iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Special challenge for RPG experts: did anyone ever make a condensed version of the 3.5/PF1e ruleset? Something around 40 pages or less. Something that does for 3.5 what the Black Hack does for OD&D.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It's a weird feeling, because I thought of these as different periods in my life. I didn't realize just how many of the book and album covers were by the same person until I stumbled on Whelan's website. It's wild that one person can define so much of the look of the fantastic and wonderful.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

One of the big revelations of my life was just how much of it has been illustrated by @michaelwhelan.bsky.social. The Anne McCaffrey books and Asimov books I read in my grandmother's house, the Lovecraft I read as a teen, the metal albums I listen to today. They all had the same cover artist.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Finding new location and character names for a grimdark setting is hard. Goetic demons, Biblical nasties, and Norse/Germanic myth names have already been done so many times.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Obviously no, and my first thought is someone was missing subtext, but it occurs to me Portal might be more intense today than when it was released. People talk about unintended creepiness in old Valve games, and our attitudes towards AI and tech companies have changed a lot since 2007.

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Chris | Junk Food Games @junkfoodgames.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

all set up for tomorrow! look at all these artisanal, locally-crafted, independently-designed analog games!

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Resident Evil '26 was a very fun movie.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This is a bit niche but spiral bound books can't be donated to people in prison or prison libraries.

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Quinn murphy @gamefiend.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Another interesting pickup this weekend: Wraithlands. I love these hexcrawl adventure books even when I am less found of OSR systems generally. But what i find interesting about Wraithlands' Outcome system is that it points directly into (instead of heavily inferring) fictional positioning.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It's a pretty cool game collection.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Going to start calling it in media re

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Cthulhu Reborn @cthulhureborn.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

A big step forward for Cthulhu Eternal. After much lobbying, DriveThruRPG has added CE as a fully-fledged Rule System in its own right. That makes it MUCH easier to find the 50+ Cthulhu Eternal items that we've made but more importantly also find stuff by others. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?or...

A screenshot of DriveThruRPG showing the Cthulhu Eternal category, which shows over 60 different titles

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I'm thinking of doing something at Everwinter game convention in downtown Boston this year. Anyone have experience tabling or running games tere?

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Nic has always been incredibly helpful when I'm working with IPR. He's a pillar of RPG publishing.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Hey, this is the third project I worked with Plasmophage on! She's been great to collaborate with.

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Greg Stolze @gregstolze.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Update on my next petite game project: The kickoff date for THOMAS JEFFERSON’S SPEEDWAY HELL Kickstarter is September 16! Mark your calendars! www.kickstarter.com/projects/gre... #gaming #TTRPG

kickstarter.com

Coming soon: THOMAS JEFFERSON'S SPEEDWAY HELL: Dangerous Playtest Edition

It's a tabletop RPG where sinners race through Hell to win brief moments of peace. It's handled with tremendous silliness.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I'm guessing the Wildsea!

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I've had a good experience with Greenerprinter!

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Not a distro but Tabletop Bookshelf is a really good online game store. The first time I sent them my game, they sold 20 copies and reordered in a few weeks.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I second Peregrine Coast!

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

That's a very interesting post! It's kind of a shame the revolutionaries-in-a-banana-republic style game wasn't the one that took off. I think Jon Peterson explores more of those earliest days details in Playing at the World, his longer two-parter.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Yeah. I do try to caveat my review with the warning that I'm not fact-checking Jon Peterson, so I can't speak to the real people, only the way they're portrayed in the book.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

It was a truly coincidental encounter. I was only passing through Providence on my way elsewhere. I had an hour planned to eat lunch in town, but a sudden strange nausea took away my appetite. I was walking around town in the hope it would pass when I saw a horrific painting in a window...

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I just think pre-decimalization British currency is very funny. (Okay I don't actually use it in any games I've published but I absolutely would.)

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🅳🅴🅰🅳🅻🆈 🅵🆁🅴🅳🅻🆈 @deadlyfredly.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

There's also a related topic to be had here: how dangerous it is to do crowdfunding at the point where you don't have the text (text; not artwork, layout, other pieces of finishing) finalized including editing. Evil Hat has been jokingly calling our crowdfunds "kickfinishers" for years for a reason.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I'm not sure the assertion that we don't have writers who put out 20+ books in their lifetimes is true. Obviously you have to have been around for a bit, so newer authors won't have those numbers yet. Martha Wells has something like 44 books, Brandon Sanderson 56. JD Salinger published 5 books.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Those are the earliest I know of and the most popular, but there are probably other RPGs that are notable just for the quality of their approach to spirit bargaining. None comes to mind right now but I feel sure I've seen some.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

On the other hand, Stormbringer is extremely specific, with magic users calling on either demons of chaos or demons of order, each granting very specific benefits. All magic in the setting comes from demons in one way or the other - and technology itself is a gift from the gods of order.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Shadowrun's setting has all religious beliefs potentially true at the same time, so there's not a lot of detail on what those offerings are like; it's mostly up to the table to decide based on the magic user's tradition.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The Shadowrun version leaves a lot of the details to the player and GM to figure out: negotiating for spirit services is usually abstracted as an opposed roll that costs some fatigue for the caster. Materials like ritual offerings can be used to give a bonus to the roll.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Another interesting post from the Indonesian TTRPG Blogwagon! Magic as spirit-bargaining is common in traditions around the world. I suspect magic-as-craft is an Enlightenment thing or later. Stormbringer (1981) has an early spirit-bargaining magic system and Shadowrun might be the most famous.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The gun has definitely been around longer than the rapier!

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I was disappointed to find out that TTRPG wiki uses AI to write their game descriptions. I've asked them to remove my games and delete their posts.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

It's a good example of how a campaign can establish facts that change the way the whole game is played.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

It makes sense to me! CoS multiplies item prices by x15 and traps characters in a world with limited resources, limited magic, food shortages, and potentially deadly random encounters. Players actually have to worry about things like how many rations they have left.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Just finished watching Widow's Bay. This show is the opposite of everything you normally think of when you hear horror comedy. It uses the comedy of mundane life to make us attached to the characters, so their perils and dilemmas feel more true. There's so much care in the acting and cinematography.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

It was the Yog-sothoth.com crew!

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

This is a great philosophy for playing RPGs.

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Here's an original setting for my horror game Fear and Panic, although you can probably use it as inspiration for a modern horror campaign in any system. brackish-draught.bearblog.dev/time-of-mons...

brackish-draught.bearblog.dev

Time of Monsters: A Setting for Fear and Panic

Time of Monsters is an original, pre-apocalyptic setting for horror game Fear and Panic. "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born:...

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Lyme @lymerpg.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The best cons I've been to are always the small local ones with a dozen friends. Well, and Metatopia, of course.

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