, so they have a lower budget for Math than for PE. I'm still vague on the specifics here. I have another game I'm trying to polish, but I can come back to this when that's done. So I have time.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

So my thought was a compromise. Put moves into classifications, like school classes - PE, Math, etc. Write moves for those classes. Give playbooks a budget for each class, rather than making them pick specific moves - think FITD Load, but for moves instead of equipment

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

So back to the cute-witches game. I had playbooks and everything in mind: Newbie, Nerd, Buddy, Underdog, Hothead, Weirdo... I can give you examples of all these characters. But to pin down their various experiences & adventures to a few key things? It just feels wrong, somehow. Too limiting.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

I personally struggle with writing games like this. I have a head full of potential stories and I look to games as an outlet for all that. I don't sit down to consume a game like a meal, but as a canvas where I'll paint what I'm doing. I want to bring the tropes I want to bring.

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

In this way, moves are like a TV Tropes entry where the outcome isn't guaranteed. When you find yourself in Trope X, roll the dice and you'll get Tropes Y or Z as the outcomes. This is good, right? If you do tropey things you get tropey results, thus we get a game that feels like a specific thing

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Astral Frontier @astralfrontier.org · 24/09/2025

My perspective on moves is that they're codified pivotal genre moments. "Pivotal" being they can go in multiple directions, "genre" being that moves tend to enforce specific fictional conventions, and "codified" in that they're not just part of the conversation, they're written up in a specific way

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