iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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

"ot"? well okay. I guess that's the name of the game now

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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yeah okay, I have a game. Let me write ot down.

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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Oh, I loved Alarums & Excursions. Even contributed for a while.

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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

At that point I had just started on my Years of Absence from RPGs. My reaction felt more dreamlike, tbh.

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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I don't know why, but my first thought was "but... Doesn't he already do rabbits? Didn't he have a rabbit game years ago?" Anyway, I guess you got the right advice.

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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 · 14/08/2026

@yochaigal.bsky.social Was it you who asked about export functionality a while ago? FInally got around to it, check it out if you're still interested!

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Reposted by Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive)

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 · 03/08/2026

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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 · 30/07/2026

It does publish games made with the help of AI, yes. I list some in the article, along with numbers!

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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

Thanks for the feedback! Will look into that!

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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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Reposted by Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive)

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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Reposted by Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive)

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

These are from B-Sides, 35 experiments I wrote between 2005 and 2017. Each download includes the game and a note about where it came from. I hope some of them surprise you.

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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Proof of Concept: get a coin and a piece of paper. And some matches. A solo game with a dream creature on your shoulder. You burn the paper at the end. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569…

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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Snow: play yourselves as 80-year-olds meeting in falling snow. You give each other a loss and a gift. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569…

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Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive) @matthijs1000.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

The Elf Archaeologists Are Saying Hurtful Things About Your Skeleton: you lie on the floor and people say mean things about your bones. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/565…

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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 · 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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Reposted by Matthijs Holter (Hyperfictive)

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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