iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 19h

oh no is being self-effacing actually often a slap in the face to people who admire you

scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 20h

Alder, Morningstar, The Bakers, Dragon, Harper, McDowall, Gal, Campbell, Shim, Munkao, Moran, Asercion, Hutchings all jump to mind. I know there are more. These are folks whose design opened my brain or if they have a project I will support sight unseen.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

tonight in blade eater 68: served secret masters, extracted a leviathan's location by remote hypnotism, got in (too?) deep with the ghost cops, planned a "comeback tour", consorted with the rival intern and the sapphic hackers, and our mysterious operator connected us with shadowy demon hunters

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

when my job wants me to write about something called "Dungeons & Dragons 2e"

A gif of Lizzy Caplan as Janis Ian from Mean Girls saying "How do I even begin to explain Regina George?"

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Chase @chkurk.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Tested yet another Gamestorm game with @scenefour.bsky.social at Playtest Chicago tonight. A map making game with a killer artifact of play. If you haven’t listened to this episode yet, the game was a blast! gamestorm.podbean.com/e/making-a-m...

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directsun @directsun.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I've been working on this for some time and with the release of the first three Cairn CAS adventures in Markdown, I thought this was as good a time as any to make a few announcements.

games.puzzledungeon.com

Just The Games

Reference at the speed of play.

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I Liv, I Die, Oliviagain Hill @machineiv.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

“Free Speech” never applies to anarchists.

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Sid Fiore Branca @sidbranca.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

i’m in a museum archive at the moment and this may be obvious but it is really being affirmed for me that the mode of prose closest to Trump’s posting style is “American newspaper advertisement from circa 1909 trying to convince you to go to the circus”

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

tonight in my dagger game: got sponsored by the armory, sent rescued mercs home to their mothers, attempted to stop local brain drain, got lore from a cow boy, augured the death of our mob boss friend, it came to pass, caught the killer, remembered his face, and realized it's worse than we thought

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

tonight in disco imperium '68: suppressed at the market, frozen in the canal, popped a cop's head with psychic power, disabled an anomaly bomb, contacted The Actualized Self, started blasting, challenged a masked racer, turned the tables, and used the Perspective Dimension to put a van on a mountain

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

had a youth workshop go so well last night it made me think "i should write a book about this"

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Vincent Baker explains one of the most frustrating misconceptions about Apocalypse World with the patience of a saint:

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This comes off kind of rude, but I'm willing to expand a bit: the "unfairness" attributed to RPGs is good because it doesn't stem from innate/immutable physical traits, but from skills that can be practiced and improved, like communication, lateral thinking, and systems analysis.

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Matthew Andre @gugg.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've always liked this spread in Apocalypse World, because it'd be impossible to tell if it's for a pbta game, or an OSR blogpost expounding on why OSR is the only real way to play ttrpgs.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Oh I think mist engine power levels would work perfectly for this honestly

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Mist Engine games like City of Mist and Legend in the Mist (LitM especially) give characters four traits, each of which can be humble or mighty. More humble characters are like hobbits. More mighty characters are like Aragorn or even Gandalf.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Yes! In Ars Magica's troupe-style play, a session often focuses on one player's extremely powerful Wizard, their companion, usually played by another player, and everyone else plays "grogs," common people and bodyguards from the covenant they dwell in.

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Stacey Mason @stcymsn.bsky.social · 15/10/2024

Formal affordances are the elements that pull a player toward certain actions, they “cry out” for the player to take those actions. Material affordances are the actions a system actually allows the player to take. Agency occurs when the two are in balance. (Mateas 2001)

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I can provide some common unexamined assumptions: - GMs - Dice - one character per player - players create characters - players always play the same character - “stats” - “the goal of the game is to tell a story” - violence is a necessary game elements - social/cultural rules aren’t real rules

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I think you’re right! I should have said “good at communicating” but I can’t resist and alliterative tricolon

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

No worries! I’m totally sympathetic to “I built my character to be persuasive, let me roll to persuade.” But that can totally coexist with “I possess and can effectively wield the leverage to convince this person as a player”, even at the same table.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A lot of people reading this as “when someone puts on a really good show, they get to throw away the rules and win by entertaining the GM or appealing to their whims,” and that is… not what this says

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

You’re sort of arguing with something I’m not saying here! I’m not saying “replace extant systems with just being clever and creative”. I am saying “you can be clever and creative within extant systems.”

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Basketball isn’t fair because tall players have an advantage. Everybody accepts this. RPGs aren’t fair because creative, thoughtful, and communicative players have an advantage. I think that’s cool! It’s not as though you can’t play if you’re not those things, but the best players will be.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It sounds to me like you are describing a bad communicator? And yes, communication is an example of a skill that RPGs reward. They’re games of and about communication. Sure, we should try to understand everyone. But good communicators will be better at RPGs and that’s fine.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I’m not talking about the real world, I’m talking about games. And arguments that don’t convince and tactics that don’t win… are definitionally not good to begin with, so I’m not following you there. I don’t know what “bad at conveying a good idea in the way others expect it to be conveyed” means.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Apocalypse World’s ethos and the OSR are in fact very similar. Play to find out, inviting randomness into generative procedure, emergent narrative, principles and agendas or primers and rulings; they share a lot. You can absolutely play AW in pawn or actor stance the same way you would an OSR.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I have a group of players who habitually predict exactly what will result from a course of action or what an NPC is going to do. It’s not even “oh that’s a good idea I’ll take it”—it’s “how could you know that. How did you figure that out.” And I love them

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

So, “PbtA” is not a single, monolithic game or even a system. It’s an ethos that contains hundreds if not thousands of games that may or may not share any individual elements in common. The OSR is similar, and these generalizations really fail to apply in my opinion.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Nobody is being “pushed out.” And it kinda sounds like you think I’m talking about play-acting or putting on a good performance. I’m not. Good plans work. Good tactics win. Good arguments convince.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I think about this every time the discourse comes up about how it’s “unfair” that players who actually have convincing arguments get to succeed at convincing NPCs. Yeah, it’s unfair, and also extremely cool

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I was thinking today about how RPGs need not be “fair.” Yes, if you’re clever, creative, and charismatic you will be better at a lot of games. That’s literally a good thing! You can be skilled at RPG play the same way you can be skilled at board games or sports.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I like how it’s completely acceptable to use “go birds” as a salutation and a farewell in philly. it’s like aloha

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Gibi @gibiofficial.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Thank god Sean is good at words cuz I’m not - but we finished our campaign last night! It is so not an exaggeration to say that the multi year experience really did change my life. It brought me an immeasurable amount of joy. 💜

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Anyway evil is inherently self-defeating and while I am skeptical that RPGs alone can build a better world I do believe there is value in imagining that other worlds are possible

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Tonight in my 4.5 Year Elf Game Finale: love is critical to life. Make peace with the reduced freedom that attends bonds of social obligation; it purchases a greater freedom to live with and love a community. Our impulses to push people away are manifestations of our desire for closeness. Also ooze.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Today in dungeon game: 3 extremely powerful wizards deigned to turn a creature into another creature, took a gross portal to a nasty tree, fell through rotten wood, assassinated a spider, got hammered by a treant, exploded his buddies, told him our life story, and offered to set him up with a dryad

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lumpley @lumpley.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

In the old days I had a reputation for controversy-for-controversy's-sake (mostly undeserved, genuinely; it should have been a reputation for putting my foot in it). Anyhow I'd be a little surprised if there's anything in this one that ANYone would take exception to.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

PAX U media badge approved! Either it's really easy to get one, I'm a real boy, or some dread mixture. See you there!

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

tonight in blade eater '68: hacked the machine that puts your soul in a robot, got stuck in the Torment Nexus by a self-loathing crystal demon, requested some files, infected everyone else's computer at the university, got a bad doctor killed, our cohort bungled a heist, and we all dropped acid

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

NEXT YOU’LL SAY… When you predict the next words out of a character’s mouth, roll + Battle IQ…

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Just an incredibly clever idea. Brindlewood battle anime is genius. Realizing long mid-fight voiceovers are Theorize moves is inspired.

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

today in SCUP: argued over breakfast with the lady wife, made the layabout torturer go do his job, created and then instantly killed an NPC, suggested the debauched farmers GO HOME and got invited along, stopped an assassin real clean, brought him to a dark room, and learned he's a skinwalker

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scene_FEAR 🔜 PAX Unplugged! @scenefour.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I have a vandercook universal 1 in my garage and it’s only a matter of time until I print an RPG zine on it

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Jason Morningstar @jmstar.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A friend suggested the "how to make a one-hour larp" chapter from Nine Space Games might be inspirational and a good format for folks to try out for the Golden Cobras, so I updated it and added a neutral worked example. I hope it inspires you! bpglink.com/freeform

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