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LeviKornelsen

@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp

Canadian maker of tabletop RPG bits and assorted weirdness.

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LeviKornelsen, to random
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This is a find-your-people post for TTRPG folk.

Please respond by saying what sorts of TTRPG things you're pretty likely to either talk about or respond to if you see them.

This can be a list of games (D&D! Tribe 8! Fate!) or categories (the weirdest of indie stuff! NSR! Anything PBtA!), topics (Worldbuilding! Publishing!), stuff you're making, meta-commentary (The State Of The Industry), and so on.

Then maybe share, and if the replies are building up, check them for new people.

LeviKornelsen, to random
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Here's an assertion that should be fairly agreeable with a second of consideration:

In a trad game, when it comes to how much gravity the game mechanics exert on play, the pull of the character sheet and the things the player imagines based on it is notably stronger than the great majority of of other rules. It's the dwarf star of rules gravity.

image/jpeg

LeviKornelsen, to random
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It's been a minute; let's do this again:

If you are a Tabletop RPG nerd and have less than, say, 500 followers (or think you have less than 500 that are actually active):

  1. Write a post to introduce yourself and your particular nerdery, if you haven't already got one pinned.

  2. Reply in the comments with a link to or copy of that post.

  3. Share, check back to find people you want to follow, all that.

LeviKornelsen, to random
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D&D has generally not actually required that you murderize your opponents to get that sweet sweet XP.

But also, dumping the morale rules was a mistake.

Fights ending with one side breaking and running or surrendering genuinely SHOULD be more common.

LeviKornelsen, to random
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This is a probably kinda hardcore RPG theory thread on Emulation.

Emulation is generally used in the sense of imitation, sometimes as in "This is a [genre] game" and other times as in "This is the RPG for that show"; the game imitates features of the genre, media, or other thing in question.

1/?

LeviKornelsen, to random
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Assuming you can parse this:

"This game captures the feeling of [this other thing, such as a piece of media] that I enjoy, and thereby some of my enjoyment of [the other thing] is applied to the game."

Two questions:

  1. Have you experienced this?

  2. Have attempts to evoke this ever interfered with your enjoyment of a game?

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

For anyone confused by cents per word among RPG freelancers:

1-4 cents / word ought to be "Name and shame the person who offered this bullshit" territory.

5-7 cents / word is trash money, but if there's no research and you can hammer it out fast, maybe.

8 cents / word is the SFWA MINIMUM for "professional rates".

9-14 cents / word is low-grade professional.

15+ cents / word is where "actual professional writer" rates live.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

Everybody is clear that "George Soros" is a direct replacement term for "Banker Jews", right?

When you see people complain about Soros in anything other than actual, specific, Soros-in-specific-and-reality ways, they just mean "Jews" (or are a complete fucking smoothbrain that listens to people who mean "Jews"). Nobody is actually confused anymore, right?

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

The Guide Principles for WeirdGlass, draft version, at the link.

I would appreciate any thoughts!

https://levikornelsen.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/weirdglass-guide-principles/

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

If you are, by some happenstance, at all interested in Lamentations of the Flame Princess and unaware of the surrounding politics, this video title should clear that up for you instantly.

51 minutes, man. Whoo.

LeviKornelsen, to random
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So here's a story:

The guy who wrote the Quest RPG didn't play RPGs hardly at all - like, a couple sessions of D&D, and read over the rulebooks a bit.

What he DID do was listen to podcasts about play and games, and listen to streaming play, and wrote a game built on what he heard there, which is so far as I can see extremely well engineered for streaming performances.

He was then shit on, in Twitter, extremely heavily, for not being connected, for having a good job (yes, really), and (1/2)

LeviKornelsen, (edited ) to random
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EDIT: Updated!

If you're posting a game on Itch or Drivethru, and you're not sure what to write...

That's sales copy, and there are books and books about it. I've read plenty, and then proceeded to write good copy for, like, three of my games. I'm lazy. But it DID improve their downloads, visibly.

So if you want a very basic, one-page, zero-level starter, I have one for you; see the picture or the link. (Left column, how-to, right column, example).

https://levikornelsen.itch.io/one-page-sales-copy-guide

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

Important announcement for Tabletop Designers doing weird esoteric games:

Not enough of us apparently know what an Egregore IS, because holy shit have a lot of us (including me) talked about it without the word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

  1. Most of the hobby plays D&D, at varying levels of satisfaction.

  2. Most new RPGs market to the existing hobby.

  3. Most new RPGs therefore market to an audience heavy with D&D players.

  4. "Do You Hate D&D?" marketing (implicit or explicit) excludes the majority of the possible audience, while "Do You Feel Mixed Satisfaction with D&D?" includes shitloads more people. Marketing that ignores D&D must stand distinct; it's higher effort.

  5. The other half of the battle is red and blue lasers.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

How The Phoenix Guards ought to work as an RPG:

Player: I shall charge the brigade, lone and heroic, and strike down all who oppose me.

GM: Magnificent! You will die heroically after inflicting notable injuries on many foes.

Player: Perhaps I misspoke. I will charge the brigade, a full step ahead of my own troops, and seek out a worthy enemy among the foe!

GM: Courageous! You will surely be injured.

Player: I scoff at danger.

GM: Let us see what fortune brings to the mix.

Rolls die

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

Trying to trace some web traffic today, I stumbled upon a forum where there's a giant discussion wherein one or more people think it's weird to call the made-up stuff that's under discussion in a TTRPG "the fiction".

I then realized it was a "no politics" site and noped out. But... If I make up a dude, that dude is fictional. It's the blandest of descriptions, and doesn't even rise to the level of jargon? Like, what?

No need to answer, just shaking head in text.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

I need swashbuckling, black-powder-era media to play in the background while continuing to muck about with Saints.

Musketeer stuff is obvious, but also just finished watching Plunkett & Mclean again, which was a lovely bit of counterweight to the glossed-up feel.

What else is out there?

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

OSR folks:

Judge's Guild decided the right way to post about the death of Jennell Jaquays was by deadnaming her throughout in their Facebook post.

This got them a bunch of yelling-at, during which they doubled down that this was somehow neutral practice, and then it vanished, possibly deleted, possibly reported into oblivion.

So, like, if they weren't already on your asshole list, mark 'em on down.

LeviKornelsen, to random
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It's amazing how many problems with the D&D structure vanish if you change the narrative to "You are a band of raiders employed by a petty kingdom to go fuck up and get shit from the one next door; 'good' means 'good for your kingdom', evil means bad for it".

As soon as you drop the pretense of being Heroic Agents Of Civilization, it becomes vastly more consistent.

LeviKornelsen, to random
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Determining the colour of the flag that goes up when someone says "I love Starship Troopers!" requires a couple of followup questions.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

I want a D&D setting where not only did A Wizard Do It, but we know his fucking name, and we know what the gods did to that asshole before changing the rules so other wizards absolutely cannot do that.

And I want wizards to curse his dumbass name on the daily.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

Attempting to clarify some long-running D&D debate here (not RESOLVE it, just clarify it):

https://levikornelsen.wordpress.com/2024/02/19/the-dd-playstyle-block/

LeviKornelsen, to random
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I think the OSR needs to collectively sit down and read Imajica.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

Welp, my experience of Mastodon has now reached the point of living up to my nostalgic memories of G+, which means it's almost certainly actually better.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

Woke up, and I am awash in cool nerds looking to make more friends. Gonna space these boosts out a bit so as not to flood the timelines, but I'm on it.

We got a lot of folks looking to find their feet on this network, it would seem!

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