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waltzingophidian.bsky.social

@waltzingophidian.bsky.social
15 followers 28 following 1 posts
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Amaranth M @jazzelves.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It’s not like people were mostly thinking about it in those terms. Some of it was the cargo culting which is still going on, a lot more was just “hey we’re just here to play” and still more was “we don’t have a framework to think critically about this, even if we are registering feelings.”
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Amaranth M @jazzelves.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This also impacted things like why “you don’t have to roll” didn’t catch on, and why “some rolls are only to determine which positive effects if any take effect”: these are *at odds* with the mainstream mood of “this is what and how you do in RPG”, subtextually. It all tracks.
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Amaranth M @jazzelves.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Around the time of Apocalypse World being made, one big influence was busily defining how a 7’th level portrait painter had 7d6 hit points and a +4 attack bonus. Another one was claiming to be a game of social intrigue and horror and devoted 65% of its rules text to elaborate brawling situations.
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Amaranth M @jazzelves.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I’m bathtub posting so maybe this is only gonna make sense to me but: one of the reasons Act Under Fire was so quick to become “the” model for the cultural mindset is because of how the most widespread games were all related around violence and skirmish heroics as a primary standard.
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psudonym @psudonym.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Spider's nest tw:arachnophobia
a diorama cutaway of a nerdy bedroom for a giant spider girl
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mossworm.bsky.social @mossworm.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
experience a nightlife like no other at Ground Melon. special features include: melon,
Little tan and black beetle on spoiled melon rindTwo small black beetles mating on spoiled melonLight brown moth licking spoiled melonvery tiny and plump little fly on spoiled melon, surrounded by some eggs of larger flies
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It's interesting how species-transition fantasy has evolved in certain circles. On one hand, there's a palpable current of magical realist exploration of many trans people's ambivalence re: whether all changes brought on by HRT are necessarily desirable; on the other hand, fuck yeah, laser claws.
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Grant Howitt @gshowitt.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Gemelli has played a lot of Hollows. More than me, that’s for sure. So that’s why you should have a bash on his thorough (and, admittedly, glowing) review of our game:
Sometimes things veer into record-keeping, breaking out rulers and cone templates. Sometimes you just don't feel the sense of danger right out of the gate.
Enter the Hollows grid system, which wrestles these problems to the ground and makes them squeal:

[image of the hollows tactical grid]
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Yadana @yadanathreefour.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Hot Streak
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3E46 (Comms Closed, Queue filled!!) @gan3e46.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
#arktober2026 Day 1 Statue
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Sometimes you go on co-op bombing missions, which means there's a second person sitting behind the pilot with a bunch of loose bombs rolling around in the footwell, and they have to pick them up with their hands, light them, and drop them over the side of the plane.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Concept: multiplayer aerial combat sim based on the first couple of years of World War I where nobody knew how air combat worked yet and rival pilots were just tooling around at double-digit air speeds plinking at each other with handguns from the open cockpits of their unarmed plywood death traps.
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Brain Dracula @cryptotheism.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I'm ngl I pogged when I leaned Pocket Deadlock is also a tall dark haired they/them. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
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tpwrtrdmn @tpwrtrmnky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
my stance on fantasy vs sci-fi is that i think these are aesthetic labels that have gotten so broad that they're barely informative at all. the real slop genre is orc fiction. if there's an archetypal "orc species," a nuance-free inherently evil group of morally uncomplicated enemies, it's slop.
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tpwrtrdmn @tpwrtrmnky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
the hallmark of orcfic is that even when it makes a token effort to be "nuanced," it's still centered on the non-orcs, still primarily about people whose jobs are to kill orcs. it can ask you to sympathize and say, "well, there might be good orcs sometimes," and then continue to be orcfic afterwards
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Putting a "describe outcomes in pure rules terms and let the players work out what it means descriptively" OSR designer and a "if you even think about the numbers on your character sheet when deciding what to do I will literally jump out of the book and kill you" PbtA designer in the same enclosure.
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H2R @h2mrs.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
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lumpley @lumpley.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
As a game thinker, personally, I'm not interested in distinguishing games clearly from other kinds of behaviors and activities. I'm interested in finding and learning from the games that are hiding, unidentified, unrecognized, unacknowledged in the other things we do.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Y'all, it... it wasn't supposed to be a death game. Nobody told you to do *any* of that. You were supposed to go on a magical adventure and learn a lesson about setting aside your differences to overcome adversity. Where did you get the guns? HOW did you get the guns?
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🎃Farmer GaddAAAHH!!!!🎃 @farmergadda.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Anyone claiming their osr houserules are the one true way are liars and charlatans UNLESS they dedicate a full page to being really autistic about polearms for no good reason, then they can talk.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
A lot of OSR dungeon crawlers claim to be the true heirs to OD&D, but you can tell they're posers because not one of them has an entire chapter inexplicably devoted to underwater combat.
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Jhoira's Bizarre Adventure: Sax Ball Run @saximus.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
On a related note,
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evgay @glitchplight.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I'm sure the l2d of tragodia selfcesting himself is like really fun and conceptually might be the only time I give a fuck about the l2d animation. wish he wasn't getting a little orientalist about it in the process though
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Chloé Stawski @chlowski.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
yo Leo are you willing to commission me for some Mary Magdalene x angel Gabrielle yuri
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Rosarie Maria🦐 @fatamorgana.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
People liking my old tweets
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The real irony is that in spite of all the AI brainrot doomsaying, access to LLM-based reference material may well increase tech literacy in certain spheres, because an evil robot is still a better resource than an entrenched userbase who won't answer simple questions unless you kiss their assholes.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Even if you don't give a shit about the ethics, hazing novice users until they cry is no longer a *materially* effective means of gating access to information technology when they can just go ask the robot. Sure, they're not learning that way, but they weren't learning anything from you, either, so.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Every time a newbie tries to ask a question on the official forum and everybody yells at them to RTFM, then when they actually do R the FM the section addressing what they need to know is just a big fat /*** TODO ***/ (Last updated: December 2017), that's one more we've lost.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The fact of the matter is that if we don't want people resorting to asking LLMs to solve their coding problems for them, we as a community have gotta get a LOT more willing to field questions whose answers we regard as painfully obvious.
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Doober @doobermcgoober.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Curses 👁️‍🗨️
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I think one of the main things games like "Of the Devil" are doing to enrich gaming culture is providing more female characters who can plausibly serve in the capacity of that screenshot-with-a-word-balloon-edited-in meme when somebody on social media starts talking like a Final Fantasy villain.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
My cat understands the call-and-response component of greetings, but not the context, so sometimes I have to say "hello" to her when she's been there the whole time because otherwise she'll get upset that I did not Furnish The Correct Response.
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Lost In Cult @lostincult.co.uk · 29/09/2026
The struggle, the cycles. It can all fade away...🌧️ Find some shelter in @rainworldgame.bsky.social : Design Works, our newest book that honours a survival game like no others. Signed Editions by the development team available only for the first 48 hours! 🔻
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Digital Poppy Poppy Zone @poppyzone.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
the world if trans women all got into Foucault's Pendulum instead of warhound
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Which game is this" come on, y'all know I'm NEVER referring to just one game with these remarks about oddly specific genres. There are several unrelated examples which either came out or had episodes published in the last few months alone – "Of the Devil" and "Money For Girls" both spring to mind.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'm not sure why "lightly surrealist slice-of-life investigative procedural point-n-click adventure with VN-flavoured UX starring a 20-something autistic woman who looks like she hasn't slept in a year" is taking off RIGHT NOW, but I guess ultimately it's one of those "better late than never" deals.
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David J Prokopetz @prokopetz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If nothing else, AI-driven spam can be good for laughs. I'm currently getting spammed at my business email by what appears to be an LLM chatbot that was randomly given the email handle "Larry King" and concluded that it should be RPing as the actual Larry King, the American TV host who died in 2021.
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Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
all this is why flying circus got that move which is just "hey if you do a thing there's not a move for, you do it, and then consequences emerge" i was so sick of people trying to 'roll stealth' lol
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Authenticity Trip | 200-Proof Games @200proofgames.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This reveals why the generic moves cause so many problems: the tiered success *does not do enough* on its own to satisfyingly and *consistently* resolve questions. It forces the fiction through the dice directly, and the results are crude and rough and need a far more skilled MC to apply properly.
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Authenticity Trip | 200-Proof Games @200proofgames.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The answer, the resolution, begins to take shape as soon as a move is invoked, and the roll of the dice simply *clarifies* that answer. The move leads to the dice which lead back to the move and then back to the fiction. The dice are airgapped away from diegesis, folded into the moves.
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Authenticity Trip | 200-Proof Games @200proofgames.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This is the skeleton key to every mid PBTA game and session - people look at the moves and think they’re equivalent to, like, initiative mechanics or something. Like an optional add-on for flavor. No, man, they’re the *whole deal.* Ignore them and everything falls alll the way apart
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Authenticity Trip | 200-Proof Games @200proofgames.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If the question a resolution engine answers is “what happens next,” a move is powerful design wise because it instantly narrows the potential result space. Really think about that: before you randomize the outcome, you have a *very good idea* of the *kind* of outcomes you might get.
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Authenticity Trip | 200-Proof Games @200proofgames.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
People think that dice are the engine for RPGs, because they’re so visible. The d20 is so iconic. We think apocalypse world “runs on 2d6.” It doesn’t. It runs on moves. *Moves* are the resolution engine - the dice are *only* the randomizing agent, which is an important piece but not the heart!
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Ben from Spookily Drawn Swords @glenatron.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Something the conversation around this, in particular some of the really insightful stuff from @200proofgames.bsky.social, helped me see is how much continuity there is between the microgames in Mobile Frame Zero and PbtA Moves when they're working well. I hadn't thought of it that way before.
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lumpley @lumpley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
PbtA fans, here's my challenge to you. For the next 12 months, when somebody asks how PbtA works, tell them that normally a 10+ is a critical hit, a 7-9 is a hit, and a 6- is a compromise, but that unusually challenging or dangerous situations can bump itdown.
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lumpley @lumpley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Their question, like @homebrewandhacking.bsky.social 's, "why would I want bad or so-so on 70-80% of rolls? Why would I TOLERATE that?" is a great question. "How am I supposed to come up with a so-so result that isn't a failure, on a majority of rolls?" is a great question.
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lumpley @lumpley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Now, this misunderstanding of PbtA— Good happen, so-so happen, bad happen — it's not the fault of the people who've had PbtA presented to them this way. They shouldn't somehow know better, when this is what people have been telling them!
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lumpley @lumpley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There are also moves in Apocalypse World that go like this: What happen? On 10+: Exceptional success! On 7-9: Success! On 6-: Partial failure or compromise! If you need a roll for someone taking action within their strengths & skills, cool, just use this template instead of the more punishing one.
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lumpley @lumpley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
As it happens, Apocalypse World has a move for cooking a Michelin star meal. It's not a basic move, it's a playbook move, because not everybody cooks at that level. It works like this: What happen? On 10+: Pick 2 good things! On 7-9: Pick 1 good thing! On 6-: NBD but meal is still delicious.
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lumpley @lumpley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
15 years ago when Apocalypse World was new and people were beginning to understand and work with it, it was seductive to look at "acting under fire" and see, not one basic move of several, but the template underlying all the game's moves. Like @kierongillen.bsky.social 's classic gag:
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