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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive)

@matthijs1000.bsky.social
231 followers 497 following 98 posts

Game designer and writer. Creator of Draug, Archipelago, and Society of Dreamers. Organizer of Den Nye Våren, a festival for new and experimental tabletop RPGs. hyperfictive.substack.com

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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Ah damn. For Golden Cobra I have: * A game that is innovative, fun, and I want to play myself * A fun name that I want to use * And no way to match them together well
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Oh, I wanna do this this year!
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In case you wonder what it's like to be an Internationally Acclaimed Artsyfartsy Game Designer, I can tell you that my anthologies of minigames, "B-Sides", have been bought by two people. Of which only one actually downloaded them. Ah, the life of the artist!
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Making historical RPGs set in Norway feels like misery tourism.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Sometimes I try to make commercial RPGs, and they just end up being "ooo I can fit a Borges reference in here" or "now I'm REALLY gonna research the hell out of our national minorities"
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Added 51 historically sourced seasonal practices to the game this week. Slaughtering patterns, fishing calendars, when the cows come in from the summer farms. Half of them turned into adventure hooks without any effort. What's the most useful non-RPG source you've used for a game?
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Norway has zero data on its own RPG players. No demographics, no spending patterns, no language preferences. Designing a nationwide survey from scratch. 29 questions. First of its kind. Does your country have any real data on who plays tabletop RPGs?
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Working on rules for playing supernatural folk as neighbours under the hill with their own problems. The hard part is making them feel foreign without making them feel like a fantasy RPG species. Have you played a non-human character that actually felt different to play?
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Ever got stuck coming up with a plot for your campaign? Let's get you started with a click of a button. We added a feature to our relationship map tool: One click gives you a tangled web of NPCs! Feuds, secrets, alliances, a crisis with a deadline. No login. maps.hyperfictive.com
maps.hyperfictive.com
Relationship Maps — Hyperfictive
Build, save and share RPG relationship maps in your browser. A Hyperfictive tool.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Need a relationship map for your campaign? I made a free one. Draw characters, connect them, add tags and notes. GM and Player views so you can hide secrets. Works in your browser, no account needed. maps.hyperfictive.com
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Writing campaign playbooks organized by season. What the community does in spring is different from what they do in autumn. It changes what's available, who's around, what's dangerous. Time of year as game mechanic. Does time of year ever matter in your games, or is it always vaguely "now"?
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Running a survey on Norwegian RPG players. Found something obvious: when games exist in Norwegian, people play in Norwegian. When they don't, people switch to English. The language of the hobby follows the language of the books. Is your group playing in your first language or in English?
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Need a relationship map for your campaign? I made a free one. Draw characters, connect them, add tags and notes. GM and Player views so you can hide secrets. Works in your browser, no account needed. maps.hyperfictive.com
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Over half of surveyed tabletop game designers use AI. A quarter of those call themselves "strongly opposed" in public. I dug into what the RPG industry is actually doing while saying it isn't. open.substack.com/pub/hyperfictive/…
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Renamed all the 'moves' in my game. The word carries too much PbtA baggage. Players kept expecting it to work like Apocalypse World when it doesn't. Sometimes you have to break the vocabulary to break the assumptions. Have you changed a term in a game and watched it change how people played?
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Finland and Norway: same population. Finnish D&D (1988) sold 35,000 in bookstores. Norwegian D&D (1989) sold 5,000 in hobby shops. Same game, 7x difference. The channel decided it. In Norwegian, translates fine: norsk-rollespillnytt.vercel.app/rollespillhi...
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Winter 1982/83: Norwegian storeowner Geir Aaslid cold-called TSR. The switchboard lady put him through, he was calling long-distance. A decade on: TSR's biggest European distributor outside the UK. My interview (Norwegian, translates fine): norsk-rollespillnytt.vercel.app/rol…
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Daniel Harila Carlsen @danielharila.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
First round of digital copies of Duginthroat Divided have been sent out to backers. I feel thankful, humbled and exhausted. And we still have to prepare the print run.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Playtested an adventure last week. 3.5 hours. Zero combat, zero magic, zero dungeon procedures. Session ran on talking to NPCs and poking around the environment. Now I'm looking at the rules wondering which ones earn their page count. What rules have you never used at the table?
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
New free game: Three Encounters. Go outside with two friends. Guide each other through encounters with spirits in nature. Touch a tree. Feel a presence. You might not have a revelation. But you might breathe differently. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
New free game: Five Characters in Search of an Identity. You know you're characters in a game, just don't know which ones. The GM reveals identities one at a time. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...
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Erik Holten @holtenher.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Borgarjournalistikk: Når ein person på ein kveld og ei natt kan fylle rolla åt heile redaksjonar. Kven av dei norske media – der verksemder og tilsette enno har greitt betalt – har fått belyst rekkjehusbrannen i Krogstadelva som @matthijs1000.bsky.social? ukas-interesse.vercel.app/krokstadelva...
ukas-interesse.vercel.app
Slik kunne ett hus bli til hundre
Over hundre boliger brant ned på fem timer i Krokstadelva. Svakheten som kan la en brann løpe fra hjem til hjem, har stått beskrevet i offentlige dokumenter siden 1997.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
New free game: Fame! One player performs meaningless acts. The audience responds with nonsensical applause. All language must be gibberish. Fifteen minutes, standing ovation. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I'm working on names for the playbooks in Draug! It's a game set in post-apocayptic Norway, 1856, after the trolls woke up and the devastations started. Want to help me pick? Thumbs up, down, or shrug for each option. Takes 2 min. survey-nine-kappa.vercel.app
survey-nine-kappa.vercel.app
Draug — Playbook Naming Survey
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
My most artsy, weird, personal and experimental stuff has mostly been published randomly, as blog posts and competition PDFs on a myriad of web pages and fora. When I started gathering them, they became a personal history. Only for the specially interested! My least commercial works :D
drivethrurpg.com
DriveThruRPG - The Largest RPG Download Store!
Your one-stop online shop for new and vintage RPG products from the top publishers, delivered fresh to your desktop in electronic format.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
I built a free browser tool for making RPG relationship maps. It started as prep for my own game. Drag cards around, draw connections, toggle between GM and player views. Give it a try! maps.hyperfictive.com
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Three B-Sides games are now free on DriveThruRPG. Here's what they are.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
It is quite possible for a creative human to use AI tools to further their unique perspectives. Come on now.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Gelatinous cute!
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
This guy really does his research!
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
I swear, I get high from playing Soledad with new people. Suck a kick. Both just for that "it actually works! AGAIN!" feeling, and because it gets so intense just discovering the world and dynamics with strangers. New people ❤️
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
One player lies on the floor as a thousand-year-old skeleton. Others walk around, speculating about who they were. The skeleton can't correct them. Ten minutes.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
A troll isn't a stat block. It's something your great-grandmother warned you about, and she was right.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
If your game uses folklore, make it mechanical. Iron protects against the supernatural. That's not flavor text. That's an economy, a scarcity system, a set of hard choices.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Write down something you want to do before you die. Roll a die. 2-6: age that many decades, explain why you never did it. Roll again. On a 1, you die. That's the whole game.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
The best sessions I've run had no permanent GM. Someone frames the scene, someone else plays the threat, someone asks the hard question. Then you rotate.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Rotating the narrator every scene sounds chaotic. In practice it means nobody gets tired, nobody gets bored. Everyone's invested because everyone directs.
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Ole Peder @olepeder.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Innovative GM-free no-prep magic realism card-based TTRPG «Roots of Soledad» only €278 away from funding! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...
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Michael Sollien - Seidmann Games (Spillforlaget) @michaelsollien.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Check out The Roots of Soledad - A Magical Realism RPG on @BackerKit! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n... #rpg #indie #gmless #pbta #ttrpg #art #rpgart #italy #norway #latin #solorpg #cardgame #boardgame
backerkit.com
The Roots of Soledad - A Magical Realism RPG
A card-based ttrpg by Matthijs Holter and a homage to South American magical realism. Play a whole campaign with zero prep and watch the characters' lives entangle between the mundane and the fantasti...
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
My new game, the Roots of Soledad, launched two days ago and is almost fully funded! So I'm super excited 😄 Soledad is a magical realism RPG, with lots of drama, supernatural weird things, and deeply human relationships. www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...
Pictures of two cards from the game Roots of Soledad, describing a relationship and a goal for a character
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NessunDove @nessundovelab.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Still a couple of hours left to back Soledad and get a free art sticker exclusive to Early Birds! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...
backerkit.com
The Roots of Soledad - A Magical Realism RPG
A card-based ttrpg by Matthijs Holter and a homage to South American magical realism. Play a whole campaign with zero prep and watch the characters' lives entangle between the mundane and the fantasti...
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Soledad. A magical realism RPG about a small town where the supernatural bleeds into ordinary life. Drama. Relationships. Deeply human. 94% funded in two days, which tells you more than I can. www.backerkit.com/c/projects/nessun…
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
A game where sex workers talk before their shift. One rule: never mention a specific man by name. That constraint moved the whole conversation to personhood.
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
My new game, the Roots of Soledad, launched two days ago and is almost fully funded! So I'm super excited 😄 Soledad is a magical realism RPG, with lots of drama, supernatural weird things, and deeply human relationships. www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...
Pictures of two cards from the game Roots of Soledad, describing a relationship and a goal for a character
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Camilla Zamboni 🔜 Metatopia @czamboni.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
As I just started a campaign of surrealist TTRPG "Itras By" with the excellent @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social, this launched! "The Roots of Soledad" by @matthijs1000.bsky.social in collaboration with @nessundovelab.bsky.social : a GM-less, card-based TTRPG a homage to South American magical realism.
backerkit.com
The Roots of Soledad - A Magical Realism RPG
A card-based ttrpg by Matthijs Holter and a homage to South American magical realism. Play a whole campaign with zero prep and watch the characters' lives entangle between the mundane and the fantasti...
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Soledad is over halfway funded. Twelve hours. I don't even know what to say. Thank you to everyone who backed and shared. This means the world. www.backerkit.com/c/projects/nessun…
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Michael Sollien - Seidmann Games (Spillforlaget) @michaelsollien.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Proud to be the 43rd backer 😎 on @BackerKit Crowdfunding for The Roots of Soledad - A Magical Realism RPG! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...
backerkit.com
The Roots of Soledad - A Magical Realism RPG
A card-based ttrpg by Matthijs Holter and a homage to South American magical realism. Play a whole campaign with zero prep and watch the characters' lives entangle between the mundane and the fantasti...
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Ole Peder @olepeder.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Roots of Soledad, @matthijs1000.bsky.socials nyeste rollespill. * Struktur spillederløse spill ofte mangler * I boks med nydelig italiensk-colombiansk design. * Noen av mine sterkeste rollespillopplevelser siste par år. * Poetiske greier. Ta en titt. www.backerkit.com/c/projects/n...
Prototype spillboks Roots of Soledad
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Michael Sollien - Seidmann Games (Spillforlaget) @michaelsollien.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
A magnificent adventure by @brianyaksha.bsky.social for Old-School Essentials is nearly funded on Backerkit. Check it out: www.backerkit.com/c/projects/m... #osr #ose #dnd #ttrpg #rpg #tabletop #indierpg #tabletoprpg #ttrpgart #darkfantasy
backerkit.com
The Tiger Princess of Treacherous Tripura
A city-crawl through a profane realm of the subtle divines of Vedic myth, created in homage to City-State of the Invincible Overlord and serving as a meta-commentary on syncretism, hedonism, and orien...
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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
My new tabletop roleplaying game is now live on BackerKit. The Roots of Soledad is a game of magical realism, family secrets, impossible memories, rebellion, faith, and fate. It takes place in the village of Soledad, where generations of characters are drawn into the shadow of the kapok tree.
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