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Mackyuu

@kmacku.bsky.social
151 followers 117 following 912 posts

He/Him. Former voice and stage actor. Contributing writer on The Between, Brindlewood Bay, Public Access, The Lands Remaining, Trophy (the Ruin compilation), and more. Trans rights are human rights.

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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I will admit I only know about the Cornell stuff because someone shared Florence Pugh's post. I'm not even one of her followers. That's the kind of reach celebrities can have, and we are seeing what people with such platforms can do (and often choose not to). So, Ed Sheeran can get fucked.
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Freyja Valentine, Girl IRL Cat URL @freyjavalentine.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Tabletop game systems have systems rhetoric and procedural rhetoric. When you write even something as simple and basic as a d20 as making an attack roll you've made an inherently ideological statement about the world. That means your design is open to being analyzed as literature.
en.wikipedia.org
Procedural rhetoric - Wikipedia
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
There's a variant of "rules lite" that's like, sure, there's very few mechanics but the ones that are there *matter*. "Load-bearing rules-lite". I consider Brindlewood Bay rules lite but in a very different way than, say, Lasers & Feelings.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I can't share ttrpg stories without addressing the mechanics that led to them. It's never just "oh and then this happened." It's "oh and they rolled a miss on Inner Conflict [and so this happened]." "We were in a Crisis in Eyes on the Prize..." "Drew a red card in Once More Into the Void..."
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I was such a slut for this aesthetic back in college. (I probably still am)
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
"It's only a few hundred words" is a lie I have told myself repeatedly. Those "few hundred words" almost always involve several nights, into even weeks of research. Even stuff I feel like I know about, you wanna confirm, verify. Good writing is often borne out of curiosity.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Sure. Here's my 9 animes. Though this doesn't include the manga that never got adapted, nor the video games with anime aesthetic.
A collage of 9 animes, captioned "My 9 animes". In reading order, they are: Macross, 08th MS Team, Samurai Champloo, Berserk, Steamboy, Millennium Actress, Porco Rosso, Howl's Moving Castle, and Escaflowne.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We're one presser away from calling our planet Super Earth.
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Owen K.C. Stephens (He/Him) @owenkcstephens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
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Kieron Gillen @kierongillen.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Actually, Do Cite me the Deep Magic, It's Been A While, And I've Forgotten Bits And Pieces. (2003 classic of geek analysis.)
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Every time an old game gets a remake and it's not "we filled out the missing content from Xenogears, it's otherwise exactly the same", an angel loses their gamepad.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
My deep dark writing secret is the sheer volume of words typed/hours spent in old yahoo chat rps.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Westworld, Blade Runner 2049, Kara, Ex Machina, and other media gave me sympathy for AIs, but it has all been squandered by the people behind stuff like Tilly. At this point I am closer to Butlerian Jihad than I ever was before. I would never dare see an AI as a person IRL.
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Magnum, T.I.(M.) @hydrationchimp.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
it’s time to give Ms Rachel a gundam
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Gwen Marshall @drgwenmarshall.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The Onion ran this amazing article and thought, I wanna play this! So I made it! 38 pps, PbtA, plus every mechanic mentioned in the article, and a bunch of Rodrigo song references. And it's free! Enjoy! #OliviaRodrigo @theonion.com #theonion #ttrpg #itch.io drgwenmarshall.itch.io/high-winter-...
drgwenmarshall.itch.io
High Winter Elves of Girlville by Gwen Marshall
A satirical game based on an Onion article about Olivia Rodrigo making a TTRPG!
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
There's a weird thing that happens when a GM asks a question about what to do in their game and the answer seems obvious to me, but then when I run my own games and look at the situations I find myself in, I'm like, "Am I an idiot? I have no idea what to do here."
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Me but when I write.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Y'all remember E.S Posthumous? That was a time. Very early in the "we exist to make trailer music" wave that you'd see with Audiomachine, The Cinematic Orchestra, Two Steps From Hell (to a lesser degree).
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The Onion @theonion.com · 18/09/2026
Olivia Rodrigo Releases Fantasy Tabletop Game ‘The High Winter Elves Of Girlville’ theonion.com/olivia-rodrigo-release…
Olivia Rodrigo Releases Fantasy Tabletop Game ‘The High Winter Elves Of Girlville’
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
There is a part of me that screams yes, I want to see people who make things I like get money. But also, there is a whole wing of this hobby that I never want to deal with again. "Going mainstream" invites those folks in. You can't really separate those two.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Had a gnarly idea for a duet TTRPG, basically Haven the TTRPG (sci-fi stranded on an alien planet). On top of the "common" rules, each playbook has an "opposite" side that you hand to the other player. Maybe the Explorer has a CfB-style mystery they're pursuing. Maybe the Hunted has a pursuit track.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Stonetop is a great game and I'm having a blast, but every session I think about how maybe the miro board interface we're using is the software tool I've been needing to finally play Flying Circus with my friends online.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
It has little to do with the game. They're playing with their friends. I know people who only play Commander because it's what the people they like are doing. You could convince them that YuGiOh or Pokemon or Star Wars are better and maybe they are but that's not a metric they care about.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Make a band edible: Depeche á la Mode
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Tin foil hat, maybe, but this AI doomerism stuff...it's bullshit, right? We've got these articles going around about how AI isn't producing profit, we're in a bubble (which, if it collapses, there goes the economy, right?). AI's been trying to sell to any market that will buy.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
It's 2044. The teaser for the trailer for the first 30 minutes of part 1 of the feature-length summer blockbuster dropped. I haven't been able to watch it except through react tiktoks. I give them all likes. If I build enough Clout, maybe I'll be among the first to see the trailer.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Trump really is the kid in school running for class president, promising "free ice cream. Every day pizza day. Twice as many recesses, and movies in every class every day!"
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Thinking of some of my favorite SNES games and how they only had so many audio channels, but also how I can't listen to OSTs of those tracks without hearing the phantom sfx of gameplay superimposed over them. And how the remakes of those games feel like they lost something.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sorry, I don't care about remakes. Just, like, at a fundamental level. Tell me the art looks great. Tell me it looks bad. Don't care. I've slowly been coming round to realizing, half the magic, for me, was the communal event. The midnight releases, the shared experience. You can't remake that.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Every time I see these fluorescent/neon question boxes with visible rivets, I think about how Mario needs a grimy urban/industrial dieselpunk setting. Yes, like the movie. That movie. Visible pipes, brickwork; y'all I've worked in power plants built before 1950. The aesthetic is there.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
My two hot takes: 1) Humans being *inclined* to tell stories (which I'm not sure is actually proved anywhere) is not the same as being good at doing it. 2) Being good at storytelling doesn't automatically make you a good GM.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I would consider this an improvement over the current system of anyone being able to pop on Youtube calling themselves a "Professor DM".
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
It's always a *little* weird in playbook-based ttrpgs when people go in with an idea and try to find the playbook that makes it work. Am I crazy for thinking that's basically a form of premise rejection?
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Stonetop's really fun.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I will probably go to the PAX Unplugged in Houston, because I want to be part of the message that there *is* a venue in the South for it. But I am really hoping that they won't keep holding it in Texas. Guys, New Orleans is right there and has a convention center too.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
ChatGPT ads really telling on their targeted demographic by opening with, "Let's assume you have no friends."
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I would love to discredit this, but real talk: some people make Fortnite or League of Legends or Magic Arena a big part of their identity. Now, is that enough to build a market on? I don't have those numbers, but I kinda doubt it.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
PAX Unplugged in Houston, like...yay, I could drive there. But considering how much of the hobby is LGBTQ+, like, c'mon. Plus, Texas in June? I guess that's no worse than Philly in December but good lord are they trying to kill us?
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Every now and then I think about how, in Armored Core 6, after you beat the first "real boss" of the game, the garage theme changes to this new, downtempo track ("Hearing Things") and you just sit there, stewing in your victory. One of the best moments in gaming has so little to do with "the game".
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𝑫𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒆𝒍 𝑸𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒔 @daniel-qualls.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I've not posted the link for my ttrpgs on itch in a while, here it is: picaroon-jack.itch.io
picaroon-jack.itch.io
Daniel Qualls
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Lowkey I feel like this is partially a failure in community. Some of my favorite music came from personal recommendations. Libraries are fantastic, but share your books with your friends. Be open in your near-public channels (bsky broadcast don't count) about the better stuff you're reading.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I'm probably wrong, but I feel like we crossed a rubicon with the dancing Star Wars game. Like, sure, Transformers was a cartoon made to advertise toys. The link between media and product was always there, but we enjoyed a thin veneer of, idk what even to call it, spirit? Like, you had to *try*.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Realizing that one of the things that instantly turns me off of a ttrpg is quantitative evaluation. Easy example: setting DCs. "Is this a DC 16? 18? 22? How would [some better GM] call it?"
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
So like, I am all for "write weird games for yourself" but like so much hyperpositivity we saw in the last 15 years, people are leaving out a second half, something like "...but if you release it in a public space as a product you intend to sell, it kinda stops being that."
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Actually, another 2026 casualty: Jane Yolen was my gateway to fantasy with her book Dragon's Blood (and its two sequels). I barely remember anything about this book other than being 99% certain it, more than even Anne McCaffrey's Pern series (came later for me) gave me my love for dragons.
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(Self) Regulators, mount up! @bankuei.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
In the world of RPGs, "don't play the rules as written" as an answer to problems experienced in play is a bit like "This Bestheda game is great, oh, you're not playing with these 37 mods that's why you're not having fun, you should have known better". 😬
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MapQuest @mapquest.com · 27/08/2026
We’re not changing it.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Realizing I enjoy few but strong rules in ttrpgs because sometimes you have a friend who is not quite "that guy" at your table. You don't want to boot them for whatever reason but you're not sure they fully bought in to the concept, or want to go off and do their own thing.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
So I actually did start running a game recently. Not a 4-session dip-the-toe-in but like a *game* game. And it's been good. I am rusty. I had to confront that theory all goes out the window when you are there in the moment. It was healthy. Run something. Try Thursday, I guess.
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Mackyuu @kmacku.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
If someone writes a Public Access mystery about a famous country singer from Degoya County, this should be a setpiece moment.
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